Xul Solar

Forwarded: Charles Bernstein on Xul Solar:

There is an excellent article on Xul Solar in today's NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/25/arts/design/25sola.html

Solar (1887- 1963) is one of the greatest modernist painters & poets
of the Americas and it was thrilling to see his major retrospective
show at MALBA with Ernesto Grosman and Susan Bee, when we were all in
Buenos Aires last month.

An excellent introduction to his work by Cecilia Vicuna is available
on-line in English :
http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article.php?lab=XulSolar

While the MALBA show is mainly of his great watercolors, and indeed
he is known primarily as a visual artist, Solar was also one of the
most significant practitioners of ideolectical modernism, along with
Khlebnikov, Schwitters, and others. One of this two invented
languages, "Pan Criollo" is a synthesis of Portuguese and Spanish,
you might say the esperanto for South America. He also invented a
"Pan Lingua," more along the lines of zaum, with its VVV base
inflected by mathematics and astrology.

Grosman – who is now teaching at Boston College – edited a Roof
Books anthology of the Argentine poetry magazine, XUL, edited by
Jorge Perednik (among others). The magazine, from the 1980s, took its
name and inspiration from Xul Solar. Both the Roof Book English as
well as all the original issues of the magazine are now on line at
http://www.bc.edu/research/xul/

For more information about Xul Solar:
http://www.xulsolar.org.ar/

Charles Bernstein