manifesto destiny

Having authored (along with Doc and David) a rather popular manifesto myself, I was immediately interested when I just now stumbled across Manifesto: A Century of Isms. Library Journal says: Caws performs an important service here with this anthology of artistic, literary, and cultural manifestos. The collection brings together for the first time over 200 manifestos, translated by various hands. It begins with English, French, Swiss, Russian, and Irish statements on Symbolism and extends to recent postmodernist declarations. The anthology includes famous manifestos on Cubism, Futurism in its various manifestations, Fauvism, Dada, Vorticism, and Surrealism, as well as more offbeat movements, such as Nowism, Thingism, Letterism, Giorgio de Chirico's Scuola Metafisica, and Kurt Schwitters's Cow Manifesto. Essential reading for anyone interested in the history of modern art, aesthetics, and culture, I wonder if, with the likes of Eckhart Tolle and his ilk, we aren't experiencing a resurgence of Nowism. Personally, I'd rather it was Cowism. But I have to admit, never having encountered Kurt Schwitters before now, I've never read the Cow Manifesto. Off to look for that one now... Well, I didn't find it, but I did (don't ask how) find The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant Guerre, and the Language of Rupture, and in that, this... Problematic, yeah. One way to put it.

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