Radio Futurism: DAVID BURLIUK 1926
WHO IS DAVID BURLIUK?
David Burliuk is the father of Russian Futurism and one of the founders of the Cubo-Futurist movement in France and Germany (Der Blaue Reiter) in 1910.
David Burliuk is one of the pioneers of the NEW UNIVERSAL ART together with Picasso, Paul Gaulois, Lefoconnier, Archipenko, Deren, Katherine Dreier, Winthrop Chandler, F. Leger, Stella, S. Sudeikin, W. Majakowsky, N. I. Wasiliew, Yavlenski, Kandinski, Goncharova, Larinov, Campendonck, Malevitch, Ch. Sheeler, Boris Grigoriew, Ecter, Matiushin, S. Konenkow, Alfred Steiglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, John Marin, N. N. Evreinow, Kanchalovski, Lentulov, Ivan Narodny, Dr. Christian Brinton, N. Feshin, M. Barnes, Mrs. Brumback, A. Baylinson, J. Maltulka, A. Maniewitz, J. Sloan, W. Kamiensky, A. Krutchenik, Prof. Roerich and others.
D. Burliuk, founder of the radio mov. – painter, poet, orator, actor and show-man. His paintings were exhibited in France, Germany, Russian, Japan, United States, Marianas Islands and the Aleutian Islands on the Pacific.
Radio-modernists are those who create, determined and not afraid of not being understood by the contemporaries.
To unite all Radio-modernists of the world – is our aim.
I now assume the name of RADIO-FUTURIST, founder of the UNIVERSAL CAMP OF RADIO-MODERNISTS in the city of New York.
AN OLD BARK AT LONG ISLAND
I am sitting now in a domicile on a wrecked bark. It lies on a sand dune. Way out in the distance stretches one of the ocean’s gulfs. There are no windows in the domicile; the door serves me as a table. The tiny crystals of the Atlantic fill the air and inspire one with dreams of immortality. Save the sun in the sky and in the water; save the dark blue ether and the murmur of the waves – there is naught. The wind caresses the dune.
Time has arrived for the richest country in the world, America, to lavish part of its gold on the creation of unheard of beauty.
RADIO-STYLE
David Burliuk is the inventor and explorer of the RADIO-STYLE, the one and only style of our epoch. In America, the earth’s greatest country, there has already been some work after this style. The artist has painted a number of such pictures, and during that time he has completely refrained from food, thereby reducing 63 pounds.
AMERICA THE GREAT
Time has ripened to recognize the fact that a country must have ART worthy of its greatness. Great America is worthy of GREAT NEW ART. THE NEW ART should be the possesion of every home. One should always look at the pictures of the great contempories.
Old Art – is as international, as history is. Its basis, its inferences – every vestige of instructive and educational matter – belong to all.
ART OF TODAY
On the tree of Great America grow leaves and flowers. The thin threads of their aroma fill the nostrils of the angels that have spread their wings amid the clouds of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD’S ESTHETICS
The Radio-Epoch – is the epoch of Cosmopolitanism. The voice of a song sung in Chicago is now heard in Australia and in the Steppes of Russia. The moment is not far distant when all inhabitants of the earth will listen all at once to the declamations of the GREAT.
The President of ESTHETICS of all the world has already been elected. But he himself is not yet aware of it. Perhaps – it is you – you who are reading these lines? A palace of transcendant beauty is already prepared for you.
Life has no meaning when one lives only for the sake of meat cutlets and the meager rewards of material success. Life assumes a meaning then, and only then, when the soul enters into the possiblity of new art.
LIFE – REMINISCENCE.
Even to science, the vault of heaven, seen thru a telescope – is somewhat metaphysical, superexisting, abstract. The spectator knows the position of a star in a given order – supposing 5, when in life, in reality, it is passing thru 8.
To our all-embracing mind, this metaphysical law is relater to everything that throbs, moves and revolves about us.
In like manner is the impression of a man walking: for the onlooker there exists the position 3, when in reality he is passing thru 4 1/2.
Man’s organism embraces the world thru its senses.
The hypothesis of the five senses is incorrect – there are more.
When Rimbaud spoke about the color of the vowels, he pointed out that sound and light are manifestations of one and the same order – possessing, however different degrees of vibration.
A great thought of universal significance can, sometimes be expressed ina single line.
Simplicity of form, however, does not imply inept substance.
Emerson expresses himself very originally and beautifully when he called Humbolt the voice (mute to him) of the stones.
The epoch that preceeded the present – RADIO AGE – was an era of destruction.
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The kinetic phase destroys the static forms.
The preceeding epoch – now finished – the epoch of electricity – was the Apocalypse of this – the dynamic age.
As in nature this in life the idea of form is continually destroyed by motion – Time – the very process of life.
Music depicts Time through the images of sound.
Painting is nothing but colored Space.
To listen to music we need Time.
To see a painting – frequently only a moment is sufficient.
REPRODUCTION OF ABSTRACT OBJECTS
(Super-Nature)
There are physical and metaphysical objects.
Between the two “real” – physical – skyscrapers there exists the third, the metaphysical, created at the intersection of the mentally prolonged surfaces of the “real” structure. Between the two living beings there is always the third – abstract, metaphysical.
Super-nature, metaphysical constructions – creations of “pure-reason”, are projected in imagination by prolonging lines and surfaces of actually existing objects. Edgar Allen Poe and Flammarion existed in reality, but live now only metaphysically.
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One can paint a bottle of whiskey on the table; but one can also portray – a bottle of whiskey which is no longer there. The myth of the so-called soul is a reality of our RADIO AGE.
Everything – from the tiny bug to a tea-spoon – has its specific soul. The whiskey bottle that was on the table is there still forever, but abstract.
Conciousness is the possession not only of man, the insignificant particle of creation, but of Mother Nature as well.
Footnote: Since people do not order their portraits from me I paint the portraits of demons, for who I keep an empty chair in my studio.
Address: D. Burliuk, 2116 Harrison Ave. (near Hall of Fame N. Y. University), Tel. Sedgwick 1124.
Yesterday is the shadow of today.
Yet the yesterdays appear sooner than the present has time to disappear.
SCIENCE & MYTH OF THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE
Beginning with the dark ages up to the era of steel and steam the evolution of life constructed in its different stages a mechanical man. This developement occured in the muscles and bones of the human man and the rougher mechanical elements of man until we reached a purely physical mechanical man – the industrial worker of the present, being replaced by a purely mechanical construction.
Today – the beginning of the historical radio era, we are witnessing the mechanization of the human mind or of the mental qualities of man. This is the beginning of the creation of a mechanical mentality. The physical side of philosophical. Speculation of the past is now complete and the dream of the Philosopher’s Stone and the mechanization of the human mind is a dream that is not far from being materially manifested.
REPRODUCTION OF SPEED.
We need to train our mind to see things slowly, yet see much. The Chinese see things on a different – a slower – scale than our highly ‘civilized’ artists.
We have acquired with our civilization a algebraic vision.
The Chinese painters see distinctly each feather on the wing of a flying bird.
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Once we acquire the habit of ’slow’ sight, we will be able to see the kinetic just as we see the static things. It is only a matter of proportion. A wood-chopper will appear in the form of a fan.
To a static vision a walking man looks like a thousand-legged creature.
A fast moving carriage assumes the semblance of a train of enchained cars.
To a higher mind a century is merely an image of man’s mind a metronome, beating a hundred times in our conciousness.
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- David Burliuk, 1926.
admin @ July 1, 2007
