Language:
German
Year of publication:
2013
Titel der Quelle:
Zwischenwelt; Zeitschrift für Kultur des Exils und des Widerstands
Angaben zur Quelle:
30,1 (2013) 37-41
Keywords:
Isou, Isidore
;
Jewish literature History and criticism
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature
Abstract:
Discusses Romanian-born French poet, film critic, and visual artist Isidore Isou's Lettristic movement as a reaction to the Holocaust. Isou was born Ioan-Isidor Goldstein in Botoşani in 1925. In 1940 he was assigned to forced labor, but was spared deportation, like the vast majority of Botoşani's 11,000 Jews. The Iron Guard, however, exercised daily terror in the city. In 1945 Isou settled in Paris, where he elaborated on the artistic concepts he had begun to create in 1942. The Holocaust was the theme of his first symphony, composed in Bucharest in 1944. In Paris, together with other Jewish survivors, he created the Lettrist movement in 1946. Argues that although Lettrism plays with sounds, mixes languages, and invents new words, it has nothing to do with Dada, since it wants to make a statement and takes a political stand. Isou's work confronts Auschwitz and is an attempt by him and fellow Jewish artists to establish a place for themselves in French society. Isou died in 2007. Concludes that although Isou himself has been largely forgotten, his ideas live on in the works of other avant-garde artists.
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