Pierre Albert-Birot (22 April 1876 – 25 July 1967) was a French avant-garde poet, dramatist, and theater manager. He was a steadfast avant-garde during World War I. He created and published the magazine Sic from 1916 to 1919. He was a defender of Futurism and Cubism. The Dadaists considered him one of their own, although he never took part in the movement. He declared himself the founder of the ″nunique" school (from the Greek adverb νῦν / nun, now), a literary school of which he was the only master, with no disciples.
After the war, he distanced himself from the Surrealists, to whom he had, with Guillaume Apollinaire, given their name, and he created a solipsistic body of work and tried his hand at everything, printing his own books and cultivating the childlike joy of artistic creation. He himself wrote: ″I find my joy in poetic creation and I find my joy in the creations of my hands. ... All of this is just like a game, I love to play, I keep the kid alive.″« Je trouve ma joie dans la création poétique et je trouve ma joie dans les créations de mes mains. [...] Tout cela, c’est du jeu, j’aime jouer, j’entretiens le gosse. » Pierre Albert-Birot, La Quinzaine de Pierre Albert-Birot, n° 1, Paris, 1926.
Despite being mocked by the Surrealists for his pretensions to excel in many artistic mediums, and being criticized by Philippe Soupault as an extravagant man without real poetic talent, he earned the praises and friendships of Francis PicabiaFrancis Picabia, ″Opinions et portraits″, 391, n° 19, October 1924, p. 2-3. and Apollinaire, who dubbed him ("Pyrogen"), because of his "fiery" temperament as an innovator and disruptor. Later, Gaston Bachelard praised the depth of his philosophical views, thanking him for ″giving the body better consciousness than a philosopher«Vous donnez mieux qu'un philosophe conscience au corps, bonne conscience au corps. Chez vous, en plein hiver, le corps garde une ambiance estivale, une lumière de merveilleux été.» — « Dire qu'il y a des philosophes qui écrivent sur l'être sans connaître la lumière des poètes ! Vous m'avez donné mille pensées. [...] Écrivez sans arrêt, cher Poète. Vous élargissez les chemins. » (You give the body better consciousness than a philosopher, good conscience to the body. With you, even in the middle of winter, the body retains a summery atmosphere, a light of wonderful summer." [...] "To think that there are philosophers who write about being without knowing the light of poets! You have given me a thousand thoughts. ... Keep writing, dear Poet. You are widening the paths.) Gaston Bachelard, Letter of March 8, 1954, Alternances. (Gaston Bachelard, P. Béarn, Jean Cassou, Louis de Gonzague Frick, Max Jacob, Louise-Marion, C. Orloff, André Salmon, M. Seuphor, Léopold Survage, Alternances, no. 44, Caen, March 25, 1959)″. He has been credited as influencing various poets such as Jean Follain, Pascal Pia, and Valérie Rouzeau.
Childhood and adolescence
He was born Pierre Albert Birot on April 22, 1876, in Angoulême. His mother, Marguerite, ″embroidered, played the piano and sang.FOLLAIN Jean, Pierre Albert-Birot, Paris, Pierre Seghers, Coll. Poètes d'aujourd'hui, 1967.″ His father, Maurice Birot, ″was constantly starting up businesses, but not very solid ones.″ The family spent their summers not far from Angoulême, at the Château de Chalonnes. There, the young Albert-Birot, still in high school, set up a glove puppet theatre, wrote plays, and invited the village to performances.
After his father made some bad business deals, the family left the Château de Chalonnes and moved to Bordeaux. Pierre received private lessons in Greek, and gave his teacher ″an exceptional wooden cutout cigar case made by him using a pedal machine as big as a sewing machine.″ In the same year, his father left the household to live with a friend of his wife. Finding themselves without resources, Marguerite set up a boarding house. The house then welcomed young female dancers from the nearby theatre who came to live in the room next to Pierre's. However, the boarding house was not sufficient to cover the family's needs, so they moved to Paris at the end of 1892. There, Marguerite worked as a seamstress.
Early years in Paris In Paris, Albert Birot, barely sixteen years old, met the sculptor Georges Achard, who introduced him to the École des Beaux-Arts and introduced him to Falguière. Since he wanted to be a painter, Albert-Birot met with Gustave Moreau and Gérôme at this time. It is finally sculpture that captures his interest: he left the École des Beaux-Arts, worked on sculptures in Georges Achard's studio, and met Alfred Boucher. In the latter's studio, an Italian craftsman teaches him how to carve marble.
Having received financial support from the city of Angoulême through a scholarship, he set up his studio in a cabin on the boulevard du Montparnasse. At the same time, he took courses at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France, including the philosophy course of Alfred Espinas.
He set up house in 1896 with the sister of the painter , Marguerite, with whom he has four children.
He exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français for the first time in 1900. Seven years later, his sculpture The Widow was purchased by the state for the cemetery of Issy-les-Moulineaux, where it remains today. For food, he sculpted Parisian façades (some of which can be seen around the Champ-de-Mars and in Neuilly-sur-Seine). From 1900, he also worked as a restorer for antique dealer Madame Lelong, a job he kept all his life and which provided the material for his novel Rémy Floche, employé.
During the year 1912, he frequented Esperanto circles in Paris and wrote poems in Esperanto. It is perhaps thereLENTENGRE Marie-Louise, Pierre Albert-Birot, l'invention de soi, Paris, JM Place, 1993. that he met the musician Germaine de Surville.
The same year, he abandoned his children. His daughters entered the Orphanage of the Arts in Courbevoie, and his sons entered the Fraternity of Artists.LATOUR Geneviève, Pierre Albert – Birot et le théâtre de Guillaume Apollinaire, . He married Germaine in 1913.
SIC
From January 1916 to December 1919, Albert-Birot edited the avant-garde art magazine SIC: Sons Idées Couleurs, Formes, which featured writings by Futurists, Dadaists and Surrealists. SIC was the second Parisian magazine, after Nord-Sud, to distribute the texts of the Zürich Dadaists, namely those of Tristan Tzara. SIC was a focus for many avant-garde initiatives, even those which Albert-Birot himself disliked, but he believed in independence and objectivity. At the end of its publication in 1919, SIC had published 53 issues.
New Birth Pierre Albert Birot avoided the draft due to respiratory insufficiency during World War I, and, according to his own words, "was really born"″Je suis né en janvier 1916″ (I was born in January 1916, ″La revue SIC, ma fille, et une fille pas ordinaire puisqu'elle a trouvé le moyen de me mettre au monde.″ (The magazine SIC is my daughter, a not-so-ordinary girl, since she managed to bring me into the world during the creation of the magazine SIC in 1916, when he definitively adopted his artist name, hyphenating his middle and last name. The title of the magazine, represented by a SIC carved into wood framed by two symmetrical F's, has two meanings; it is firstly the Latin word yes, standing for "a desire to constructively oppose the war that negates human values" and more generally, a desire "to assert oneself through a complete acceptance of the world,". It is also the acronym for its subheading "Sons Idées Couleurs, Formes," which was an expression of the multiple activities of the Albert-Birot couple – Sounds for Germaine's music, Ideas for poetry, Colors for painting, and Forms for Pierre's sculpture – but aspired to become the motto for a "synthesis of modernist arts."
Issue number 1, sold for twenty centimes, appeared in January 1916, entirely written and illustrated by Pierre Albert-Birot. The publication stood out for its modernism, despite coming from a painter and sculptor trained by traditionalist Achard, a self-taught "Adamite poet" who had not yet encountered the avant-garde. "Our desire: to act. To take initiatives, not to wait for them to come from across the Rhine," is the first of the "First Words" displayed by SIC; an affirmation of originality as a condition of Art, "Art begins where imitation ends Sic n° 1, page 1" which is not without evoking, although in a much less radical form, Dada's rejection of all imitation and literary tradition and life. Earlier by one month, Albert-Birot is not far from synchronous with the vitalist affirmation of the Dadaists of no longer imitating life but creating life.As Hans Arp wrote : ″la vie est le but de l'art. l'art peut mécomprendre ses moyens et ne faire que mirer la vie au lieu de la créer." (Life is the goal of art. Art may misunderstand its powers and only reflect life instead of creating it) —
An illustration in the publication of the first issue shows the outstretched hand of an isolated artist to avant-garde circles of which he was both completely unknown and ignorant.
He mockingly calls Paul Claudel a ″beautiful poet of the day before yesterday″ and continues with ″I would really like to meet a poet of today″.
Meeting with avant-garde circles The first to respond to this magazine was not a poet but the painter Gino Severini, whose impetus made SIC a true avant-garde magazine, as Albert-Birot humorously explains:
″Severini already had quite a few years of combat and research into ultra-modern art behind him, since he had been with Marinetti, the creator of Futurism, for a long time; naturally, for him, the first issue of my magazine was quite timid, but after talking to me he had the feeling that I was ready to become a true warrior for the good cause.″Severini avait déjà derrière lui pas mal d'années de combat et de recherches d'art ultra moderne puisqu'il avait été longtemps aux côtés de Marinetti, le créateur du futurisme; naturellement pour lui le premier numéro de ma revue était bien timide, néanmoins après conversation avec moi il pressentit que j'étais prêt à devenir un vrai combattant pour le bon motif.″ Naissance et vie de SIC ″, les Lettres nouvelles, n° 7, septembre 1953.
The second issue, published in February, is devoted to the discovery of Futurism. It reports on Severini's First Exhibition of Plastic Art of the War and other previous works, held at the Boutet de Monvel gallery from January 15 to February 1, 1916. Albert-Birot writes: "The picture, until now a fraction of space, becomes with futurism a fraction of time." Severini offered SIC a reproduction of his Train Arriving in Paris.
In addition, Severini convinced Guillaume Apollinaire to meet Albert-Birot. The meeting takes place in July 1916, at an talian hospital, and immediately the two men became friends. Apollinaire introduced Albert-Birot to his many friends and brought his mentorship to the magazine. Apollinaire has his Tuesdays at the Café de Flore and SIC has its Saturdays, on rue de la Tombe-Issoire, where Apollinaire comes as soon as he is released from the hospital and brings his friends: André Salmon, Pierre Reverdy, Serge Férat, and Roch Grey.
Collaboration with Apollinaire