Metamorphosis Makale Basilmis

8/6/2019 Metamorphosis Makale Basilmis

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Detail from Francis Picabia, Savon, 1924 (plate 1).Figure 2. Francis Picabia, Ridens, c. 1929. Watercolour, gouache, and pencil on cardboard,104 74 cm. Private collection. Photo: Estate of Francis Picabia/SODRAC (2010).

In June 1924 Francis Picabias dadaist magazine 3911 included on page three a drawing bythe editor occupying the upper half, a poem by the American expatriate Man Ray2 in the

bottom left, and a short writing by Erik Satie to the right. Until now there have been noproposals to thematically connect the three enigmatic works (plate 1). Their proximity hasbeen taken to be unrelated. I would like to propose, however, that the entire page wascarefully calculated to operate in an integrated fashion whereby shifting and evolvingreferences occur that are of considerable richness and associative possibilities. Metamorphosisand interpretative simultaneity are both subjects and devices of this three-part collaborative

effort. The three works are mutually interdependent to such a degree that one could speak ofone work rather than three, or one work comprised of three.3 Responsibility for the authorshipof the individual pieces is, arguably, a matter of degrees, despite each contribution beingsigned. Rather than considering the individual works in isolation, it is when conducting ananalysis at the level of the page itself that the artistic project becomes intelligible.Figure 1. Francis Picabia, Savon; Man Ray, Poem; and Erik Satie, Cahiers dun Mammifre;in 391, number 17, June 1924, page 3. Los Angeles: Research Library, The Getty ResearchInstitute (84-S1216). Photo: Estate of Francis Picabia/SODRAC (2010); Man RayTrust/SODRAC (2010).

Picabias magazine was an integral part of his own art practice, and he clearly directs theoverarching content and style of the publication. It is a commonplace in the Picabia art-historical literature to point to the innumerable borrowed sources that he employed in hiswork. Indeed, much of the meaning of this 391 page emerges through recognition of andengagement with the metamorphosing, interconnected references. As when consideringPicabias own multi-layered approach to painting in the later 1920s, or his earlier poetry,4 onefinds that the concept of metamorphosis is critical for understanding the interpretativetransformations that are demanded by this pages composition and shifting thematic

references (plate 2). The interpretations that I give for the page, therefore, will themselves bemutable, because the task of the commentary is found in the works structural form,operations, and allusions.The Man Ray, Picabia, and Satie contributions have not been adequately discussed in theliterature, probably because any interpretative attempts necessarily founder when trying tounderstand them as autonomous entities to be considered in isolation from one another. As anexample of the interpretative problems that arise when requiring conventional artisticautonomy for each work, whenever Man Rays poem is illustrated in the art historicalliterature, it is consistently excised from the original page context in which it first appeared.5


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But doing so immediately removes the source of much of the poems meaning. An interesting,though significantly limited interpretation based strictly on its circumscribed appearance

becomes one of the few viable options for commentary. It is typically assumed that ManRays poem at bottom left employs blocked-out lines of text organized as poetic stanzas.Either actual words or simulations of the spaces occupied by possible words are understood tolie beneath the thick black lines. Jean-Grard Lapacherie points out that in terms of traditional

poetry (which Man Ray wrote on occasion) the work is organized as a tercet, two quintils, anda quatrain.6 Lapacherie has written about Man Rays poem in a manner that typifies theconventional understanding of it:This poem is not made up of words, nor letters, but of thick black dashes, of variable length,each one of which is supposed to stand for a word. It is arranged the way poems usually are:with a title (made up of three dashes) and seventeen lines of unequal length It retains thevisual and graphic appearance of a poem: that is to say an arrangement in lines of unequallength and in stanzas. By reducing the poem to black dashes, Man Ray expresses hisdefiance of words as the dada poets did. With derision he reminds us of this truth, that poetry,which today has hardly any existence except written and printed, is laid out on the page in acodified, specific, visual, and immediately recognizable manner.7Despite the importance for the avant-garde of declaiming poetry in public, Lapacherie views

the poem as a visual presentation of suppression and withdrawal in which the form of a poemis abstracted to indicate a resistance to the verbal. The codification that he refers to involvesthe conventions of poetic presentation on the page.Because there is no actual text (apart from the authors name, place of production, and date,which provide some contextual information) the effect of Man Rays poem partly depends onthe readers experience of being denied information. As such it would resemble the

presentation strategy of his well-known photo-sculpture The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse,which depicts a burlap-covered, bound, uncommunicative object (plate 3). The veiled

presentation is more intriguing than the unveiled object or assemblage beneath. One couldsuggest, furthermore, that the photograph of the veiled presentation is of greater interest thanthe actual three-dimensional object in space. The example of The Enigma of Isidore Ducassehas no doubt informed the reception of Man Rays poem that understands it to involve arefusal to communicate8 or an emulation of censored text. From the latter standpoint therewould seem to be a conscious deployment of the aesthetic effect of censorship,9 minus the

political circumstances around its occurrence. Because Man Rays poem is on a page that Iconsider to be devoted to metamorphosis and multiple readings, the poem could certainly beread in terms of negation, the suppression of text, or a refusal to communicate. But as will beshown in this paper, the poem (as well as the other works on the 391 page) can perhaps more

productively be understood as presenting encoded information (made meaningful by relationsto the other works on the page) that is conveyed through a process of ongoing translation,which itself is fundamental to any interpretative understanding.Figure 3. Man Ray, The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse, 1920. Photograph, dimensions unknown.Location unknown. Photo: Man Ray Trust/SODRAC/ADAGP/Telimage (2010).

One should not necessarily assume that Man Rays poem was a pre-existing work that wasthen requested by Picabia for publication in 391. The poem could have been made specificallyfor the original 391 page setting. If so, it may not have been an essentially autonomous work,in terms of the poem itself and possibly even the authorship of it. It is dated to just one month


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prior to the issues publication, and on close inspection the three contributions on the page byMan Ray, Picabia, and Satie demonstrate themselves to be interrelated. This interrelatednessmay seem unlikely given their individual distinctive appearance, but each contributionappears to make cryptic references to the magazines title and engage in a conversation ofsorts with the other works on the page. One example of the 391 references is found in theformatting of Erik Saties text at bottom right entitled Cahiers dun mammifre or

Notebook of a Mammal. Perhaps because it appears to be a simple textual presentation withverbal transparency (and so notable mainly for its literary significance as a personal polemicagainst perceived enemies) it has never been pointed out that Saties contribution has beenformatted so as to present 3 separate sections and 9 indented paragraphs, while including theunderlined word for 1 in the title. There are no literary or stylistic necessities for theseformatting peculiarities, making it reasonable to suggest that the presentation of Satieswriting may have been consciously encoded to allude to the magazines title of 391. Satiestext comprises 3 sections (each separated by 3 dots in triangular form that emulate thetripartite organization of the page) having 3 indented lines each. The 3 mens 3 contributions

being on page 3 of 391 is probably not coincidental,10 but seems largely due to Satiesinterests in numerology and his frequent employment of 3 as a symbolic and technical devicein his musical compositions and experimental writings, as will be further discussed later. Like

the two other works on the page, Man Rays poem (with its 3-part title) can certainly beviewed in isolation from its original context, but doing so gives it a largely non-representational significance of negation. It becomes a richer, more complex work when it isread in conjunction with the Picabia and Satie contributions.In addition to Saties numerological interests, a partial explanation for the dense encoding ofthis 391 page may be found in the circumstances of Picabias and Man Rays earlierassociation in New York. When living in New York, Man Ray, Picabia, and Marcel Duchampsocialized in the circle of Walter Arensberg. Picabia dedicated his book of poetry, TheMorticians Athlete, to Arensberg in 1918.11 Francis M. Naumann has noted that Arensbergwas intensely interested in cryptography, writing that between 1915 and 1920, he spent themajority of his waking hours deciphering secret messages he believed were deliberatelyconcealed by means of ciphers in the writings of Dante and Shakespeare.12 In 1922Arensberg published his book The Cryptography of Shakespeare (plate 4). He begins his firstchapter by writing:Figure 4. Walter Conrad Arensberg, The Cryptography of Shakespeare, Los Angeles: HowardBowen, 1922, page 194. Photo: Jarrett Duncan.

The conclusive evidence that William Shakespeare is the pseudonym of Francis Bacon is

incorporated in the original editions of the Shakespeare plays and poems. This evidenceconsists of cryptograms in which the name of the poet is signed as Francis Bacon. Thesecryptographic signatures are numerous. I have already deciphered more than five hundred,and there appear to be indications of many more in passages which I have not yet had time tosubmit to final examination. Pending a complete account of the signatures that I havedeciphered, I shall confine myself in the present introductory study to describing andillustrating the cryptographic method in accordance with which these signatures areconstructed.13


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Francis Picabias thorough encoding of this 391 page, carried out two years after thepublication of Arenbergs book, could partly involve playful allusions to the activities of thecircles cryptographer friend and patron. Arensbergs project revolved around problematicauthorship questions, also central to the work of Picabia. In this case Arensberg focused onthe presumed page-encoding, signature-hiding cryptographic activities of that other Francis Francis Bacon, a task with which the somewhat egocentric Picabia could perhaps both

identify with and caricature.14 At the time of the magazine issues production in 1924,Picabia, Man Ray, and Marcel Duchamp had come to live in the same building in Paris, sothere were opportunities for nostalgic recollection as well as collaboration, potentially alsoinvolving Duchamp.15 Satie later moved into the building in January 1925, not long beforehis final hospital stay prior to his death.16As with the formatting of Saties text, Picabias drawing may possibly allude to themagazines title of 391 through the use of numerical combinations. It depicts Erik Satie as theupper half of what initially resembles a mermaid or sea serpent. (See plate 5 for a

photographic portrait of Satie.) Satie is presented as being part of a composite creature, ratherlike a satyr playing the watery equivalent of the pan-pipes, simultaneously playing musicand blowing soap bubbles.17 Against Saties back lay a woman whose suspended, wavystrands of hair hint at Botticellis Birth of Venus. The composite creature is composed of 2

distinct bodies, which added to the woman makes 3 bodies. The woman has precisely 9 thickstrands of hair, and there is 1 eye looking at the woman. While perhaps a coincidence, the 3

bodies, 9 hanks of hair, and 1 eye could involve an additional coded reference to the magazinetitle of 391.Figure 5. Studio Hamelle, Arcueil, Portrait of Erik Satie, 1909. Photograph, 24 18 cm.Saint-Germain-la-Blanche-Herbe: IMEC Labbaye dArdenne. Photo: Studio Hamelle/FondsErik Satie/IMEC /dpt des Archives nationales.

Two earlier drawings progressively develop the theme that led to Picabias Satie drawing onthis page. One is his drawing of 192223 entitled Centaur and Wife Lapith,18 and the other ishis Thermomtre Rimbaud drawing from the previous issue of 391, no. 16, May 1924 (plates6 and 7). During the 1920s, Picabia sometimes incorporated Renaissance figure compositionsinto his own artwork.19 Imaginative copying was a standard working procedure for Picabiathroughout his career.20 Apart from the possible Botticelli reference, all three Picabiadrawings appear to freely borrow and recombine characters and poses from Raphaels frescoThe Triumph of Galatea of around 1512 in the Villa Farnesina in Rome (plate 8).21 Thesequence of drawings suggests an ongoing process of transformational mutation resultingfrom Picabias study of Raphaels Galatea (which notably depicts a subject from Ovids

Metamorphosis22) in conjunction with several other interests and sources, including twoengravings by Albrecht Drer.Figure 6. Francis Picabia, Centaur and Wife Lapith, c. 192223. Ink, watercolour, and pencilon paper, 28.4 39.3 cm. Private collection. Photo: Estate of Francis Picabia/SODRAC(2010).


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Figure 7. Francis Picabia, Thermomtre Rimbaud, in 391, number 16, May 1924, page 3. LosAngeles: Research Library, The Getty Research Institute (84-S1216). Photo: Estate ofFrancis Picabia/SODRAC (2010).

Figure 8. Raphael, The Triumph of Galatea, c. 1512. Fresco, 296 224 cm. Rome: VillaFarnesina, Rome, c. 1512. Fresco, 296 224 cm. Photo: Alessandro Angeli, 2003; Alinari/Art Resource, New York.

Picabias earliest drawing depicts a centaur moving through water, with outstretched arms andhead turned gazing at a woman who rides him bareback (and backwards) while recliningagainst his shoulders. In Raphaels painting, the sea-borne centaur at centre-right similarlygazes at a mermaid who reclines against his back and shoulders. In order to create a moredefined pose for the woman whose source is partly obscured in the fresco, Picabia appears tomake mirrored adaptations to the body of the putti at bottom centre in the Raphael, lending

some elements of the puttis pose to the woman, and continuing with the process of charactermetamorphosis. In the subsequent drawing, Thermomtre Rimbaud, the transformationcontinues with the centaur losing its legs (that were barely indicated in the earlier drawing)and mutating into a bald, jacket-wearing merman. The mermans lower half is blackened likethe trunk and tail of both Picabias earlier centaur and the later Satie-related merman. Fromthe Raphael, the centaurs torso, trunk, and very closely copied mermaids tail mergecompletely in Picabias merman. In place of the mermaids arrow-like tipped tail end, Picabiasubstitutes the magazines title of 391, thereby beginning the self-referential process thatculminates on page three of the next issue. Picabias merman also draws partly on the figureof the lascivious male sea creature at lower left in the Raphael. Picabias character emulatesthis merman of Raphaels who seizes and lifts up a protesting sea nymph. In the fresco, themain character Galatea flees in a dolphin-powered vessel from an unwanted suitor. Three

cupids fire arrows from above, two of them aimed at the heart of the accompanying seanymph who has been caught by Raphaels merman, with the other arrow aimed at the centaur.Picabias woman is also caught, but with Rimbauds thermometer hanging from her

backside, rather than Cupids arrow from her heart.23In the final 391 drawing incorporating the head of Satie, the male character (still a mermanand recognizably connected to the earlier drawings) rotates 180 degrees to the right, while thewoman reverts to a reclining position against his shoulders. Picabia makes a further change byassigning to Satie the activity of the trumpet player just to the right of Raphaels centaur. Afurther source for the later 391 drawing is Albrecht Drers engraving The Sea Monster of


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around 1498. Beverley Calt has noted Picabias direct copying of the abducted female fromthat image in his painting of 192426, Woman with Dog (plates 9 and 10).24 Calt shows thatPicabia combined this woman with a dog directly copied from the centre foreground ofanother engraving, Drers St. Eustace (plate 11). Apart from the rotated orientation ofPicabias figures on the 391 page, Drers sea monster engraving provides further links. Asmall male figure with raised arms runs to the shore, and he makes direct eye contact with the

captive as she is taken away. The psychological effect of this gaze seems to be transferred intothe final Picabia drawing by the curious inclusion of the tails eye that gazes at the womanfrom a similar angle. This eye substitutes for the 391 located at the tails end inThermomtre Rimbaud, which in turn references the tipped tail end of Raphaels mermaid.Albrecht Drers St. Eustace of around 1501 holds a number of references for Picabia apartfrom the already-mentioned dog. The posture of St Eustaces torso and the positioning of hisextended arms and hands appear to be the visual references for the upper half of Satie playinghis wind instrument. Out of the instrument emerges a soap bubble, and in a similar spatialrelation to St Eustace is the miraculous appearance of a deer with a crucifix growing fromits forehead. Both details are suggestive of purity and transformation.25Figure 9. Albrecht Drer, The Sea Monster, c. 1498. Engraving, 24.6 18.7 cm. Boston:Museum of Fine Arts (Centennial Gift of Landon T. Clay, 68.183). Photo: Museum of Fine

Arts, Boston.

Figure 10. Francis Picabia, Woman with Dog, 192527. Oil and gouache on cardboard, 72 92 cm. Private collection. Photo: Estate of Francis Picabia/SODRAC (2010).

Figure 11. Albrecht Drer, St. Eustace, c. 1501. Engraving, 35.5 25.9 cm. Boston: Museumof Fine Arts (Anonymous gift, 59.803). Photo: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Erik Saties writing Cahiers dun mammifre, at bottom right on the 391 page, can be bestunderstood in relation to his ballet Mercure. While it is revelatory in terms of Picabias andMan Rays work on this page, Mercure has been largely overlooked in the art-historicalliterature on French dada, unlike Picabias and Saties ballet Relche that was premiered laterin the year. Satie premiered Mercure26 in the same month of June 1924 in which this 391issue was published, making this page something of a promotional vehicle for Satie. Satiesthree-part Notebook of a Mammal is an absurdist defence of himself against Jean Cocteau,composer Georges Auric, and music critic Louis Laloy, with all of whom he had fallen out.27Satie wrote the musical score for Cocteaus ballet of 1917, Parade, (which Picasso also


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collaborated on, as he did with Mercure). Satie, Cocteau, Auric and several others formed agroup called the Nouveaux Jeunes shortly after the ballet of 1917, but Satie later quit thegroup. Cocteau was viewed as an opportunist by most of the Paris dadaists, although he andPicabia sometimes got along well. According to Michel Sanouillet, Cocteau tried to have hiswriting Le coq et larlequin published in the dadaists magazine Littrature, but although it

praised Satie, he blocked its publication.28 John Richardson writes of Saties then-permanent

dispute with Cocteaus circle: He would avenge himself on them when he and Picassocollaborated on their ballet Mercure.29 In one section of his writing in Cahiers dunmammifre, Satie ridicules Cocteaus concerns with scandal by using 3 variations of theword: In fact, the scandals are too scandalous and are scandalizing everyone.30 Satie notesthat Cocteau advised his friends to be small, colourless, and invisible. In a similar way (ifunderstood to be a presentation of suppressed text, as it commonly is) Man Rays poem to theleft would seem to reduce the sign of writing to an act of inscription or translation of a stifledspeech.Mercure was not a typical ballet because, as Robert Orledge notes, it involved movement aswell as tableau vivant miming of dancers posing as constellations, letters, etc..31 The balletwas commissioned by Comte tienne de Beaumont, who wrote the basic scenario and sentinstructions to the set and costume designer, Pablo Picasso, saying that he wished for a

presentation of tableaux vivants using mythology as a universal alphabet, and that Picassocould view the material like the collection of letters that the child has at his disposal toconstruct words.32 I will return to the idea of a universal alphabet when further discussingMan Rays poem. Saties ballet began with a setting entitled Night, which was followed by aDance of Tenderness between Venus and Apollyon.33 The ballets next act was Signs ofthe Zodiac, and in astrological terms Apollyon is a ruler over the lower sphere, in the shadowof Venus who rules above. Among the references that Picabia makes to the ballet in hisdrawing, the Botticellian woman lying against the back of Saties figure could allude to Venusand her astrological dance with Apollyon in the ballet of 1924.34 However, another

possibility emerges when one recalls Picabias use of metamorphosis and simultaneity asorganizing principles. One of Picassos set designs for the ballet depicts a woman seemingly

being abducted by a man in a horse-drawn chariot.35 The ballets final act involves theAbduction of Proserpine, a theme that directly relates to Picabias Satie drawing as well asto the mythological images of abduction and pursuit that I have suggested as beingfundamental visual source material for the three Picabia drawings.Mercures occult character of Apollyon originates in the Bibles apocalyptic book ofRevelation. Apollyon is the fifth of the seven angels who appear after the Book of the SevenSeals is opened in chapter eight. The seven angels possessed seven trumpets, and each ofthem introduced themselves by blowing their trumpet, to be followed by some disastrousevent.36 The fifth angel is introduced in this manner: And the fifth angel sounded, and I sawa star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.37Apollyon is written about as a figure of creative destruction, which is not unlike the role ofdada ascribed to by its protagonists. From the bottomless pit, in the biblical account, came

hordes of locust-like creatures that did not eat vegetation. These locusts strangely are said toresemble battle-ready horses, but with tails like scorpions with stingers that would strike andtorment unbelievers with five months of unremitting pain.38 The location of the tails eye inthe Picabia drawing (with its already existing references) may involve a further associationwith the stinger of these creatures. The king over the locusts was Apollyon, the angel of the

bottomless pit.39 Consistent with the shifts of metamorphosis, the wind instrument thatPicabia borrowed from Raphael could allude, in this reading, to Apollyon, who introduceshimself in Revelation with a trumpet blast. The angels trumpet blasts heralding destruction inRevelation are here connected to a more amiable musical event. While Apollyons trumpet


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music is of bombast and terror, Saties music is, of course, one of delightful delicacy. Hencethe trumpet blowing soap bubbles.40 Apollyons being the angel of the bottomless pitsuggests an association between the divine and the unclean. Therefore, Picabias introductionof a soap bubble may also serve as a humorous mediator between the two.As a further complication, Picabias male composite figure is joined together from two parts.Similarly, the word SAVON or soap, that emerges in a large bubble from the instrument,

neatly conjoins with a V the two first letters of Satie and the two last letters of Apollyon,while also declaring its own substance. Just as V connects the two sets of letters, so too doesthe zigzagging line at the figures waist act as the point of transition between the top half ofSatie and lower half of Apollyon in the composite character.41Picabias drawing includes naturalistic and abstracted components, as well as coded imagesand text. When considering the different approaches to representation on the magazine page,at least two parallel sets are created between the contributions of Satie and Man Ray, andPicabias male composite creature, whose two halves appear to reference the two contributors

below. Satie (the composer of abstract sounds) writes in a representational and descriptivemanner, while Man Ray (the photographer of visible appearance and object traces) seems to

provide abstract indicators of absent text. In the drawing, Satie is rendered figuratively, butonly to the waist. What proceeds from Saties waist is a blackened, meandering line (though

still a tail) that visually pairs with Man Rays thick-lined poem and ends in an observing eye.In his drawing of the composite figure (and on another level of reference than that of theMercure and Apollyon discussion) Picabia appears to shift from the figurative rendering ofthe musician, composer, and writer Satie to then translate Man Rays apparently non-representational lines of abstract poetry into an abstracted portrait of the photographer and his

practice.42 In a similar manner, Picabias celebrated mechanical portraits, published in theearlier New York magazine 291, demonstrated the degree to which individuals identitiescould be closely linked to seemingly non-mimetic images.Man Rays poem at bottom left becomes more meaningful than simply a presentation ofnegation (with the apparent effacing of individual words) when the above associations aredeveloped. It becomes far more productive of meanings when one realizes that this seeminglyresistant, non-signifying work may, in fact, be deciphered by means of the Morse code (plate12).43 All three works employ codes of different sorts, and recognition of the appearance ofthe Morse code allows for a closer relation to develop between Man Rays poem and Satiestext, as well as to the other forms of encoding that Picabia seems to employ on the 391 page.Morse code involves the translation of letters, numbers, and terms into dots and dashes, and itwas the basis for the modern communication system of the telegraph.44 Morse code appearsto be abstract and non-referential to the uninitiated, but it is an interpretable communicativesystem. The Morse code alphabet and number chart illustrated in this paper was published inan American popular guide to radio receiving in 1922, two years prior to the production ofMan Rays poem.45 It is useful to recall that Marcel Duchamps earlier telegram workPODE BAL of June 1921 was transmitted using Morse code, although it is the translatedtext with which we are familiar. The telegram was a punning insult sent to the Paris dadaists

who had requested an exhibition contribution.B

oth Man Ray and Picabia sometimesemployed devices similar to those used earlier by their friend Duchamp, and as alreadymentioned, Duchamp, Man Ray, and Picabia lived in the same building in Paris when the 391

page was produced, with Satie moving in several months later. But from 1912 to 1915, ManRay lived in the small community of Ridgefield, New Jersey, where he came of age as anartist and published one issue of a satirical magazine, The Ridgefield Gazook. It was, andremains, a point of local pride in Ridgefield that Samuel Morse (inventor of the Morse code)had possessed large property holdings in the area.46 Man Rays use of the Morse code couldtherefore have had a certain personal resonance for himself.


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Figure 12. International Morse Code, from Rhey T. Snodgrass and Victor F. Camp, RadioReceiving forBeginners, New York: MacMillan Company, 1922, page 96. Photo: JarrettDuncan.

Published on the eve of the production of his new ballet Mercure, Saties writing in Cahiersdun mammifre discusses his dispute with Jean Cocteau, and takes care to disparageGeorges Auric, and Louis Laloy as well. Given that Satie also attacked Auric, it is noteworthythat in May 1924 (just one month prior to the publication of this issue of 391) the often-divisive Picabia responded to a questionnaire from Paris-Journal regarding his favouritemusicians: I love Aurics wireless telegraphy.47 In 1918 (when he and Satie were still ongood terms) Cocteau wrote a pamphlet entitled Le coq et larlequin, which was designed toexplain the ballet Parade on which Cocteau and Satie had collaborated. Cocteau wrote that

Satie had composed background music for noises that Cocteau had wanted to include in orderto convey an urgent sense of modernity. These included the sounds of a steam engine, sirens,and the clicking of a Morse code apparatus.48 In addition to its many other references, ManRays poem appears to associate the Morse code with Saties conflicted relationship toCocteaus circle, within the larger already codified context of this page of Picabias 391. The

poem can therefore be understood as an exercise in codified communication rather than non-communication, as it is generally held to be.Most, though not all, lines of Man Rays poem can be translated using individual Morse codeletters for comparison. The following is a Morse translation of the poem made by consideringeach poetry line individually and distinguishing between the short and long markings of thesequences, with the shorter marks being the equivalent of a dot and the longer ones a dash.Identical Morse signs were then linked to the corresponding alphabetical letter or number.

The lines marked [ ] do not translate accurately:U [ ] [ ] M [ ] [ ] K Y V K J X 3 [ ] V P X XWhen considered in terms of the lyric poetry tradition, this may not seem like much of a

poem, and some might argue that it is not a translation of a poem at all on account of therebeing no obvious words other than the number 3. However, as transcribed above, Man Rayspoem is quite reasonably situated within the context of dadaist experimental poetry, as thefollowing short poem of 1918 by Berlin dadaist Raoul Hausmann demonstrates: fmsbwtz u/ pggiv-..?m.49 Translated through Morse code, Man Rays poem fits within a pre-existingavant-garde poetic tradition one largely pioneered by the Italian futurists as well as by theRussian zaum poets and the later dadaists. The futurist leader F. T. Marinetti wrote about hisnew poetic form in 1913: With words-in-freedom we will have: TELEGRAPHICIMAGES.50 Marinetti proposed that futurist poetry involve a swift, brutal, and immediate

lyricism, a lyricism that must seem anti-poetic to all our predecessors, a telegraphic lyricism.51 The suggestion of a meeting between poetry and the Morse code (the basis of thetelegraph system) had already been placed into circulation by the futurists, whose innovationswere at the root of so many later developments in dada. There is no need to assume that adadaist poem (or a futurist or Russian zaum poem for that matter) requires viable individualwords. What was often emphasized in this type of poetry was the abstract utterance or theabsolutely fundamental components of language and writing such as letters, punctuationmarks, and other signs of distinctions. The Italian, Russian, and German poets took theirinitial lead from cubist as well as futurist painting and collage, and their poetry emerged at the


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same time as did European abstract and non-representational painting, which likewise movedaway from immediately comprehensible references. Just as paintings do not requirerepresentational images to properly function, so it was reasoned that poems do not necessarilyrequire legible words. In 1921, Man Ray and other Paris dadaists participated in an eveningevent of 21 October at the Caf Camlon showcasing Russian zaum poets such as IlyaZdanevich. Two years later Zdanevich recited zaum poetry at Tristan Tzaras event, Le coeur

gaz,52 where Man Ray first screened his film Le retour la raison, which includes aseveral-second shot of a sheet of paper bearing marks similar to those found in his laterpoem.53 We know, therefore, that Man Ray was familiar with such extreme poetic material,and certainly Picabia would have known it well given his international connections andinterests. Within Paris dada, there were additional interests in codes, formulae, and alternativemeans of communication. Included in Picabias book of 1918, Pomes et dessins de la fillene sans mere, is the poem Wireless Telegraphy. Picabias close friend Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes planned but failed to publish a magazine in 1920 called DdO4H2 , its title beingthe chemical formula for sulphuric acid.54 Slightly later, the Paris dadaists Ren Crevel,Robert Desnos, Andr Breton and others began investigating spiritualism and hypnotictrances55 requiring translation and interpretation to render legible the resulting mysteriouscommunications. Desnos went so far as to claim to be receiving telepathic messages from

Rrose Slavy/Marcel Duchamp, then living in New York.56 Man Rays employment of theMorse code (with its relation to the telegraph system) is therefore well situated within the

practices of dada and its various avant-garde antecedents.In Man Rays poem, the letters stand independently (rather than being strung together aswords) and should be interpreted in terms of their individual and syntactical significance and

possible relation to the 391 page as a collective effort. The poems most unusualcharacteristics are Man Rays esoteric employment of the Morse code and, importantly, thefurther levels of encoding and reference found within the poem as it is structured. Atranslation of the poem through Morse is an early rather than final element of theinterpretative process because of the further codification of the letters, untranslatable lines,and numerical relationships, all with reference to the larger page collaboration as well as to391. The title line of Man Rays poem translates as the letter U, or perhaps for an English-speaker like Man Ray, as You. Duchamps earlier telegram work PODE BAL iscommonly translated as the insult: Balls to you. The rest of the translatable letters areconsonants and there is 1 number. Of the 18 lines in total, there are 12 letters and 1 numberthat are translatable, making 13 identifiable lines. While perhaps a coincidence, this numbermay have been formulated so as to point to the identity of the magazine because when addingup the numbers in the magazine title one finds: 3 + 9 + 1 = 13.57 Curiously, there are also 13musical numbers in Saties ballet Mercure, resulting in a possible codified connection

between Picabias 391, Saties ballet, and Man Rays poem. There are 17 lines in the poemand this is issue number 17 of 391, page 3. There are 3 components to the remaining titleline.58 I have mentioned that the encoding of this page may partly refer to the cryptographyobsession of Picabias and Man Rays American friend Walter Arensberg, which makes it

reasonable to look for some coded recollection of the Arensberg circle. The illustrationprovided earlier of a page from Arensbergs book (with its dots and vertical column of letters)is itself suggestive of the poem and the code. The title of Picabias 391 involves a brief chainof historical references linked to the earlier New York magazine, gallery, and street address of291. The magazine 291 ceased publication in 1916. It is fascinating to note that addingtogether the numerals that make up that date results in: 1 + 9 + 1 + 6 = 17, and 17 is both the

present magazine issue number and the number of lines in the body text of the poem.Picabias 391 itself began publication in 1917. Adding together the numerals that identify thatfounding date results in: 1 + 9 + 1 + 7 = 18. When including the title line of Man Rays poem


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into the line count, the total sum is 18, perhaps suggesting that both the publication dates ofthe final issue of 291 and the first of 391 have been encoded into the poem and larger page.The number 3 appears on the sixth line from the bottom. The repetition of 3 is found in all3 contributions as well as in Saties ballet and the magazines name itself: 391, which would

be one point of departure for the use of 3 as an organizational template and commonreference. But one must also consider Saties intense interest in numerology and the particular

attention that he gives in his music to the number 3. Saties fixation on this number whencomposing his music and experimental writings (and hence its relevance for this 391 page)may seem problematic for some art historians due to a contemporary aversion to findinghidden meanings in artworks, but it is a commonly known fact among musicologists. RobertOrledge provides a detailed explanation:At the root of Saties calculations lay the golden number three, whose Trinitarian symbolism

pervaded Masonic ritual, including that of the spurious Rosicrucian movement to which Satieadhered In Satie too we find three Sarabandes, three Gymnopdies, and the humorous

piano pieces of 1913 arranged in nine groups of three (including the Trois NouvellesEnfantines). When, in the Rose-Croix period (18915), these groupings disappear (apart fromthe Trois Sonneries), we find the Trinitarian aspect transferred to the harmonies Satiesfascination with the tritone is bound in with all this numerology, a classic example being

Vexations, where all the chords are notated as 6-3s, and the upper parts are almost all tritones.It is surely no coincidence too that each half of Vexations contains eighteen chords (six timesthree), with the upper parts in the second half being a mirror image of those in the first.59Similarly, Roger Shattuck writes: There is a trivial feature of Saties music that takes onsignificance in this context. His first major sets of pieces all contain three parts: threeSarabandes, three Gymnopdies, three Gnossiennes. Of the fifty-odd works that followed,almost half are similarly threefold. This trinitarian obsession was a quirk which became partof his musical pose.60 As the occurrences of 3 rapidly accumulate on the 391 page, it

becomes increasingly unlikely that they can be accounted for purely by chance appearance.Satie had earlier contributed a short writing entitled Tale to the New York magazine TheBlind Man in May 1917. Arensberg and Duchamp were involved in producing the publicationas was Henri-Pierre Roch, who knew Satie. Saties writing was placed on page 3, apparentlyat his request through Roch.61 The 391 collaborative project is also located on page 3,making it reasonable to suggest that the repeating 3s on the page may have been included atSaties urging. The repetition of 3 on the 391 page includes the 3 authors, 3 sections, 3components to the titles, 3 bodies in Picabias drawing. In Saties text there are 3 sectionswith 3 indented paragraphs for each. There are 3 dots in triangular form (emulating thetripartite organization of the 3 contributions to page 3) that separate the 3 sections. Satieincludes 3 variations of 3 words or qualities in his text. In his ballet, there are 3 acts and 3types of characters, among whom of which are the Three Graces!62 There are 2 recurringVs that link 3 verses of Man Rays poem. (V also serves as the connector of the first 2letters of Satie and the last 2 of Apollyon in SAVON.) The number 3 is written inMorse code in the third verse of Man Rays poem. Three Xs are also found in the poem. X

can be associated with both the substitute signatures of the illiterate and the signs ofcancellations. Ridicule directed outward and among friends was commonplace in dada, and itcould be assumed that most readers would indeed be illiterate when attempting to grasp thesignificance of Man Rays apparently uncommunicative presentation. Furthermore, the poemis typically understood to be a cancellation of text through its abstracted occupying ofinscribed space, so both interpretative possibilities of the 3 Xs are productive.The poem is highly complex, which raises the question as to whether it may have been agroup effort rather than being solely the work of Man Ray. The 3 Xs, those substitutesignatures of the illiterate, could indicate that possibility. Recall that Walter Arensberg had


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devoted his cryptographic attentions to finding hidden signatures of Francis Bacon in thetexts of William Shakespeare, which suggests that the 3 Xs could be humorous references toArensbergs obsessive project. One might further consider that Picabia had earlier forged hisown version of Duchamps work, LHOOQ, and presented it as Duchamps own in the 391issue of March 1920, number 12. Given that precedent, it is even possible that the poem waslargely created by Picabia and merely modelled on Man Rays earlier blank-line poems, such

as the one that appears in the film Le retour la raison of 1923. That work does not seem tobe decipherable at all in the manner that this poem is. On the other hand, the use of numbersthat correspond with those found in Saties text, ballet, and musical compositions moregenerally, indicates a potential role for Satie in suggesting the numerical combinations andletters found in Man Rays poem. Saties numerological interests are well known, and hewould also have no doubt been familiar with the technique of soggetto cavato by whichcomposers of the early Renaissance (and some late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centurycomposers like his younger colleague Maurice Ravel) created coded verbal passages byassociating sequences of notes with their letter equivalents.63 I will, however, maintainlinking the poems authorship to Man Ray largely for purposes of identification as well as toacknowledge the widespread acceptance that he was solely responsible for the work in its

presentation form, whether or not that was actually the case.

The Morse code can be transcribed in dots and dashes. It can be transmitted via the clicking ofa telegraph key, but it can be voiced as well, which is where a fruitful association with theLautgedichte comes in.64 People learning Morse code are instructed to vocalize it. Dashes arevoiced as dah. Dots are pronounced as di, and as dit when ending a line. The letters A BC D are pronounced as follows:A = di-dahB = dah-di-di-ditC = dah-di-dah-ditD = dah-di-ditLine 3 of Man Rays poem consists of two long dashes, which corresponds to the letter M.Remarkably enough, the two dashes of M are voiced as: dah-dah. Picabia, Man Ray, andSatie (to a degree) were, of course, associated with Paris dada, and one of the mostrecognizable characteristics of dada is the constant invocation of the word dada. So a poemthat has commonly been interpreted as refusing to signify at all in fact communicates a greatmany things, among them, dada (with all of that words implications) while collapsing intoabstracted utterances for four lines that are, importantly, both immediately before and afterthat word, dada. Those four untranslatable lines are significant just for their lack ofcorrespondence to a fixable identification, while the possibility of voicing them as free-floating utterances remains. The very untranslatability that surrounds the M may suggest theemergence of Man Rays M as dada as the first element of the poems text (apart from thetitle) that declares itself out of a codified field of indeterminacy, as a kind of primal utteranceemerging out of chaos. In a similar way, the abstract sound poetry ofBerlin dadaist RaoulHausmann was voiced as an originary cosmic text.65 Hausmanns idea of the primal text is

visually exemplified in his photomontage of 192324, AB

CD, where from out of his openmouth issue the four first letters of the alphabet and the star-filled universe (plate 13).Figure 13. Raoul Hausmann, ABCD, 1923. Photomontage, collage, and black ink on paper,40.4 28.2 cm. Paris: Muse National dArt Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou. Photo:Runion des Muses Nationaux/Art Resource, NY.


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The letter M pronounced as dah-dah is of additional interest when considering that Satiesballet was entitled Mercure,66 and that his writing, Cahiers dun mammifre, is an attack onJean Cocteau. Robert Orledge notes that Cocteau sometimes went to masked balls dressed asMercury, and John Richardson unequivocally states that Cocteau was a central object ofridicule in the basic conception of the ballet.67 In Act 3 of the ballet, the god Mercuryadvertises a ball with the Polka of the Letters, which partly involves presentations ofinvented letters belonging to a universal alphabet. (Certainly, one could say that the Morsecode functions as a universal alphabet.) Following the polka and a further dance is the sceneChaos, during which Mercury abducts Proserpine68 (who is perhaps referred to by the P ofthe poem). Chaos is another way of understanding the indeterminacy that frames theemergence of M or dah-dah in Man Rays poem. This leaves one unexplained

untranslatable line in the poems third section. That can be accounted for as a numericalrequirement due to the need to have 13 translatable lines to pair with the 13 musical pieces ofMercure as well as the addition of the magazines title number sequence: 3 + 9 +1 = 13. Also,17 lines in the body of the poem are required for it to refer to being issue number 17 of 391,etc. The poem, then, along with the rest of the page, operates on many evolving levelssimultaneously. It may be objected that providing specific identifications and associations forcomponents of these works conflicts with the idea of metamorphosis that I propose as beingfundamental to the page, for flux and fixity contradict each other. However, one can onlyknow that change occurs by observing and recognizing the alterations of states, which arethemselves identifiable. The whole 391 page seems to require the deciphering of shifting,densely coded references and allusions that no doubt would have thoroughly engaged theattention of the cryptographer Walter Arensberg himself.

When Man Rays poem, Picabias drawing, and Saties text are thought of in terms of codedreferences, among other things, one begins to understand the full 391 page as operating as acomplete exercise in interrelated forms of communication. The Gesamtkunstwerk ideal ofsaturated communication working through all sensual possibilities becomes realized on this

page.69 The mutative quality of possible interpretations suggests that the page is meant to beunderstood through multiple, even divergent and simultaneous readings. The resultinginterpretative flux recalls Picabias own multi-layered approach to painting, which may serveas a model for understanding the operations of this 391 page. Picabias poetry provides furtherstructural parallels. In a similar way, Marinettis earlier idea of the wireless imagination

pointed to a new compositional approach when he stated that the new poet will cast immensenets of analogy across the world. In this way he will reveal the analogical foundation of life,telegraphically.70 The interpretation of this 391 page that I have provided points to the

importance of considering the context in which works appear. By segregating Man Rayspoem from its original page surroundings, the poem would seem to be essentially a statementof negation. One thereby misses a wealth of additional possibilities that come from readingthe 391 page as an integrated system of proliferating codes. The same is true of Saties textand ballet that informs both Man Rays poem and Picabias complex, almost scholarlydrawing that itself emerged out of a remarkable process of citation and transformation. Thecollaborative orchestration carried out by these three diverse characters set into play theoperations of metamorphosis and translation that drive the functionality of the 391 page andallow for its intelligibility as a project.


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Notes1391, 17, June 1924, 3. This issue was published in Paris. Francis Picabias 391 (published

between 1917 and 1924) served partly to bridge his own diverse relationships with Europeandada (specifically the French variant) and the Arensberg circle in New York. The magazinestitle derives from 291, an earlier New York publication of Marius de Zayas in which Picabia

published his well-known mechanical portraits of individuals involved in the local culturalscene. The magazine 291 was in turn related to the 291 art gallery run by Alfred Stieglitz at291 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The magazine 291 concluded its short run in 1916 and the291 gallery closed in 1917, the same year that Picabia founded his magazine 391 inBarcelona. The choice of 391 as a title, therefore, involves a sequence of evolving references.2Of the three contributions, it is the seemingly abstract poem by Man Ray that is mostcelebrated for its radicalism and implications for advanced art.3The collaborative aspect and technical devices found on this page of 391 can be comparedwith the third issue of the Berlin-produced Der Dada, published in 1918. The three directorsof that magazine are given as: groszfield, hearthaus, and georgemann, a violent collage on the

names and identities of George Grosz, John Heartfield and Raoul Hausmann. Picabia makesan appearance in this issue, with his Manifeste Cannibale Dada occupying almost an entire

page. Instead of page numbers appearing at the bottom of each page of this third issue, othermeasurements are substituted in their place, such as: 254 km, 437 l, 642 kg, A 50, 6 ZB, 4/1,75%, 1920, 100M., 1 mm, W E, h m, TOM 2, and OH 61. By placing various types ofmeasurements in place of page numbers, the Berlin dadaists interrupted the assumedtransparency of written language and undermined the publishing conventions whereby

pagination serves as a unifying organizational system. Because there is no continuity betweenthe different measurements as page numbers, each page comes to possess its own uniqueassigned identity. At the same time, the markings do not identify their context, but insteaddirect the readers attention to vastly different areas of thought such as weight, distance, andtime. It is possible that Picabia, Man Ray, and Satie may have recalled this issue of Der Dadawhen formulating the devices found on the 391 page under consideration in this essay.4Picabias poetry exemplifies this quality of transformation, as seen in the following lines from1918: watch the stepladder hesitations / of falcon symbols / and the model hat. / Weepinghypothesis of the fish cricket / of pleasure in chopped-up petals, / the husbands plants altered/ into grass close the eyes of the specialized / apparatus. Francis Picabia, Canto I: SaltWater, from The Morticians Athlete, in I Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry Prose, andProvocation, trans. Marc Lowenthal, Cambridge, MA, 2007, 99.5George Baker does present the complete page in a recent book, but does not mention the ManRay and Satie contributions, and just briefly points to the character of Satie in Picabias

drawing. See GeorgeB

aker, The Artwork Caught by the Tail: Francis Picabia and Dada inParis, Cambridge, MA, 2007, 394. Man Rays poem was presented as a single work removedfrom its original page presentation in Benjamin Buchlohs Open letters, industrial poems,October, 42, Autumn 1987, 76. Dawn Ades also reproduced the poem alone in Dada andSurrealism Reviewed, although many other pages of the various magazines are presentedwhole. See Dawn Ades, Dada and Surrealism Reviewed, London, 1978, 149. Hans Richterearlier reproduced Man Rays poem by itself, though he paired it with a pictorial sign poem

by Christian Morgenstern. Richter writes of Man Rays poem as being a dumb poem, but itis captioned as a phonetic poem. Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art, 1964. London,


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1978, 1201. I have not encountered commentary that discusses the 391 page as aninterrelated whole. The interpretation that follows of the page and individual works (alongwith the positing of sources) is my own, apart from acknowledged references.6Jean-Grard Lapacherie, Typographic characters: Tension between text and drawing, trans.Anna Lehmann, Yale French Studies, 84, 1994, 72.

7Lapacherie, Typographic characters, 72.8In an essay on the industrial poems ofBelgian poet and artist Marcel Broodthaers, BenjaminBuchloh included an illustration of this poem by Man Ray. Its appearance follows adiscussion ofBroodthaers work of the 1960s and early 1970s in which it is said that he partlyengages in a modernist strategy of hermetic resistance by which the visual or linguistic signconstitutes itself to refuse the visual or sensual data which the viewer demands. See Buchloh,Open letters, industrial poems, 73. The poems illustration serves as a visual component ofthe essays argument. AlthoughBuchloh illustrates but does not discuss Man Rays poemdirectly, it appears in a section of the essay dealing with semantic deletion and visualerasure, leading one to assume that Man Rays poem is understood to be engaged with

similar issues. That would certainly be a useful reading to apply to Man Rays poem, althoughit works best when the poem is presented (as it generally is) as a unique and autonomouswork, in isolation from its original published context. Applying the deletion and erasurenotion to the poem results in a partial reading, however, that does not sufficiently account forthe calculation that went into its design and presentation. See Buchloh, Open letters,industrial poems, 75. Buchloh also includes an illustration of four cartoons from Man RaysMarch 1915 publication The Ridgefield Gazook that make references to censorship throughthe blanking out of spaces. In a later article, Craig Douglas Dworkin mentions what he callsMarcel Broodthaers restaging of Man Rays series of lautgedicte in an article on VitoAcconci. See Dworkins Fugitive signs, October, 95, Winter 2001, 92.9Although censorship is generally understood to be an undesirable action, it (like any otheraction) can result in aesthetic consequences. Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine theunfolding of twentieth-century art were there not such a negative model for emulation.10Groups of three found in Western artworks often refer to the Holy Trinity (the three in one).Perhaps, by appropriating for this page Saties numerological obsession, Picabia is making ahumorous suggestion of a three in one of 391? The 3 is found all over the page, appearing indifferent forms while retaining the same identity as the number 3. Two articles that examinethe sacrilegious aspects of Picabias earlier drawing in 391, La Sainte Vierge of March 1920,are Elizabeth Legges Thirteen ways of looking at a virgin: Francis Picabias La SainteVierge, Word & Image, 12: 2, AprilJune 1996, 21842, and David HopkinsQuestioningdadas potency: Picabias La Sainte Vierge and the dialogue with Duchamp, Art History,

15: 3, September 1992, 31733. A more recent essay dealing with Picabia and religion isWilliam Camfields Dieu est partout, sauf dans les glises: du religieux et du blasphemedans loeuvre de Picabia, Francis Picabia: Singulier ideal, trans. Jeanne Bouniort, Paris,2002, 749. Picabias mockery of religion is well demonstrated in his book of 1920, Jesus-Christ Rastaquoure, in which he writes: One should take communion with chewing-gum,that way God will strengthen your jaws. Francis Picabia, I Am a Beautiful Monster, 228. ErikSatie had earlier created an imaginary version of his own church for which he produced twosatirical publications. This was the glise Mtropolitaine dArt de Jsus Conducteur. See


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Nigel Wilkins, The writings of Erik Satie: Miscellaneous fragments, Music & Letters, 56:34, JulyOctober 1975, 292.11Picabia, I Am a Beautiful Monster, 98.12Francis M. Naumann, New York Dada, 191523, New York, 1994, 31.

13Walter Conrad Arensberg, The Cryptography of Shakespeare, Los Angeles, CA, 1922, 3.14Picabia sometimes made humorous references to himself in his writings, as with his Francismerci! in Littrature 2nd series, 8, January 1923, 1617.15This was the Htel Istria on Rue Campagne Premire. See Billy Klver and Julie Martin,Man Ray, Paris, in Gaye Brown and Alan Axelrod, eds, Perpetual Motif: The Art of ManRay, Washington, DC and New York, 1988, 125.16Robert Orledge, Satie the Composer, Cambridge, 1990, xxxix.17

Dawn Ades writes of Picabias drawing as representing Satie as a merman blowing bubblesin Dada and Surrealism Reviewed, 153. Valentine Hugo writes in her 1958 Notes for aPortrait of Satie: He was much like the satyr Marsyas: a short greying goatee; rather thicklips, twisted into a teasing smile which could at times be cruel; a sensual, greedy nose.Quoted. in Orledge, Satie the Composer, xli.18Maria Llusa Borrs notes the relation to this earlier untitled drawing, writing that the laterone may be a profile of Satie, taken from an earlier watercolour which is here transformedinto a caricature. See Maria Llusa Borrs, Picabia, trans. Kenneth Lyons, New York, 1985,241.19William Camfield has pointed out some of Picabias many Renaissance borrowings, as withhis Venus and Adonis of 1924 to 1927 that derives from Titians painting of around 1553. SeeWilliam Camfield, Francis Picabia: His Art, Life and Times, Princeton, NJ, 1979, 224.20Earlier, Picabia had appropriated mechanical images from published sources, and he later

borrowed heavily from photographic images in popular magazines.21My proposal is new regarding Picabias use of Raphaels Galatea, but it is indebted toCamfields recognition of Picabias Renaissance appropriations.22Picabia had earlier referenced Ovid when entitling both a drawing of 1915 and a book of

poetry from 1918, The DaughterBorn without a Mother, or La fille ne sans mere. It comes

from verse 553 of the second Metamorphosis by way of Montesquieu and the Petit Laroussedictionary. Marc Lowenthal in Francis Picabias I Am a Beautiful Monster, 589.23It has been suggested recently that Thermomtre Rimbaud functions as a parody of MaxErnsts work, specifically his painting Piet or Revolution by Night of 1923, in which it issaid that the repressive father is pictured carrying a clothed Ernst. See Baker, The ArtworkCaught by the Tail, 38995. However, Emily Braun has subsequently demonstrated that thefigure actually represents Giorgio di Chirico. Braun suggests that the figure carrying diChirico portrays Picasso, while the bearded figure with closed eyes and bandaged head


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depicts the wounded Apollinaire. See Emily Braun, Thtre dombres: Picasso et Chirico,Giorgio di Chirico, la fabrique des rves, Paris, 2009, 789.24Beverly Calt, La vie de Picabia, Francis Picabia, Tokyo, 1999, 44. Calt does not discussthe 391 Satie drawing, or the two others that I discuss, or make links between them and theDrer engravings.

25A further connection can be made between this Drer engraving and Thermomtre Rimbaud.Just as the upper half of Satie seems clearly modelled on the corresponding parts of StEustace, so too are the trunk and legs of Picabias carried woman in Thermomtre Rimbaudvery like those of St Eustace. From the womans backside hangs the scandalous thermometer,while in a similar orientation is St Eustaces sword that hangs on his left side, with a knife onhis right.26Mercure premiered on 15 June 1924 at La Cigale Theatre in Montmartre, Paris. Pablo Picassodesigned the costumes and sets, while Lonide Massine choreographed. Robert Orledge, ErikSaties Ballet Mercure (1924): From Mount Etna to Montmartre, Journal of the RoyalMusical Association, 123: 2, 1998, 229.

27William Camfield writes that Andr Breton led an attempt to disrupt the second performanceof Mercure on 15 June. Georges Auric (criticized in Saties article) was in Bretons circle atthe time. The performance was interrupted with shouting in favour of the shows designerPicasso and against Satie. Breton and Satie got along poorly. See Camfield, Francis Picabia,2056. This would suggest that Breton, Auric and the others may have been reacting in partagainst Saties provocative criticism in this June issue of 391. The subsequent July magazineissue comments on the disruption. John Richardson mentions that Breton may have decided toattack Satie as a proxy for his main enemy of the moment Tristan Tzara. Breton was then inthe process of correcting the galleys of the first surrealist manifesto. John Richardson, withMarilyn McCully, A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years 19171932, New York, 2007,260. Throughout his book, Michel Sanouillet discusses the tenseness and friction created

between Breton, Tzara, and Picabia by Bretons frequent undermining of the anarchicradicalism of dada during his passage toward surrealism. See Michel Sanouillet, Dada inParis, revised and expanded by Anne Sanouillet, trans. Sharmila Ganguly, Cambridge, MA,2009.28Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 75.29Richardson, A Life of Picasso, 252.30Satie writes: Cocteau has a thousand arguments: More scandal he says / In fact, thescandals are too scandalous and are scandalizing everyone. He likewise advises his friends

Laloy and Auric to avoid scandals also to be small, colourless and invisible. / For inreaching the age of 40, one becomes serious very serious massively serious grave (andalso low). My translation. Note the 3 uses of serious that follow the 3 variations onscandal, as well as the 3 qualities advised for Cocteaus friends.31Orledge, Erik Saties Ballet Mercure, 231.32From a letter to Picasso of 21 February 1924, translated in Orledge, Erik Saties BalletMercure, 234.


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33An English critic for Londons The Observer, who reviewed the revival of the ballet in 1927,reported that the male figure was Apollyon. See Alan M. Gillmor, Erik Satie and the conceptof the avant-garde, The Musical Quarterly, 69: 1, Winter 1983, 105. However, RobertOrledge more recently suggests that it was Apollo. See Orledge, Erik Saties BalletMercure, 238. In early Christian writing, Apollyon can figure as a destructive alter ego to

Apollo. I believe the Apollyon identification is more productive, for reasons that will becomeclearer as my discussion continues.34Raphaels Galatea is itself indebted to Botticellis Birth of Venus.35Richardson, A Life of Picasso, 256.36On page 3 of the 391 page, it is 3 that is repeated. In Revelation, it was 7 repeated inreference to Apollyon and elsewhere, with 7 angels, seals, trumpets, churches, candlesticks,stars, lamps of fire, Spirits of God, horns, eyes, etc.37Revelation 9: 1 (King James Version).

38Rev. 9: 710.39Rev. 9: 11.40As another possible allusion, Satie had earlier referred to Georges Bizets suite of piano duets,Jeux denfants, in his own set of compositions, Sports et divertissements, of 1914. One ofBizets songs from the suite is entitled Les Bulles de Savon, or Soap Bubbles. See Mary E.Davis, Modernity la mode: Popular culture and avant-gardism in Erik Saties Sports etdivertissements, The Musical Quarterly, 83: 3, Autumn 1999, 455.41There is yet another possible association to be made. In Ren Clairs and Picabias filmEntracte, created in late 1924 as an introduction and intermission feature for Saties andPicabias ballet Relche, there is one shot that dwells briefly on a billboard with an image of a

baby. The camera pans across this advertisement for the soap product Savon cadum for fourto five seconds, for no apparent reason. However, Michel Sanouillet has noted the existenceof a Savon dada, a Belgian soap that predated the dada movement, but that gained addedcachet through the later association. This could suggest that the soap bubble in Picabiasdrawing is, among other things, also a reference to dada. See Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 616,n58.42In their articles on La Sainte Vierge, Elizabeth Legge and David Hopkins both discuss the

portrait character of that inkblot drawing in the earlier issue of 391.

43I first presented the idea of a relation between Man Rays poem and the Morse code at mypublic lecture at Concordia University in Montreal on 27 February 2006.44As an American photographer in Paris, Man Ray may have been aware of the famous meeting

between the artists Samuel Morse (American inventor of the Morse code and telegraph) andLouis Jacques Mand Daguerre (inventor of the Daguerreotype) to discuss their respectiveinventions on 7 March 1839 at the very moment that Daguerres studio burnt to the ground.During the period of 1821 to 1823 Morse himself had tried photographic experiments with the


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camera obscura, but came up with only non-permanent negatives. Oxford Companion to thePhotograph, ed. Robin Lenman, Oxford, 2005, 423.45The illustration is from Rhey T. Snodgrass and Victor F. Camps Radio Receiving forBeginners, New York, 1922, 96.46

See The Borough of Ridgefield, New Jersey,http://www.ridgefieldboro.com/about/index.html.47Francis Picabia, With Francis Picabia, I Am a Beautiful Monster, 306.48William Austin, Satie before and after Cocteau, The Musical Quarterly, 48: 2, April 1962,21633.49Kurt Schwitters experimental poetry consisting of vertically aligned sets of numbers orletters of the alphabet are also related to Man Rays poem. See especially Schwitters poemsof 1922 entitled Poem 25, ZA, and Register. Kurt Schwitters, Poems Performance PiecesProses Plays Poetics, ed. and trans. Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris, Philadelphia, PA,

1993, 489.50F. T. Marinetti, Destruction of syntax imagination without strings words-in-freedom,Futurist Manifestos, ed. Umbro Apollonio, trans. R. W. Flint, London, 1972, 100.51Marinetti, Destruction of syntax, 104. My italics.52Klver and Martin, Man Ray, Paris, 104, and Richardson, A Life of Picasso, 230. MichelSanouillet discusses Zdanevichs peripheral presence in Paris dada, but he does notacknowledge that the Russian zaum idea and sensibility predate even Zurich dada by severalyears and hence cannot be derivative or of a Dadaish nature. See Sanouillet, Dada in Paris,21921. As with dadas relation to futurism and the anarchist wing of German expressionism,it was dada that was the beneficiary of earlier innovations.53In Man Rays 1923 film Le retour la raison, the similar page of line markings is followed bywhat appears to be an unfurling and rotating section of a roll of perforated paper fabricated for

player pianos. The horizontal perforations provide immediate references for the precedingmarked page. Though less central, they may also be associated with the far more complex 391

poem.54Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 155.55Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 259.

56Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 261.57Although the 391 poem is credited to Man Ray, the use of mathematics and numericalrelations is found in a recently published poem, ZUT, by Picabia (apparently written

between 1919 and 1921) in Francis Picabia: Singulier ideal, 344: 1149 est 434 Lon 98 624vend / lescargot 00 000 10 Papa 2 le public / 48 et 49 la roue 24 le caca 000 et / le pipi 126 +33 = 8 / Lon 45 121 893 question 21 mais / je suis bien tranquille aujourdhui 25 / la mode


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2222 + 333 = 0 / 22 + 1 = 22 / 22 1 = 22 / 22 + 22 = 22 / 22 = 22 = 44 / 34 987 6 cestdabord la chert du 30 / comme la danse 9 et le pipi 10 / deux fois / trois fois.58My colleague Anne Dymond pointed out this latter fact.59Orledge, Satie the Composer, 168. Note also that Man Rays poem contains 18 lines in total.

60Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 toWorld War I, New York, 1968, 141.61Robert Orledge, Satie & America, American Music, 18: 1, Spring 2000, 87.62The reference to the Three Graces is found in Richardson, A Life of Picasso, 259.63I thank Ed Jurkowski for drawing my attention to the compositional practice of soggettocavato.64The Dutch sound poet Jaap Blonk has used Man Rays work as a score, understanding it to

represent a crossed-out, censored poem, functioning as a Lautgedichte, German for soundpoem. In the 1960s Hans Richters book on dada indicated that it was phonetic, though it isnot specified as such on the 391 page. Kenneth Goldsmith, the American experimental poetand founder of the avant-garde media website Ubu Web, writes ofBlonks recording: hesimply intones every duration in an obnoxious, nasaly, guttural honk which lasts about sevenminutes. See Kenneth Goldsmith, Bring da noise: A brief survey of sound art, New MusicBox: The Web Magazine from the American Music Center, 1 March 2004,http://www.newmusicbox.org/page.nmbxid=59tp01.Blonks is an equivalent rendering of the

poem as an unmodulated abstract sound image in which the grating sound is meant to be asonic analogy to the act of censorship.65For more on Raoul Hausmanns poetry see Timothy O. Bensons Raoul Hausmann and BerlinDada, Ann Arbor, MI, 1987.66Picabias painting, Chapeau de paille? of 1922 was rejected from the Salon des Indpendants

because of the text inscribed on the work: M.. pour celui qui le regarde! Picabiaclaimed that the M stood for Merci, but the Salon committee and later journalistic reportssuggested that it stood for Merde. Camfield, Francis Picabia, 1725. The M in Man Rays

poem, could perhaps involve a further reference to this earlier controversy. However, it is alsopossible that Picabia may have already known in 1922 that when voiced in Morse code, Mbecomes dah-dah.67See Orledge, Satie the Composer, 362, and Richardson, A Life of Picasso, 175 and 258.

68Orledge, Erik Saties Ballet Mercure, 235.69Arnauld Pierre writes of two of Picabias orphist paintings from 1913 and 1914 that have theword Udnie in their titles. Pierre sees these as tributes involving anagrams of the name JeandUdine, a musical theorist specializing in synaesthesia. Pierre writes of the orphist paintingsas involving a densification of aesthetic experience and a polysensorial multiplication ofsensations by means of synaesthesia. Arnauld Pierre, Francis Picabia: La peinture sans aura,


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Paris, 2002, 98109. The devices of simultaneity, metamorphosis, and translations involved inthe 391 page would then seem to be related to long-standing interests of Picabia.70

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