Dimensionism: Modern Art in the Age of Einstein

The first book to document how artists of the early twentieth century responded to new scientific conceptions of reality. In the early twentieth century, influenced by advances in science that included Einstein's theory of relativity and newly powerful microscopic and telescopic lenses, artists were inspired to expand their art-to capture a new metareality that went beyond human perception into unseen dimensions. In 1936, the Hungarian poet Charles Sirato authored the Dimensionist Manifesto, signaling a new movement that called on artists to transcend "all the old borders and barriers of the arts." The manifesto was the first attempt to systematize the mass of changes that we now call modern art, and was endorsed by an impressive array of artists, including Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, Cesar Domela, Marcel Duchamp, Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miro, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Ben Nicholson, Enrico Prampolini, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Dimensionism is the first book in English to explore how these and other "Dimensionists" responded to the scientific breakthroughs of their era. The book, which accompanies a traveling exhibition, reproduces works by the manifesto's initial endorsers and by such artists as Georges Braque, Joseph Cornell, Helen Lundeberg, Man Ray, Herbert Matter, Isamu Noguchi, Pablo Picasso, Kay Sage, Patrick Sullivan, and Dorothea Tanning. It also offers essays by prominent art historians that examine Sirato's now almost-forgotten text and the artists who searched for a means of expression that obliterated old conceptions and parameters. Appearing for the first time in English is Sirato's own "History of the Dimensionist Manifesto," written in 1966. The book brings aa long-forgotten voice and text back into circulation. Artists Alexander Archipenko, Jean Arp, Herbert Bayer, Georges Braque, Alexander Calder, Joseph Cornell, John Covert, Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, Cesar Domela, Marcel Duchamp, Harold Edgerton, Max Ernst, Naum Gabo, Barbara Hepworth, Wassily Kandinsky, Gerome Kamrowski, Frederick Kann, Helen Lundeberg, Man Ray, Andre Masson, Roberto Matta, Herbert Matter, Joan Miro, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Henry Moore, Nina Negri, Ben Nicholson, Isamu Noguchi, Gordon Onslow Ford, Wolfgang Paalen, Antoine Pevsner, Pablo Picasso, Enrico Prampolini, Anton Prinner, Kay Sage, Charles Sirato, Will Henry Stevens, Patrick Sullivan, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Yves Tanguy, Dorothea Tanning Copublished with the Mead Art Museum, Amherst College