First Diasporist Manifesto: With 60 Illustrations

by R.B. Kitaj

An artist declares his credo on art and life

Genres: Art

128 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1989

About the author

Ronald Brooks Kitaj (1932-2007)

Reviews

[Freddie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book feels more like a vaguely profound rant from a pretentious guy who's cornered you in a pub than expected. While the author speaks to personally touching sentiments, he doesn't make any real coherent point about diasporism or diasporic art. Going into the book expecting an interesting stream of consciousness rather than an artistic manifesto, it'll be well-written and interesting. Otherwise, the title is a bit misleading.

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh post-colonial theorists, why haven't you embraced this book as the clearest and loveliest-put description of what it's to make art and a place when living within/between distinct communities? Hey Deleuze's Kafka, Hey Damien Hurst, Hey Arielle Greenberg, Hey Pope.L, Hey M.I.A., Hey Derek Walcott, Hey John Zorn John Cage John-John, Li'l John and Mr. Johnny Appleseed: this book's for you!

[Victoria]

A curious hybrid book of the painter R.B. Kitaj, with his own art work on alternate pages facing the text. The epigraph from Philip Roth's The Counterlife, "The man had Jew on the brain," will give a sense of what Kitaj is trying to deal with in his life and with his art, in the US, in London, and in Israel. Gabriel Josipovici in his What Ever Happened to Modernism? briefly discusses this in terms of the modernist sense of isolation and exile, which is how I came to it. Although it's an awkward work, I liked it enough that eventually I'd like to take a look at his Second Diasporist Manifesto.

[Elias Mendel · Rating 5 out of 5]

reread for thesis thinking
one of my bibles, beautifully coined phrase of diasporist in opposition to nationalist or Zionist, and in its time of writing (1987) both horribly prophetic in the horrors of genocide that Israel will wrought whilst also providing a way out of the problems of its nationalism in a nation formed out of the confrontation with the abyss..
would recommend for all artists, wanderers and multiplace people

[Mia Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

wow. i’ll need to read this a few more times to understand it… but wow new ideas 💡