Typographic Manipulation of the Poetic Text in the Early Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde

Abstract

Experiments with typography proliferated in the early decades of the twentieth century in the works of poets and artists involved with the various movements of the early avant-garde. For artists of the Dada, Italian and Russian Futurist, and Vorticist movements, these manipulations were an integral part of their aesthetic and political concerns. The source which inspired these works and the central issues which motivated these visual pyrotechnics varied considerably from poet to poet. This article traces the relations among aesthetic principles, linguistic meaning, political strategies and visual representation in the typographic work of F.T. Marinetti, Guillaume Apollinaire, Tristan Tzara, Wyndham Lewis and Ilia Zdanevich in the Period of 1909 to 1923.