by Valery Oisteanu 

I am a Beautiful Monster, Poetry, Prose and Provocations, Francis Picabia, Translated by Marc Lowenthal, (MIT Press 2007)

I am a Beautiful Monster is the first definitive edition in English of writings by the poet and consummate anti-artist Francis Picabia (1879-1953) published recently by MIT-Press. With lightning wit and, speedy contradictions and a slight of hand, Picabia created works and wrote text demonstrating that “abstractionism”; Ddada and Ssurrealism can be as powerful and challenging as Ffigurative Aart or Rrealist Lliterature.

Picabia once received a “Ddada Ddelegation from Cabaret Voltaire” by smashing an old clock in his hotel room, taking it apart, and dipping small and large spoke wheels in jars with of black ink, and then pressing them onto paper. He finished the composition by adding provocative inscriptions. With this spectacular gesture Picabia “stenciled” his way into Zurich Dada (Reveil matin-1919), after his earlier participation in New York’s Dada with Duchamp, Man Ray, and & Marius de Zayas.   

Who was Picabia?   It has taken scholars more than half a century after his death to redefine Picabia as a multi-artist, poet, and philosopher. As a leading figure in the Ddada movement, he was a Ddandy, painter, bon vivant, filmmaker, and funny polemicist. and miscevously enigmatic . Picabia was the quintessential avant-gardist, yet little or none of his poetry and prose has till now been translated.    

I am a Beautiful Monster has a great many of Picabia’s poetry and prose pieces assembled from all of his known writings. The opening poem is “Medusa,” which was originally written in English (published in “The Blind Man” no. 2, May 1917) after his return to New York from Barcelona. The poem reflects his position on the rejection of Duchamp’s “Fountain” by the Society of Independent Artists: “Artists of Speech /who have one hole for mouth and anus.” raved Picabia.

The translator and commentator, Marc Lowenthal, informs us that while Gabrielle Buffet (his wife) and kids werePicabia’s family was away in Switzerland, Picabia he was having an affair with the infamous dancer Isadora Duncan. That affair had precipitated a poem called “Delightful” and along with several portraits:

” ““This age is nothing but a sick woman
Let her scream, rant and rave, argue,
Let her break all the dishes.”
   
“(Partially attributed to Nietzsche).

Platonic False Teeth,” a poem in two chapters dedicated to the memory of Guillaume Apollinaire, was written in 1919 as a Ddada anagram and a play on the words “l’aAtelier d’aArtiste.” According to Lowenthal, tThe implied “Atelier Platonique” could be a private joke, comments  Lowenthal, concerning Picabia’s threesome with wife and mistress, and toas well as the living arrangements, which at one point had them staying in three interconnecting rooms—, Picabia in the middle, as always. The element in the poem points to the use of collage in both his work and love life. , just as in his love life style he created multi-sensorial assemblages.

Verse by verse Picabia studied himself, his art world, and his lovers. “Around Ooneself” was written in Barcelona in a book called Fifty-Two Mirrors in which every clue pointed to a self-introspective analysis of his life. In 1921 he became a Dada-inventor with “Cannibale” manifesto”, a book containing both prose and graphic poems and even graphic poems such as “Presbyotic Manifesto.” (Paris 1920) poetry.

FUNNY GUY -Picabia is an imbecile an idiot a pickpocket. Picabia is an idiotic Spanish professor who loves the morality of idiots …etc etc

After a short Dada-stint, anti-Dada was in vogue.! In October. 1921, he addressed the crisis in a painting with a graphic poem. Picabia proved to be a poet with a creative egoistic bravura, an appropriator with a twist, an outrageous posturing performer, and a loud polemicist . He was notoriously provocative in intellectual circles throughout the world.
Picabia’s writings still remain radical, belligerent,, and funny, a, and, according to the translator, were borrowed heavily from influenced by Nietzsche himself and then slightly manipulated.

I am a Beautiful Monster is a selection from all of his significant books, accompanied by their original visuals. It should also be noted that Picabia parallel invented Picto-poetry while experimenting with Dada poems (Romanian/French Victor Brauner also invented “picto-poetry” in 1924.)

From the his beginnings until to the present day, Picabia’s poems have been presented as raw events, rule-breaking manifestations, happenings, or Ddada -performances. This book, however, reveals them asto be something different. Picabia’s poems hide a confused personality mixed up with surreal dreams and Ddada impertinence. Beautiful Monster appropriately concludes in pure Picabian form: “Everything for today, nothing for yesterday, nothing for tomorrow.” “concludes “the beautiful monster”.

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