Mina Loy and her 'Aphorisms on Futurism'

From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Wed Jan 30 2002 - 02:28:26 MST


Dear Extropes,

In the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome last weekend was an Alfred
Stieglitz photo exhibit, featuring his photos (not enough), early
black & white photos (many) from the origins of photography, and pieces
from his 'zine: "Camera Work". This small magazine featured artists,
writers, painters, photographers, sculptors, etc. of all kinds, with
insightful essays.

One of Stieglitz' features in his Camera Work magazine was Mina
Loy's: 'Aphorisms on Futurism', 45 (January 1914): 13-15. While I
was in the exhibit hall, I copied some of the aphorisms that I
thought most interesting, which I show below. Serafino found some
information about this piece and more info about her.

The full reference is here:
"Aphorisms on Futurism."
Camera Work, 45 (January 1914): 13-15.
Rpt. Camera Work: A Critical Anthology.
Ed. and Introd. Jonathan Green. New York:
Aperture, 1973. 276-7. Rpt. Last Lunar Baedeker, 272-275.

I had never heard these aphorisms before, and I had never heard
of Mina Loy before (even though she was spending time with the
most famous artists of that time).

She's a remarkable woman. Creative. Bold.
http://shc.stanford.edu/sed/Mina.Loy.html
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/loy/bio.htm

some of Mina Loy's "Aphorisms on Futurism":

* Die in the past. Live in the future.

* The Futurist can live a thousand years in one poem.

* Love the hideous in order to find the sublime core of it.

* In pressing the material to derive its essence, matter becomes
defined.

* Forget that you live in houses, so that you may live in yourself.

* What can you know of expansion; those who limit yourselves to compromise?

* Love of others is appreciation of oneself.

* Life is only limited by our prejudices. Destroy them, and you cease
to be at the mercy of yourself.

* Time is the dispersion of intensiveness.

* The future is limitless- the past is a trail of insidious reactions.

* The future is only dark from the outside. Leap into it, and it
_explodes_ with Light.

* The smallest person is as great as the Universe.

* May your egotism be so gigantic that you compromise mankind in
your self-sympathy.

********************************************************************
Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com
Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt
Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/
********************************************************************
"Whenever I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the
future of the human race." -- H. G. Wells



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