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Perpetual Movement: Francis Picabia's 391 Review (1917–1924)

19 volumes of a Dada and Surrealist–associated journal published by Francis Picabia.

Picabia’s capricious approach to proper nouns extended to the many “-isms” that characterised the period in which he worked: no sooner had he hoisted the banner of one movement, than he had cast it off altogether, wriggling free before what we might call the three “c”s — convention, codification, and collectivism — impinged on his individual creative freedom. While most issues are just a few pages long, they contain no shortage of curiosities: a calligramme by Guillaume Apollinaire, a redacted poem by Man Ray that constitutes an early precursor to erasure poetics, and a full-page parody of an advertising spread by Tristan Tzara. In the postwar years, Paris became the scene of frenetic creative activity: poems were read in the dark or under umbrellas in the rain, eggs were pelted at performers and insults at audiences in ever-more chaotic “happenings”.

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