I’ve never been keen on manifestos, political, religious or artistic, and especially not those associated with modernism – too much certainty, too much rhetoric, too much damned ego. Even allowing for youth’s frustration with the past, I can’t read Marinetti’s proto-Fascist Futurist fantasies without an overwhelming sense of their stupidity. Just two of his manifesto’s 11 articles should be enough to make the point:
Five years later the First World War was launched by men drunk on such hubris. Why did anyone take this rubbish seriously? Why do they still?
On the other hand, read as poetry, dreams, exhortations or simply promises to the self, artists’ manifestos can be wonderful and weird. It helps to think of them as works of art rather than political projects, even when they’re stuffed with claims about how much better things will be once their fantastical propositions are enacted. But as literature, or philosophy, the best artists’ manifestos can open windows onto new horizons and challenge my assumptions.
Yvonne Rainer wrote her ‘No Manifesto’ in 1965 to give a foundation to her vision of dance.. It’s admirably short, clear and thought-provoking, though its grammar of rejection challenges me. Every statement begins with the same word – No to virtuosity, No to the heroic, No to eccentricity. But rebellion against an oppressive, even tyrannical situation is the engine of social justice. I saw the community arts movement as a rebellion against the existing art system (how’s that working out, people?).
What I like still more about Yvonne Rainer, is her openness to second thoughts. In 2008, for the Serpentine Gallery’s ‘Manifesto Marathon’, she published a new version, informed I suppose, by her evolving experiences and beliefs. I like both: they’re full of wisdom and beauty, especially when in dialogue with each other. And I respect anyone willing to say that they no longer understand what they once thought important. It’s how we learn and grow. In the words of Walt Whitman ‘Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) ‘
All this because I’ve been wondering whether to try my hand at a manifesto for a selfless art, if I can work out what it is – or, rather, as part of working out what it might be. It would have to written in charcoal though, ready to be smudged, written over and rebelled against. After all, whatever a selfless art might be, it can’t be one person’s possession. It contains multitudes.
And here’s a last word from Yvonne Rainer, reading an extract from her notebook for Getty exhibition, ten years ago. Beautiful; and brave. And a poetic manifesto of sorts too.
Yvonne Rainer’s manifesto was published in a Serpentine Gallery Pamphlet (2008), which can be downloaded here,
François Matarasso 