THE DIMENSIONIST MANIFESTO
Paris, 1936
ch. sirato
Dimensionism is a general movement of the arts. Its unconscious origins reaching back to Cubism and Futurism, it has
been continuously elaborated and developed since then by all the peoples of Western civilization.
Today the essence and theory of this great movement bursts with absolute self-evidence.
Equally at the origin of Dimensionism are the European spirit’s new conceptions of space-time (promulgated most
particularly by Einstein’s theories) and the recent technical givens of our age.
The absolute need to evolve, an irreducible instinct, has sent the avant-garde on their way toward the unknown,
leaving dead forms and exhausted essences as prey for less demanding artists.
We must accept—contrary to the classical conception—that Space and Time are no longer separate categories, but
rather that they are related dimensions in the sense of the non-Euclidean conception, and thus all the old limits and
boundaries of the arts d i s a p p e a r.
This new ideology has elicited a veritable earthquake and subsequent landslide in the conventional artistic system.
We designate the totality of relevant artistic phenomena by the term “DIMENSIONISM.” / Tendency or Principle of
Dimensionism. Its formula: “N + 1.” (A formula discovered in Planist theory and then generalized, reducing to a common
law the seemingly chaotic and inexplicable artistic phenomena of our age.)
ANIMATED BY A NEW CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD, THE ARTS, IN COLLECTIVE FERMENTATION
(their interpenetration)
HAVE BEEN SET INTO MOTION
AND EACH HAS ABSORBED A NEW DIMENSION.
EACH HAS FOUND A NEW FORM OF EXPRESSION INHERENT TO THE NEXT DIMENSION,
OBJECTIFYING THE WEIGHTY INTELLECTUAL CONSEQUENCES OF THIS FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE.
Thus, the Dimensionist tendency has led to:
I. …L i t e r a t u r e leaving the line and entering the plane.
Calligrammes. Typograms. P l a n i s m .
(preplanism) Electric Poems.
II. …P a i n t i n g quitting the plane and entering space.
Painting in space “Constructivism”
Spatial Constructions.
Poly-Material Constructions.
III. …S c u l p t u r e stepping out of closed, immobile, dead forms, that is, out of forms conceived of
in three-dimensional Euclidean space—in order to appropriate for artistic expression Minkowski’s
four-dimensional space.
It has been, above all, “solid” sculpture (classical sculpture) that has opened itself up,
first to inner space, then to movement, and is transformed into:
Perforated Sculpture.
Open Sculpture.
Mobile Sculpture.
Motorized Objects.
And after this a completely
new art form will develop:
Cosmic Art
(The Vaporization of Sculpture,Synos-Sense Theater, provisional denominations.) The artistic conquest of four-dimensional space / to date
an artistic vacuum /. Rigid matter is abolished and replaced by vaporized materials. Instead of looking at
objects of art, the person becomes the center and the subject of creation, and creation consists of sensorial
effects operating in a closed cosmic space.
This is how one would most concisely summarize the essence of Dimensionism: Deductive with respect
to the past. Inductive with respect to the future. Alive in the present.
[The following artists endorsed the DIMENSIONIST MANIFESTO in Paris in 1936:]
Hans Arp
Francis Picabia
Wassily Kandinsky
Robert Delaunay
Marcel Duchamp
Enrico Prampolini
César Domela
Camille Bryen
Sonia Delaunay
Sophie Taeuber-Arp
Ervand Kochar
Pierre Albert-Birot
Frederick Kann
Anton Prinner
Mario Nissim
Nina Negri
Siri Rathsman
Charles Sirató
[The following foreign endorsements appeared in the first (movemental) edition of the Manifesto:]
Ben Nicholson (London)
Alexander Calder (New York)
Vincente Huidobro (Santiago de Chile)
David Kakabadze (Tblisi)
Katarzyna Kobro (Warsaw)
Joan Miró (Barcelona)
László Moholy-Nagy (London)
Antonio Pedro (Lisbon)
Contributo di
Steven Connor