tur. Munich:

P. Theobald.Electricity,

ury London.

?rg File. 2nd

." Artforum

. Electricityncisco: San

an Inquest:•k: Dell Pub.

fssays. New

rt? Answers

i, One-Way

•a, and and(ed.), Walterd University

ender, andCambridge

i: Princeton

the 1960s.

Senses & Society VOLUME 4, ISSUE 1pp 47-74

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© BERG 2009PRINTEDINTHEUK

Suzanne Zelazo is aPostdoctoral Fellow atthe Modern Literatureand Culture Research

Center, RyersonUniversity, Toronto.

She studies the bodyäs performance,

women writers andavant-garde artists

of the early twentiethCentury.

Suzanne Zelazo

ABSTRACT This article traces theemergence of a multisensual aesthetic inthe works of modernist avant-garde artistand poet Mina Loy. Loy's creative effortswere heterogeneous, spanning multiplemedia: a poet and painter, she was alsoa designer, actor and inventor. Seekingto instantiate herseif in a cultural climatewhich tended to objectify the female body,Loy's multisensual art aimed to makethe viewer/listener/reader sense äs shedid, and, in so doing, made importantadvances in the cultural configuration ofwomen äs whole, complex beings worthyof intellectual, physical, artistic and Spiritualpresence in the world.

Loy's assemblage art of the 1950s isshown to be a radical attempt to push

Suzanne Zelazo

the medium of collage into a more complexdimensionality in an effort to represent emergingunderstandings of perception and consciousness,positioning her äs a major contributor to adefining art form of modernism. Bolstered by anappreciation of her own body äs sensually chargedand relational, Loy ascertained the simultaneity ofpresent absence, Connectivity and juxtapositioncharacterizing collage. This article articulateshow, by troubling normative conceptions ofdimensionality Loy's assemblages underscore thematerial and textual aspects of language exploredin her collage-inflected poetry.

KEYWORDS: avant-garde, feminism, poetics

Although there has been a resurgence of interest in MinaLoy's work over the past twenty years, the extent to whichshe contributed to, even in some cases anticipated,

advances in poetry and the visual arts is still relatively unknown evenamong modernist scholars. Furthermore, äs a heterosexual andhighly sexualized feminist and culturai figure of the early twentiethCentury, Loy made major strides in contending with a misogynisticartistic climate, garnering, albeit infrequently, important critical nodsin her direction. Afthough she was insufficiently appreciated by hermale contemporaries, her influence on the writings of Pound in"Hugh Selwyn Mauberly," and Eliot in The Waste Land, for exarnple,is a testament to what those writers really thought of her work andthe seriousness with which they approached it. More famously,Pound created the term logopoeia ("a dance of the intelligenceamong words and ideas and modification of ideas and characters")1

to describe the cerebral work of Mina Loy and Marianne Moore(Pound 1973: 424).

As a person, Loy embodied the same integrationist tendenciesthat her work espoused. Her polylingualism, multiple talents, charrriand radicalism rnade her an important link between New York,Parisian and Italian avant-garde circles. A centerpiece of Louiseand Walter Arsenberg's salon, Loy acted äs a liaison to a number ofthe century's most influential artistic and inteilectual figures. Thesequalities of Loy's also made her an exemplar of the modern womanäs was proclaimed in a 1917 New York Evening Sun article on theartist. Curiously, however, this fact seems to have been forgotten inretrospective appreciations of modernism and is only recently beingmadeclearagain.

This current study explores Loy's development of a multisensualaesthetic through her literary and visual collages, culrninating in her

a radical attemdimensionalityof perceptioncontributor tosensibility, evkartistic media,äs sensually csimultaneity ocharacterizing

Multisensua"Multisensuaifrand practicesartist. The terrW.J.T Mitchell"a physical anaspects of syressentially gerfeminist implicswhich tendedaimed to makesodoing, mad*of women äsphysical, artisti

The term "rof language - ivisua! and textassociation, trgenerally, a serto and conveyiia process-oriedynamic relaticconceiving hovrepresented indeveloped, in pmodernity andand the same 1in the face of 1expanding the

Assernblageinstantiated ctemporal boun>to a general unments within tldual theory ofBergson distincabsolute. "The

s,

ed>f

3rest in Mina:ent to whichanticipated,iknown evenDsexual andrly twentiethmisogynisticcritical nods;iated by herof Pound infor exampfe,er work and•e famously,intelligence

:haracters")1

Etnne Moore

t tendencieslents, charmi New York,;e of Louisea number oflures. Thesetern wornan.rticle on theforgotten incently being

multisensuallating in hershown to be

a radical attempt to push the medium of collage into a more complexdirnensionality in an attempt to represent emerging understandingsof perception and consciousness, positioning her äs a majorcontributor to a defining art form of rnodernism. Loy's Integration istsensibility, evidenced by her life-long engagement in a number ofartistic media, and bolstered by an appreciation of her own bodyäs sensually charged and relational, enabled Loy to ascertain thesimultaneity of present absence, Connectivity and juxtapositioncharacterizing collage.

Multisensuality"Multisensuality" refers here to somatic-oriented aesthetics: theoriesand practices that aim, fundamentally, to substantiate the femaleartist. The term was initiaüy adumbrated in a passing remark byW.J.T M itchell in Landscape and Power to describe landscape äs"a physical and multisensory mediurn," and clearly incorporatesaspects of synesthesia (Mitchell 2002: 14). Although not itself anessentially gendered concept, "multisensuality" has very practicalfeminist impücations. Seeking to instantiate herseif in a cultura! miüeuwhich tended to objectify the female body, Loy's multisensual artaimed to make the viewer/listener/reader sense äs she does, and, inso doing, made important advances in the sociocultural configurationof women äs whole and complex beings worthy of intellectual,physical, artistic and spiritual presence in the world.

The term "multisensuality" encompasses the corporeal aspectsof language - in effect, the materiality of the text: the aural/oral, thevisual and textual fas textured) dimensions of the written, and, byassociation, the spoken word. Multisensuality also implies, moregenerally, a sensory-engaging discourse; that is, language belongingto and conveying Sensation and sensory Impression. It is, moreover,a process-oriented concept, offering a way of thinking about thedynarnic relationship between text and experience, äs well äs ofconceiving how consciousness, äs an associative process, can berepresented in art and literature. Importantly, multisensual aestheticsdeveloped, in part, äs a response to the technological innovations ofmodernity and the increasing mechanization of experience. At oneand the same time, multisensuality attempts to hold on to the bodyin the face of the machine, but also uses the body äs a machine,expanding the limits of normative sensual experience.2

Assemblage, äs used herein, is considered a three-dimensionalinstantiated collage, one that extends normative spatial andtemporal boundaries between subjectivity and objectivity. Essentialto a general understanding of assemblage and to Loy's own experi-ments within the medium, is French philosopher Henri Bergson'sdual theory of knowing. In his Introduction to Metaphysics (1955)Bergson distinguishes between two kinds of knowledge: relative andabsolute. "The first," he reasons, "implies that we move around anobject; the second, that we enter into it" (ibid.: 21). In relative knowing,

Suzanne Zelazo

Bergson continues, "l am placed outside the object itself," whereas,in absolute knowing, he asserts, "l am attributing to the movingobject an interior and, so to speak, state of mind; l also imply that lam in sympathy with those states. And l insert myself in them by aneffort of Imagination" (ibid.). Bergson's relational definition of absoluteversus relative knowledge illuminates Loy's contributions to collageand assemblage, which are a function of her remarkable ability to"enter into" her subject. Aside from Hannah Hoch, few women havebeen recognized äs significantly extending the mediurn of collageand its related forms. Fundamentaliy, this project articulates how, bytroubling normative conceptionsofdimensionality, Loy's assemblagesunderscore the material and textual aspects of language explored inher collage-inflected poetry; creating new and interdisciplinary waysof reading and writing.

Also productive for understanding collage and assemblage isGilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's theory of the rhizome. For Deleuzeand Guattari, the rhizorne exemplifies an epistemologicai modelbased on alliance and heterogeneity that "uproots" or deterritorializesthe causal or teleological paradigms of thinking associated with whatthey identify äs the traditional arboreal model. "A rhizome," theysuggest,

has neither beginning nor end, but always a rniddle fromwhich it grows and which it overspilis ... the rhizome pertainsto a map that is always detachable, connectible, reversible,modifiable, and has multiple entryways, and exists, and itsown lines of flight. (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 21)

Ernphasizing at once a profound interconnectedness and disparatemultiplicity, the figure of the rhizorne and its associated conceptscomprise an apt critical apparatus for theorizing the sensualmultiplicity with which Loy was engaged.

Loy's 1924 essay on Gertrude Stein perhaps best illustrates herown theorizing of a multisensual aesthetic. In it she pays tribute tothe distinct beauty she locates in Stein's experimentalism. Loy urgespurveyors of beauty and artistic value to resist outdated aestheticstrategies by instead turning their attention to points of relation,juxtaposition and connection, and, most importantly, to the sensoryexperience of perception:

The flux of life is pouring it's [sie] aesthetic aspect intoyour eyes, your ears - and you ignore it because you arelooking for your canons of beauty in a sort of glass case oftradition. Modernism says Why not each one of us, Scholar orbricklayerj,] pleasurably realize all that is impressing itself uponour subconscious, the thousand odds and ends which makeup your sensery [sie] every day life. (Loy 1924: 429-30)

For Loy, thesin often starttraditional, pand the can>itself and toher poerns e\g e;

from languaphrases," äsradiumoftheher poetry nairn to conciattempt to diinterpreting ir

Hi story ofIn order to fiinnovations lof the aestheof collage de1989: 6; Poeand Wolframfirst instanceLife with Cftartist glued t<while nevertlSimüarly, Mafigure-grounc

Collage frdrawn imtsurface. Efunction: ithrust is t(Perloff 1£

In fact, thegluing (co/tejuxtapositionmaterials errseparatenes;slang word f<outside of rrconvention.juxtapositionof significaticthus perforn

tf," whereas,the moving

3 imply that li them by ann of absoluteis to collageble ability toA/omen haven of collageates how, byissemblages3 expiored inplinary ways

semblage isFor Deleuzegical modelterritorial izessd with whatzorne," they

Idle from3 pertainseversible,3, and its

id disparate;d concepts:he sensual

ustrates herys tribute ton. Loy urgessd aesthetic. of relation,the sensory

intos you are5 case oficholar orseif uponich make10)

For Loy, these "thousand odds and ends" butt up against each otherin often startling, provocative and generative ways. Working againsttraditional, phallogocentric bodies of culture such äs the museumand the canon, Loy advocates an allegiance to the making of artitself and to recording acts of perception. As my close readings ofher poems evidence below, Loy's texts hinge on sensory association.Deploying extreme linguistic contractions, Loy iiberates the wordfrom language into a feit sense - "consciousness congealed tophrases," äs she articulates about Gertrude Stein, "to extract / aradium of the word" (ibid.: 305). In many ways, Loy was a semiotician;her poetry mobilizes an array of signifying Systems, all of whichaim to concretize consciousness. Crucial for this purpose is Loy'satternpt to disassociate sensory experience from an interpretive andinterpreting intellect.

H i story of CollageIn order to fully appreciate th9 extent of Loy's multisensual collageinnovations both in the üterary and visua! arts, a contextualizationof the aesthetic form must be established. Most populär definitionsof coltage derive from theorization in the visual arts (See Hoffman1989: 6; Poggi 1992: 1-29; Seitz 1961: 9-10; Taylor 2004: 11-24;and Wolfram 1975:15). Considered by many art historians to bethefirst instance of collage äs a legitimste art form, Picasso's 1912 Stil!Life with Chalr Caning contains a piece of woven caning that theartist glued to the canvas, thereby invoking the presence of the chairwhile nevertheless eschewing normative rneans of representation.Similarly, Marjorie Perloff characterizes collage äs a Subversion offigure-ground compositional elements. She asserts:

Collage typically juxtaposes "real" items ... with painted ordrawn images so äs to create a curiously contradictory pictorialsurface. Each element in the collage has a kind of doublefunction: it refers to an external reality even äs its compositionalthrust is to undercut the very referentiality it seems to assert.fPerloff 1998a: 385)

in fact, the word "collage" derives frorn the French word forgluing fco/ter) and is thus a genre preeminently concerned withjuxtaposition, one in which the yoking together of discrete or separatemateriais emphasizes the simultaneity of the inherent paradoxes ofseparateness and Connectivity. The term also refers to the Frenchslang word for an illicit love affair - that is, two people iiving togetheroutside of marriage, pasted together, äs it were, outside of socialconvention. This meaning certainiy resonates with the tension ofjuxtaposition and union inherent in the medium. In its destabilizationof signification, collage often mobilizes verbal and visual puns, andthus performs a resistance to the ontological fixity or essence ofthe art object. Collage thereby generates an aesthetic that

Suzanne Zelazo

self-consciously challenges ideas of stability, emphasizing insteadstates of perpetual becoming and constructedness, Fundamentally,collage calls into question what constitutes a work of art, and perhapsmore significantly, whaf constitutes an original work of art.

According to Perloff's taxonomy, collage underwent various in-carnations during the modernist era. Both cubist and futurist collageartists drew their materials frorn a homogenous conceptual field- typically from items of the everyday (Perloff 1998a: 385). Unlikethe futurists, the cubists tended to maintain equality among thatwhich they represented, with no single component Standing outbeyond another. Both forms of collage, however, were unified bythe composition. Futurist collage emphasizes the artist's ability totransform raw materials, and integrates those materials, somewhatseamlessly. In both of these respects, the cubists differed. Manyof Picasso's cubist collages, for example, contain the pins he leftin that were used to keep material in place during construction.Representation, for the cubists, entailed the artist's manipulation ofan environment replete with its own meaning, whereas the futuristsaimed, äs Christine Poggi assays, at "develop[ing] empirical lawsregarding the innate expressive properties of materials and forms"(Poggi 1992: 21). Collage, for the futurists, was based on the fusionof cornponent parts with the surrounding, and those parts "wouldalso necessarily generate a kind of inner absolute dynamism basedon a collision of the different physica! properties - weight, density,and mass - of the constructive elements" (Poggi 1992: 20-1),Futurists' deployment of the form also diverged from their cubistcounterparts, in imbuing collage with an overtly political agenda,often using fragments of their own politicaliy charged manifestesäs well äs newsprint specifically on or about war. Where the cubistsused newspaper fragments, they were used without a glorification ofwar that characterizes the work of the futurists.

Different still is Dadaist collage, which celebrates the everydayin its use of quotidian detritus such äs paper scraps, bus ticketsand garbage. The emphasis in Dadaist collage is on the elementsassembled; which are often arranged according to a metonymiccohesion. The component parts were purposely not integratedinto the composition in order to stress the separateness of theiridentities. The technique äs practiced by the Dadaists underscorestheir anti-art aim, vehemently rejecting traditional structures of allkinds. Additionally, the Dadaists were responsible for the rernark-able innovations vis-ä-vis the form through Raoul Hausmann's(1887-1948) development of photornontage (the pasting togetherof photographs) with Hannah Hoch (1889-1978).3 Photomontagewas a significant hallmark in experimental collage practice, and itwas among the first to employ rnass-printed material äs part of itscomposition. Like the futurists, Hausmann and Hoch were drawnto the powerful Propagandist potential of the art form. Finally, in

Surrealist coldisparate fra-

While colliavant-gardeinto the dire"assemblageinstaliation cblage "mayjuxtapositionEnglish to 'tr5). Blurring ispatial and <an "embodiraptly calls "ethe deploymor fragmentsaspects of aLoy's own cprimary influboxes are c<Seitz reason;

In thoughreaiistic, lPhysical ramalgamthe meanwell äs obecomesa metaprrat he r th;repulsionresponse;

Loy's imporcertainly re1associationIntuition ancmeaning sirressential notwould provicassemblage,terms of ontpresent of th

Recent sGoody, Virgiihave redisc<

zing insteadndamentally,and perhapsirtt various in-turist collageDeptual field385). Unlikeamong thatitanding outB unified by5t's ability to;, somewhatfered. Manypins he left

onstruction.nipulation ofthe futuristsnpirical lawsand forms"

)n the fusion)arts "wouldmism basedght, density,992: 20-1).their cubistcal agenda,manifestos

i the cubistsorification of

ie everydaybus tickets

ie elementsmetonymic

t integrat9dless of theirjnderscoresctures of allthe remark-\n 'sng togetherotomontagectice, and itis part of itswere drawnn. Finally, inlaist collage,

Surrealist collage privileged narrative äs the unifying force of highlydisparate fragments (Perloff 1998a: 385).

Whiie collage was commonly practiced by artists across differentavant-garde rnov9m9nts, others pushed the genre even furtherinto the direction of Installation art, or what becarne known äs"assemblage," Rooted in collage, assemblage is a three-dimensionalInstallation closely related to the readymade. For Hoffman, assem-blage "may include all forms of composite art and processes ofjuxtaposition," and she points out that the term "refers in French andEnglish to 'the fitting together of parts and pieces'" (Hoffman 1989:5). Blurring more profoundly than collage the conceptual, media,spatial and dimensionai boundaries, assemblage can be seen äsan "embodiment" of collage, one based on what William C. Seitzaptly calls "extreme actualism" (Seitz 1961: 81). By this Seitz rneansthe deployment of objects themselves rather than representationsor fragments of them. Seitz resolutely Signals the inherently poeticaspects of assemblage that speak directly, almost uncannily so, toLoy's own constructions and, significantly, to those of one of herprimary influences, Joseph Cornell (1903-73} whose assemblageboxes are conceived of äs "poetic reveries" (Newman 1989: 338).Seitz reasons:

In thought provoking ways assemblage is poetic rather thanrealistic, for each constituent element can be transformed.Physical materials and their auras are transmuted into a newamalgam that both transcends and includes its parts... Whenthe meanings of highly charged units impinge on a poetic äswell äs on a physical or visua! level, significant expressionbecomes possible. The assembler, therefore, can be botha metaphysician and (because his units are loosely relatedrather than expository) a poet who mingles attraction andrepulsion, natural and human Identification, ironic or naiveresponses.(1961:80-1)

Loy's important and under-examined assemblages of the 1950scertainly refiect her literary poetic experimentation with form,association and juxtaposition äs well äs her unique perception,intuition and ability to decipher and represent multiple levels ofmeaning sirnultaneously. An in-depth study of Loy's assemblages isessential not only in and of itself, but also for the richness doing sowould provide into Loy's collage-based literary poetics. Importantly,assemblage, for Loy, enabled the unification of form and content interms of one of her most enduring themes: a multisensua! makingpresent of that which is absent, ignored or undervalued.

Recent scholars such äs Carolyn Burke, Roger Conover, AlexGoody, Virginia Kouidis, äs well äs Maerra Shreiber and Keith Tuma,have rediscovered Loy's crucial contributions to literary modern-ism and have estabfished a context for, and increased access

-

Suzanne Zelazo

to, her poetry and critica! writings.4 In light of the Loy scholarshipthat precedes it, this current study examines the ways in whichLoy's visual artworks provide insight into her notoriously difficultpoetry. Both Burke's and Conover's reproductions of Loy's paintingsin their texts are essential. Undoubtedly, an exploration of Loy'sother artistic media has been iimited by the fact that not much ofthe work survives, and/or that it survives merely in photographicreproduction. By analyzing Loy's assemblages of the 1950s, suchäs Househunting, Bums Praying and Wo Parking, l demonstratewhat these works indicate about Loy's progressive 9mbrace anddevelopment of a coliage aesthetic. The rnost significant showingof Loy's oeuvre was the 1959 exhibit of her assemblages at theBodley Gallery, New York. These assemblages epitomize h8r Singularattempt to concretize consciousness through representations of theimmediacy of perception. They demonstrate Loy's profound abilityto enter into her subject, and an ability to map points of connectionamong seerningly disparate entities with a geographer's precision,cultivating her unique contributions to the development of coliagein both poetry and assemblage. In the ianguage of Deleuze andGuattari, Loy was adept at creating a "line of flight" through whichall her work wouid proliferate (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 9). Asdefined by Deleuze and Guattari a "line of flight" is the multiplicity ofa rhizome:

Multiplicities are defined by the outside: by the abstract line,the line of flight or deterritorialization according to which theychange in nature and connect with other multipiicities... Theline of flight marks: the reality of a finite number of dimensionsthat the multiplicity effectively fills; the impossibility of asupplementary dirnension, unless the rnuitiplicity is transformedby the line of flight; the possibility and necessity of flatteningall of the multipiicities on a single plane of consistency orexteriority, regardless of their number of dimensions. (Deieuzeand Guattari 1987: 9}

It is äs the interstice of poetry and visual art - the "deterritorialization"of both that we discover the experimental innovation of Mina Loy'soeuvre, in particular, her use and shaping of multisensuality (Deieuzeand Guattari 1987: 9).

Loy's Bergsonian Metaphysics of CollageCrucial to the multisensuality that constitutes Loy's aesthetic is aninterest and irivestigation of things esoteric. Loy's conception of visualand textual coliage is inflected by her explorations of consciousnessthrough spirituality and what she refers to äs the fourth dirnension.5The latter is the fourth term in the dimensionai progression of length,height and width. Configured äs a hologram, it is the dissolution of

religious ancThought," wfFreud to Ved;fourth dirnen:For Loy, Newand Mary Ba^Loy cultivateever-evolvincmodes of repfor his elabotof Intuition, n(1889), Mate(1903). Thecubism, andäs Americanwhen she aia text whichinspired by Eserious illnesChristian Seifaith to influiother alternaprayer asa\t such

other fernaleDjuna Barne:all seeking v>oppression,a psycholocaesthetic thrwhich pivotfwas at onceoriented anccorporealitycontribution

It was in Eto articuiate 1in her writinc

The truthobjects wis a rneremoveme:number <center, ar

Loy ernbodi

1 scholarshipays in whichlusly difficultiy's paintings:ion of Loy'snot much ofhotographic1950s, suchjemonstratembrace andant showinglages at thej her Singularations of the•found abilityf connection•'s precision,it of collageDeleuze andrough which1987: 9). Asnultiplicity of

tract line,tiich they35... Themensions>ility of ansformedflatteningätency o r(Deleuze

torialization"f Mi na Loy'sility (Deleuze

sthetic is antionof visualnsciousnessdimension.5

Dn of length,issolution ofnsof occult,

religious and spiritual practices - the trend, at the time, of "NewThought," which for Loy "includ[edj everything from Nietzsche andFreud to Vedanta and Pragmatism" - would lead Loy to embrace thefourth dimension äs a source of creative Inspiration (Burke 1996: 8).For Loy, New Thought was best exemplified in the work of Bergsonand Mary Baker Eddy f 1821-1910). Drawing from these two theorists,Loy cuitivated an understanding of human consciousness äs anever-evolving fiux, and she advocated the need to forge aestheticmodes of representing that dynamism. Bergson rose to prominencefor his elaboration of anti-Kantian theories that centered on mattersof Intuition, mernory and duration äs espoused in Time and Free Will(1889), Matterand Memory (1896), and Introduction to Metaphysics(1903). The latter text became essential to the development ofcubism, and also influenced William James and those who identifiedäs American Pragmatists. Eddy founded Christian Science in 1879when she authored Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,a text which outlines the principles of the church, and which wasinspired by Eddy's in-depth study of the Bible conducted during aserious iüness from which Eddy experienced a miraculous recovery.Christian Science is predicated on the power of mental forces andfaith to influence health. Having evolved out of homeopathy andother alternative medicines, Christian Science ultimately emphasizesprayer äs a viable tool for healing.

That such renegade secret knowledge appealed to Loy and rnanyother female artists and intellectuals, such äs Margaret Anderson,Djuna Barnes, H.D., Jane Heap and Mabel Dodge Luhan, who wereall seeking ways of rebelling against the Status quo and patriarchaloppression, is no surprise.6 Loy was preoccupied with discerninga psychology of modernism and searching for a correspondingaesthetic through which to articulate it. Her philosophical interests,which pivoted on her desire to deveiop a linguistic medium thatwas at once inside and outside of language, äs well äs a process-oriented and multisensual aesthetic, intersected with her interest incorporeality - and arguably her own body - to form the basis of hercontribution to textual and material production.

It was in Bergson's texte, however, that Loy found the vocabularyto articuiate the theoretical sensibilities that were already taking shapein her writings. In Matter and Memory (197'S), Bergson observes:

The truth is that rny nervous System, interposed between theobjects which affect my body and those which l can influence,is a mere conductor, transmitting, sending back or inhibitingmovement. This conductor is composed of an enormousnumber of threads which Stretch from the periphery to thecenter, and frorn the center to the periphery. (Bergson 1978: 40)

Loy embodied this profound interconnectedness in her aesthetic,enabling in herseif an almost intuitive understanding of collage.

tu800

0CO

Suzanne Zelazo

Even more significantly, the power and importance of a BergsonianIntuition - his concept of "entering into the thing" - proved invaluableto Loy's thinking. In her 1918 pamphlet "International Psycho-Dernocracy," Loy echoes Bergson's aforementioned relational under-standing of Knowledge and experience äs outlined in his Introductionto Metaphysics. Insisting on the centraiity of intuition and collectivityin the "racial conquest of consciousness" (Loy 1982: 276), Loy'snotion of "Psycho-Democracy"

is based on the laws of psychic evolution, [how] our principlesspring from Intuition, and are presented to man's intellect formaturation.

We make the experirnent of a "collectivity" moved by thesarne intellectual logic äs the tactics of the successful Individualreckoning with "actual" values and following the rules of thegame of life, influencing our era by right of the merits of our(collective) personality. (ibid.: 277)

Loy's manifesto was a response to her contemporaries, such äsMarinetti and his propagation of futurism, äs well äs Pound andWyndham Lewis who called for the "Blasting and Bombadiering"of Victorian social mores in their vorticist manifesto. Loy overturnedtheir masculinist and individualist polemics by instead promotingideals of equality and "collectivity." Vorticism, by contrast, calledfor "an art of individuals" (Lewis 1914: 8). As Janet Lyon pointsout, "Lewis associated [coliectivism] with an efferninately 'pleasanttea-party"' (Lyon 1992: 104). The oppressively patriarchal andmilitaristic sentiments characterizing manifesto writing of the tirne,are countered by Loy's vision that art can achieve a "coilectivepersonality" through a rhizornatic anti-genealogy and a privileging ofintuition äs relational.

Loy's collage aesthetics were distinct frorn those of her futuristand cubist predecessors. Her male contemporaries unarguablyinfluenced her theory and praxis; Loy's use of collage was motiv-ated, however, by a sense of union that distinctly contrasted thefragmentary impetus, for example, that is typically associated withmale high modernists. As Lesley Higgins notes, "common to thetexts of Lewis, Hulme, Pound, and Eliot is the desire to 'break'-to 'break-up' the 'Renaissance humanistic attitude' ... to 'breakaway' from conventional attitudes and artistic techniques"(Higgins2002: 148).7 Echoing Marinetti, Eiiot's "heap of broken images"can be read äs the consummate modernist trope, highlighting theviolent and destructive impulse that so often underwrote the artand literature produced during the era of the First World War (Eliot1965: In 27). Loy, however, envisioned an alternative approach thataccentuated reunion rather than "the break" itself. Loy shared withthe surrealists an ability to unify her compositions through narrative,

marginalizedcollages em|within a re-ion a continLIn her provcgendered biiunion, suggegender:

Is the cuneeding tnonlinearieach cunlsex, intenfree zoneShe no loiäs her te>

Although l nLoy's use ofthan severaran acknowbor discretely

Collage irtween opaciwhich, DeleiThefabricofiing from thethan startincfascination v- with theirwith her usethe jarring efthe patienceword (Loy 1Struncated mthe following

this slowpushingits virginaagainst tr

Pure purfof centrip

Upon the

a Bergsonianed invaluable•nal Psycho-ätional under-; introductbnnd collectivity: 276), Loy's

principlesiteüect for

ed by thel individuallies of therits of our

ies, such äs; Pound andimbadiering"y overturnedd promotingitrast, caitedLyon pointsely 'pleasantriarchal andof the time,

a "collectiveprivileging of

if her futurist, unarguablyä was motiv-ntrasted thelociated withnmon to the•e to 'break'... to 'breakues"(Higgins<en i mag es"ihlighting thei/rote the art-Id War (EliotDproach thatshared with

gh narrative,•sessed and

marginaiized. The disparate component parts of her literary and visualcollages emphasize not their distinction, but rather their continuitywithin a re-invented context. Absence, in effect, exists thereforeon a continuurn with that which is sensually and multiply present.In her provocative text Cunt Ups, Dodie Bellamy questions thisgendered binary of collage äs masculinized fragment or ferninizedunion, suggesting instead that collage, by its very nature, transcendsgender:

Is the cut-up a male form? l've always considered it so -needing the violence of a pair of scissors in order to reachnonlinearity. Oddly, even though l've spent up to four hours oneach cunt-up, afterwards l cannot recognize them - just like insex, intense focus and then sensual amnesia. They enter thefree zone of writing; they have out their own ties to the writer.She no longer remembers these disembodied shreds of desireäs her text. (Bellamy 2001: 66)

Although l rnaintain (and demonstrate in greater detail below) thatLoy's use of collage and assemblage Privileges Connectivity ratherthan severance, my understanding of it äs rnultisensual necessitatesan acknowledgement of Bellamy's view, which defies any essentializedor discretely gendered configuration of the form.

Collage in Loy is thus rooted in a paradoxical coextensivity be-tween opacity and clarity, one that reiies on a rhizomatic tegibilitywhich, Deleuze and Guattari profess, "is alliance, uniquely aliiance...The fabricofof the rhizomeis conjunction" they continue,"...proceed-ing from the middle, through the middle, coming and going ratherthan starting and finishing" (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 25). Loy'sfascination with Baedekers - early populär guidebooks for travelers- with their connotations of clarity and direction, seems at oddswith her use of a language that is dense, difficult and cerebral. Yet,the jarring effect of opacity is also überating, providing readers havethe patience to bring all of the '"intelligence of our senses'" to eachword (Loy 1996: 157). Language, äs an arboreal, fixed, and therebytruncated medium, becomes instead imminent possibility. Considerthe following lines from "Der Blinde Junge"(1921-2):

this slow blind facepushingits virginal nonentityagainst the light

Pure purposeless eremiteof centripetal sentience

Upon the carnose horologe of the egothe vibrant tendon index moves not

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Suzanne Zelazo

Since the black lightning desecratedthe retinal alter

(ibid.: 83)

The blindness of the mouth-organ player is mirrored in Loy's nearlyinaccessible vocabulary ("eremite," "carnose") äs well äs in heruse of light and dark imagery ("sparkling," "spectral," "concussivedark") (ibid.: 83-4). The poet's emphasis on the blind youth'sacute perception is also echoed in the speaker's exclusive appealto the "iliuminati," who are able to "Listen!" äs "this expression-less 'thing' / blows out damnation and concussive dark / Upon amouth-organ" (ibid.: 84). Just äs the blind recruit other senses to"see," Loy's technical language requires readers to enlist multiplesenses to cornprehend what initialty appears impenetrabie until one"hears" its incredibly precise song. For Loy, it is from in-betweensensual registrars that meaning emerges. Similarly, Deleuze andGuattari affirm, "Between things does not designate a localizablerelation going from one thing to the other and back again, but aperpendicular direction, a transversal movement that sweeps oneand the other away ... [it is] a stream that picks up speed in themiddle" {Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 25). The senses for Loy can andmust inforrn one another. Ironically, then, within the blinding opacityof her language inheres the potential for vivid clarity. Loy's evocativeuse of maps and Baedekers can also be discerned at work here:she guides the reader's travels through her "difficult" vocabuiary,sonically punning on, with her characteristic use of alliteration, andexpanding words to fit and encapsulate others. In this way "Pure"expands to become "purposeless": the blind youth, pure withoutthe vanity of Vision, necessarily "poses less" (Loy 1996: 83). Lcy'suse of the term "eremite" refers to a religious recluse, and is atypical example of her fascination with the marginalized subject. Theeremite becomes (ironically, in "posing-less") the center-piece of thepoem's "pavements of Vienna," the "center petal" that blooms in allits "sentience," äs eremite becomes centripetai, becomes sentienceitself (ibid.: 83). Loy is delighting in language for its own sake, inits playfulness and rhizomatic exuberance. Although the poem'srecornbination underscores Loy's "elusiveness äs resistance," äsHilda Bornstein explicates in terrnsof Loy's "intermittent-Unfinishing,"this resistance is liberating äs it enables Loy's language repeatedchances to bloom (Bronstein 2000). For Deleuze and Guattari, thisrhizomatic proiiferation necessarily occurs because "language isnever closed upon itself, except äs a function of impotence," whichis, of course, anathema to Loy's aesthetic of fertility (Deleuze andGuattari 1987: 8).

Thus, my major contention is that Loy's plastic, performative,visual and literary arts are motivated by her integrationist tendencies;

is so multiplethat it affectand Singulara language tof normativealso, therefolevel of its plread in iight *the spatio-tethe dash, foivon Freytagperforms thepossibiiity, &of her manyarticulates £English langiauthority äsgeneraily) pa

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idenlInto -;Mey

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SurrealistLoy's gift ölSurrealist ercollagiste" ifragments, kof meanings

Loy's nearlyeil äs in her"concussiveilind youth'susive appealexpression-irk / Upon asr senses tonlist multipleible until onei in-betweenDeleuze anda iocaüzableagain, but asweeps onespeed in theLoy can andding opacity/'s evocativet work here:vocabulary,

.eration, and

. way "Pure")ure without3: 83). Loy's5e, and is asubject. The-piece of the3looms in all53 sentiencewn sake, inthe poem'sistance," äsJnfinishing,"30 repeatedsuattari, thislanguage is>nce," which)eleuze and

arformative,tendencies;nguage that

is so multiple in its points of entry, rhizomatic in its lines of flight, andthat it affects a kind of felt-sense rather than merely an exclusiveand Singular signification. Loy's aim then is towards the creation ofa language of the fourth dimension wherein matter exists outsideof normative spatial and temporal Parameters. Language for Loy isalso, therefore, a systern of signification that enacts meaning at thelevel of its physicality. Her typographical innovations, then, must beread in iight of her preoccupation with the materiality of the text andthe spatio-temporal plasticity of the fourth dimension. Loy's use ofthe dash, for example, (also a favorite device of the Baroness Elsavon Freytag-Loringhoven, Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore),performs the "unbounded potentiality" of language - its continuum,possibility, even its paradoxical elusiveness" (Goody 2000).8 In oneof her many uses of the dash in "Love Songs to Joannes," the poetarticulates a gap in our traditional use and understanding of theEnglish language, realizing its insufficiency and defying its genderedauthority äs Loy satirizes (in this case a futurist, but also a moregenerally) patriarchal misogyny:

Don't let nie understand you Don't realize meOr we might tumble togetherDepersonalized

IdenticalInto the terrific NirvanaMe you - you - me

(Loy 1996: 58)

The feminine psyche is at once annihilated and affirmed äs theseif moves from a blurred connection to separateness. The useof the dash in the final line simultaneously links and splices äs thefemale lover fundamentally bookends and entraps the male loverin his own linguistic (read patriarcha!) garne of communication, the"me" ultimatefy pulling away from and enclosing the "you." Althoughmy reading of Loy's use of the dash suggests separateness, äspunctuation the dash also Signals connection and thus Loy's useof it here rnay also be read äs a consent to dissolve into the "other"- wherein the "me" and "you" become indistinguishable. Like theparadoxical connection and separateness inherent in collage, Loy'suse of the dash enables her simultaneous and multiple signification.

Surrealist SensibilityLoy's gift of satire enriches her transition into more pronouncedSurrealist endeavors. Marjorie Perloff insists that Loy "was not acollagiste" in that "she does not paste together disparate verbalfragments, letting their spatial juxtapositions createa complex networkof meanings" (Perloff 1998b: 144). Instead, Perloff argues that Loy'swork is temporally arranged and Privileges "voice" and "address"

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Suzanne Zelazo

instead of irnages (Perloff 1998b: 144}.Yet Loy herseif was a perfectembodirnent of collage-based aesthetic in her heterogeneous tal-ents äs actress, assemblage artist, designer, inventor, model, painterand poet; conjoining multiple media and invoking multiple senses,Loy dissolved their disparity. In the convergence of numerous artforms, Loy forged the coalescence of both votce and address.Loy's may not be "disparate verbal fragments" pasted together, butthey are sensory fragments consciously arranged so äs to "createa complex network of meaning." In her essay on constructivistartist Joseph Cornell (1903-73), "A Phenomenon in American Art,"Loy conceives artistic influence äs coliage: "This appropriation ofother's handiwork is not pilfering, but lifting out of the past another'ssight tinged with family likeness - aspects added to the originalby the altered observation of modern eyes" (Loy 1982: 301). HereLoy echoes forrnalist Viktor Shklovsky's (1893-1984) notion of"defamiliarization."9 Loy's description of "making stränge," her "liftingout of the past another's sight," finds a technological analog inthe splicing and montage mechanics of film. Doing so enables aprioritization of all things mundane within the ernphasis of the frame,and thus a certain defamiliarization. Loy employs similar techniquesin the making of both her poetic collages and visual assemblages,inspired in part by her friendship with Cornell, whose own highlyadvanced boxed assemblages (literally small boxes filled with reifes)relied on the found object from junk shops and flea markets. Cornell'suse of juxtaposition was surreal in its irrationallty, often conveying asense of wonder and nostalgia.10

Although Shklovsky's work emerged much earlierthan surrealisrn,the concept of defarnüarization was nonetheless a major Surrealistpremise.11 The Surrealist image relies on a violent juxtaposition andsubsequent yoking of the most seemingly disparate elements, äsarticulated in Lautreamont's famous imagining of "the fortuitousencounter upon a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and anumbrella!" (Lautreamont 1994: 263) In his introduction to The LastLunar Baedeker, Conover elaborates on Loy äs Surrealist:

[Loy] was a Surrealist in her temperament and in the way shelived. Like thern, she was haunted by some indefinable pres-ence long after Cravan's death, and üke them she admiredthose whom society condemned,.. She did not think of thebums äs hopeless victims, but beatific and fallen angels whohad miracuiously survived. Together with the poets, sacerdotalclowns, and "lepersof the moon," they had been dispossessed.(Loy 1982: Ixi)

In celebrating the underside of reality, and in her practice of estrange-ment, Loy, like Shklovsky and the surrealists, permits a kind oflinguistic purity.

For Loy, itreasures biLoy observeinto the objlocates sublexpressingthat Cornell,has raised isublime soliCornell's attisymbolism.work, may v"immanence

Loy's VisuMuch of Lo;complexitiesexaminationassemblagewho in Creisense of th<body to its eamong ther!n her multi:foreclosing,heralding a l

RecentlyAccommod,Julien Levy,useful introcpresents a puriifythecarof movemersimultaneoufeministcritiiof a male cliberation frcthe Iower ri<beautiful gospeed andserene deflethe hose ofher, äs thoiappears toof a once vprison barsone anothe

/äs a perfectgeneous tal-odel, painter:iple senses,umerous artnd address.ogether, butis to "createDnstructivistnerican Art,""opriation ofist another'sthe original: 301). Here4) notion ofs," her "liftingal analog in0 enables a3f the frame,• techniquesisemblages,own highly

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For Loy, artistic Vision can penetrate the surface and discern thetreasures buried beneath. Cornell typified this ability, creating, äsLoy observes in her essay, "the purest enticernent of the abstractinto the objective" (ibid.: 300). In Cornell's expansive Vision Loylocates sublime transcendence, which was certainly her own aim,expressing it most cleariy in her iater assemblages. Loy remarksthat Cornell, "whüe theoretically adhering to Surrealist formula alonehas raised it above reality, having achieved an incipience of thesublime solidified" (ibid.: 301). Although he is certainly Surrealist,Corneü's attempt to frame that which defies framing finds its roots insymbolism. Loy's own aesthetics, and the "magical" aspects of herwork, may well have been fostered by a Symbolist understanding of"immanertce" through time and space.

Loy's Visual ArtMuch of Loy's visual art explores the fundamentals of the relationalcornplexities between matter and emotional and sensory data, anexamination that is most cleariy developed in her innovative use ofassemblage. Loy is in this respect, certainly influenced by Bergson,who in Creative Evolution states that "our intellect, in the narrowsense of the word, is intended to secure the perfect fitting of ourbody to its environment, to represent the relations of external thingsarnong themselves - in short, to think matter" (Bergson 1911: Ixi).In her multisensual aesthetic, Loy prioritizes the "felt-sense," oftenforeclosing, it would seem, the need for articulation, and insteadheraiding a kind of telepathic ability "to think matter."

Recently on display äs part of the 2005 traveling exhibitionAccommodations ofDesire: Surrealist Works on Paper Collected byJulien Levy, Loy's undated collage, Surreal Scene (see Figure 1), is ausefui introduction to her more complex assemblages. The collagepresents a painted peach background on which dismembered limbsunify the canvas's seemingly disparate components in a satiric gestureof movement. The fioating arms in the top left corner, for example,simultaneously caress and entrap two women. The collage offers afeminist critique of thefernale body äs determined by the requirementsof a male gaze. On!y through her Imagination can a woman findliberation from the conventional interpretations that imprison her. Inthe Iower right-hand corner, a woman, depicted centaur-like in herbeautiful gown, is half bicycle wheei. The connotations of mobility,speed and ernpowerment are ernphasized by her stature and herserene deflection of the rays of star-like light being aimed at her fromthe hose of what could very well be a red and angered Cupid. Aboveher, äs though in her mind, one finds a kind of thought-cloud thatappears to assume the shape of a carcass - the wasted remainsof a once very large animal, whose now flesh-less bones are theprison bars that entrap a human heart - and two iovers bent intoone another in hopeless deflation, seated on coiled intestines. Tothe right of them is what looks to be a brain - the mind/body split

tuoco

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Suzanne Zelazo

Figure 1Mina Loy, Surrea! Scenefn.d).

echoed. Just outside their cage, a death-faced sun shlnes its rays ofcontorted limbs over the desolate "bodyscape."

Surrea! Scene also contains an emblem of the "perfect" femaleshape äs imagined in a male economy of desire: an hour-glassentraps a woman who is stuck within its sinking sand. In a cuttingcomment on the highly gendered social treatment of aging, theimprisoned woman is watched helplessly by her lover, who Standson a ladder outside, provocatively ambiguous. Is he attempting torescue her, or did he in fact put her in there? An angel with wingsbut no arrns watches: yet the scene offers neither redemption norsalvation. Perhaps the aspect of the piece of greatest impact is thestriking split between the foreground and the distant horizon, rneantto Signal the recurring motif of present absences characterizingLoy's aesthetic: figuring the paradoxical divide and inextricability ofbody and mind. The scene is cut exactly at the centrai figure's neck,

oftheimagimof the collagiand domestisurface areatwo womena hearth is iart: a Renaispresentationäs exemplaranything of 5like the druda naked worwheat, and :latter is the vt hat with heown transub

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Every woiEvery woresponsitthe unfit c

The call to npreoccupata potentiell}also be reacof populär 'creativity isrnaternity, afemale formThis essentrnultiplicity icreativity anScene the sfigure is a ftelements o'asserting tf

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of the Imagination or the horizon. Furthermore, the uppermost sectionof the coilage is governed by the split female roles of sexual objectand domestic care-taker, seemingly reducing the already truncatedsurface area of the woman's mind. On the left side of a brick wall,two women are groped by numerous arms and hands; on the right,a hearth is un-peopled except for certain decapitated symbols ofart: a Renaissance statue and a harpsichord piayer. The reductivepresentation of these conventionaliy feminine items portrays thernäs exemplary of artistic "hobby" rather than äs capable of yieldinganything of substance. Above the scene, a symbol of infinity hoverslike the drudgery of housework. The central figure of the coilage isa naked woman whose reproductive apparatus flowers with daisies,wheat, and seeds, and whose solar plexus is a glass of wine. Thelatter is the work's most hopefui and ernpowering detail, suggestingthat with her own reproductive abilities, her body can perform itsown transubstantiation.

Much of Loy's work seeks to reclaim and celebrate the female,and in particular the rnaternal body in all its sensory expressivity.As in Surrea! Scene, Loy's harrowing although ernpowering poemabout giving birth, "Parturition," prioritizes maternity. Similarly, her"Feminist Manifesto" is an attempt to assert feminine creative (evenartistic} power. In fact, Loy's manifesto can be more provocativelyunderstood äs a celebration of maternity, a means of underminingthe subjugation occasioned by patriarchal ideals of femininity:

Every woman has a right to maternity -Every woman of superior intelligence should realize her race-responsibility, in producing children in adequate proportion tothe unfit or degenerate members of her sex -.

(Loy 1996: 155)

The call to maternity through eugenics aliudes to the era's troublingpreoccupation with race suicide, and in fact, lends itself toa potentially proto-fascist and essentiafist reading. The text canalso be read, however, äs Loy's ironic comment on the lirnitationsof populär conceptions of womanhood. Thus for Loy, femininecreativity is in-born and takes its power frorn (and is nurtured by)maternity, äs though birthing the female consciousness and thefemale form are integrated in the seed of her multisensual aesthetics.This essentialism, however, paradoxically establishes a liberatingmultiplicity by equating femininity with the unlimited potential ofcreativity and the fertility of difference. Significantly, then, in SurrealScene the symbolic reproductive apparatus of the painting's centralfigure is a focal point around which contradicting and paradoxicalelements of Loy's configuration of femininity pivot. Rather thanasserting the need to tear down structures of hierarchy, Loy'smanifesto affirms the power of feminine difference:

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Suzanne Zelazo

be BRAVE & deny at the outset - that patheticclap-trap war cry Woman is Iheequal of man-

forShe is NOT!

(ibid.: 153)

The only means for "Reform" is "Absolute Demolition" (ibid.: 152).Here, Loy appropriates futurist strategies and language. It is throughthe complete demolition and destruction of patriarchal conceptionsof maternity and sex that these women achieve liberation.

Both the typographical experimentation in the manifesto - theuse of underlining and emboldened fönt, together with the vigorousdash - and Surreal Scene echo the modernist use of collage andits development into assemblage. The emphasis in both workson "Splitting" is in productive tension with a sense of integration,just äs the birthing process is at once a physical manifestation ofmutuality and Connectivity äs well äs Separation, syrnbolized by thenecessary cutting of the umbilical cord. The central female figure inSurreal Scene (with head intact) dominates in life-size proportionsover the miniature portrayais of the highly gendered restrictionsthat plague her. With characteristic irony, Loy's image makes a verycynical comment on sentimentalized and romanticized treatrnents ofthe female subject and feminine thinking. As in "At the Door of theHouse," the collage of Surreal Scene reads like a Tarot spread:

The wheels with wings....Passionate magenta blossoms....

A man cut in halfMeans a deception

And the nude womanStands for the worldThose eyes. ...

Looking for the little love-taleThat never came true[.]

(ibid.: 34-5)

Thus Loy's textual explorations of linguistic materiality, are not distinctfrom the progression in her visual work from symboltsm to surrealismand from painting to collages and assemblages. The progression ofLoy's aesthetic occurs between genres and must be considered äsreciprocally influential ratherthan äs independent. Loy's rnultisensualoeuvre seeks to integrate the body and mind, to understand both äsconductors of energy capable of refracting Sensation and experienceäs though into multiple rays of light, or rather, multiple points of entryand relatedness, connecting individual consciousness to a collectiveone, configuring a perfect rhizome.

The multis-culminate in heliterally out of t!assemblages,would "disappeand the messain a figure's clo(Burke 1996: *dissolved barrigive possessioto life on the siephemeral, limiwith its emphjtension betweeand content. Fin her assemb!their original ccLoy's assemb!;time Loy refernBurkenotes.w(ibid.: 420). Thethe refusal of liigarbage (refus<art. Loy's asseexile, the itinerehaunting in parobjects they Epossible to reatof collage that;andherfourthcpathways to ni

In her assenis confronted vhousing for thewherein the juassemblage's iwoman's heacentrapment an-the central fenthe conventiorhung with launtAlthough raiseiwoman's headare distinctly thphysical is offsicharacteristic cof conventions

"(ibid.: 152).. It is throughconceptions)n.nifesto - thethe vigorouscollage andbot h works: Integration,lifestation ofolized by thenale figure inproportions

1 restrictionsnakes a veryreatments of• Door of thespread:

e not distinctto surrealisrn'ogression of:>nsidered äsmultisensualtand both äsd experience

of entrya collective

The multisensuality and polylingualism of Loy's aestheticsculminate in her Bowery assemblages, fashioned in the 1950s quiteliterally out of the trash found in New York's Bowery district In theseassemblages, the tin cans, the eggshells and the paper wrapperswould "disappear" into the compositions, becoming both the mediumand the rnessage. These materials, Burke recounts, "used texturallyin a figure's clothing or äs part of the earth, became unrecognizable"(Burke 1996: 429). This democratic use of materials provocativelydissolved barriers of class and consciousness. Loy's assemblagesgive possession to the dispossessed äs they lend an ear and a voiceto life on the street.13 Her assemblages make material that which isephemeral, liminal and lacking in Substantive presence. Her medium,with its emphasis on synecdochic representation, hinges on thetension between presence and absence, allowing her unity in formand content. For Loy, the emphasis on the defarniliarization at workin her assemblages - the generative removal of her materials frorntheir original context - is on the join and Connectivity of juxtaposition.Loy's assemblages document the interrelation of all things. At onetime Loy referred to these constructions äs "Refusees," a name, äsBurke notes, which incorporates "Refuse," "Refuses" and "Refugees"(ibid,: 420). The connotations invoked by Loy's assemblages includethe refusal of limitations of all kinds. In particular, her anti-art use ofgarbage (refuse) rejects normative conceptions of what constitutesart. Loy's assemblages also showcase and pay homage to theexile, the itinerant and the refused. Although these assemblages arehaunting in part because of their ephemerality, äs three-dimensionalobjects they are concrete representations. In some sense it ispossibie to read all of Loy's work äs installation pteces, various formsof collage that act äs an Interface between the viewer, or the reader,andherfourthdirnension. Inthisway, Loy's work creates holographicpathways to nurnerous moments of modernisrn.

In her assemblage Househunting (see Figure 2), for example, oneis confronted with the physicality of the imagination - the body äshousing for the soul. This piece is reminiscent of a child's dollhousewherein the junk of the street is transformed in the mind of theassemblage's central female figure. In a thought-cloud above thewoman's head, Loy links images of dornesticity with genderedentraprnent and dispossession. Two-dimensional houses surroundthe central female form who dreams up fragmented Symbols ofthe conventional female role in the hörne, including a clotheslinehung with laundry, a ball of yarn with knitting needles, and crockery.Although raised from the flat background of the assemblage, thewoman's head is still fairly two-dimensional, whereas her "thoughts"are distinctly three-dimensional. The relative insubstantiality of thephysicai is offset by the substantiality of the mind (consciousness),characteristic of Loy's Ironie inversions and her trenchant critiquesof conventional gender norms. The woman's physicality is hererendered less dimensionally developed than her thoughts which are,

Suzanne Zelazo

Figure 2Mina Loy, Househunting(1950s). Private collection.

paradoxically, portrayed äs objects. It is the woman's thoughts inthe assemblage that make her alive, so to speak. The presence ofthe ladder appears to be utilitarian, set for the purpose of hanginglaundry, and yet signifies ascent, with all its connotations of freedom.Ultimately, however, the ladder is literally blighted by the rope ofhanging garments - the clothesline itself, stretched and crowdingher thoughts, seems orninous, threatening to become "unhinged."The assemblage suggests that the confining codes of femininity aremaddening, constantly undoing - even äs they "pin-up" - femalesanity in their atternpt to control it.

The recurring tension in Loy's work between the body andmind, presence and absence, the spiritual and the mundane, is acelebration of the liminal, the in-between of rhizomatic becoming.In Bums Praying fsee Figure 3) Loy depicts transients at the altarof despair. The altar appears äs a threshold which three of thetransients adorn, positioned in a satirical inversion of the Holy Trinity,the resulting triangle literally upside down. In these representations,Loy emphasizes Bergson's relational understanding of consciousand physicality in bis belief that "our intellect... is intended to securethe perfect fitting of our body to its environment" (Bergson 1911:ix). These figures are still very rnuch on the side of living and yet areethereal, cloaked not in rags, but in devotional robes. The dregs

disembodied,bodies, but t>their profounchave is their o\e rendered

through whichworship. Alsoand dimensiocomparison tcfigures appeaithe face and lLoy's Bergsorto its environr(Bergson 191"

In A/o Parksensibility is atThe defiant reinsofar äs it paltar in Bumsinanirnate, sulhovering abovmeans for tho

; thoughts inpresence of

e of hangingsoffreedom.r the rope ofnd crowding; "unhinged.":emininity arejp" - female

e body andundane, is ac becoming.i at the altarthree of the3 Hoiy Trinity,resentations,)f consciousled to securergson 1911:3 and yet are5. The dregsfloating and

disernbodied, not because they can no longer afford to keep theirbodies, but because their beauty comes from their dispossession,their profound ability to endure in the physical worid when all theyhave is their own minds. As in Househunting, the five "Bums Praying"are rendered äs bodiless heads, but here they also have hands,through which Loy transforms gestures of begging into gestures ofworship. Also simiiar to Househunting is the disproportionate spaceand dimensionaiity in Bums Praying accorded material objects incomparison to the human life portrayed. The robes adorning the fivefigures appear to bulge out of the assemblage's surface, dwarfingthe face and hands of the transients and underscoring, yet again,Loy's Bergsonian conception of the relational capacity of "the bodyto its environment" äs the robes themselves appear to take on life(Bergson 1911:xi).

In Wo Parking (1950s) (see Figure 4) Loy's marche aux pucessensibility is at its prime äs she finds beauty in the ugliest of situations.The defiant repose of the assemblage's two transients is strikinginsofar äs it perrnits the figures to adorn the sign äs they do thealtar in Sums Praying, blurring the boundary between animate andinanimate, subjectivity and objectivity. With the "No Parking" signhovering above these figures, Loy implicitly asks what such a signmeans for those who will never own a car. What is it then that theyare not allowed to "park," äs it were? The assemblage emphasizes

Figure 3Mina Loy, Bums Praying(1950s).

Suzanne Zelazo

Figure 4Mina Loy, No Parking(1950s).

the lack of rights to property or residency that these bodies have,recalling Loy's Surreal Scene in which the fernale body, without itsown Claim to itself, needs to be freed. Perhaps the most exquisitefeature of the construction is the presence of a butterfly amidst thissordid scene with its Suggestion of escape, delicacy and beauty.In line with the butterfly is the leg of one of the transients, whichcornes off the painting into the Viewers space, creating one of Loy'scharacteristic present absences äs she depicts those that residebetween the cracks, giving us a glimpse into another dimension ofthe social strata. Like her early poetic portraits, these "refusees" arean hornage to what she dubs the "Crab-Angel," the "atomic sprite/ perched on a polished / monster-stallion" (Loy 1996: 85). In theseassemblages, äs in her writing, the viewer/reader gets an impressionof Loy's heightened sensory perceptions, which appear to give heran exclusive point of entry into the representation of her subject. Hermetalinguistic ernphasis on the power of the senses to penetrateconsciousness, to speak its language äs it were, underscore hermultisensual aesthetic, which permits a union between the viewer/reader, the subject and the artist herseif, "l am the center / Of a circleof pain," Loy observes in "Parturition," "Exceeding its boundaries inevery direction" (ibid.: 84}. Her aesthetic is expansive and ultimatelycollective: in entering her subject, she enters her audience, creating

not hersensuabsentee," äsloss is a recuto the disappof Mexico inwith Cravan'sfolfowed; theCravan took \t for a tesi

lost her first cbirth. Whetheintellectual, pmake presenl

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the astronomi(Loy 1942: 1making hersemust live in i"Trimming sul/ Coloured gnever sufficieiconsciousnesexperiments ithe boundarkpersonified Btand accuratedelirious, but,

Acknowledl wish to thantheir helpful fe

PhotograpRoger ConovtScene, Figun2004-6 exhibPaper by JulkBurke's Becoi

Notes1. Pound slic

essay "Ho1

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oodies have,y, without itsost exquisitey amidst thisand beauty.iients, whichone of Loy's

5 that resideDimension of'efusees" areätomic Sprite85). In thesen Impressionr to give hersubject. Herto penetrateJerscore heri the viewer/r/Of acircleoundaries innd ultimateiyice, creating-e often than

not her sensual aesthetic is an attempt to combat a "Cravan /Colossalabsentee," äs she mourns in "The Widow's Jazz" (ibid.: 96). Poignantloss is a recurring thematic in Loy's work, and may be tied, perhapsto the disappearance of her husband Arthur Cravan off the coastof Mexico in 1918. This tragedy occurred while Loy was pregnantwith Cravan's child. He fled to Mexico to avoid conscription and Loyfollowed; the couple married almost immediately. Shortly thereafter,Cravan took his boat (procured for the purposes of dodging the war)out for a test ride and never returned. Significantly, Loy had alsolost her first child to meningitis in 1905, just a year after the baby'sbirth. Whether in terrns of gendered, social, economic, emotional,inteüectual, physica! or personal issues, Loy wrote and painted tomake present that which is otherwise lacking or obscured.

In the February-March 1942 issue of the avant-garde JournalThe VIEW, Loy was one of six modernist figures asked a series ofmetaphysical questions. In response to the query, "What do you seein the stars?" Loy responded, "Our need of an instrument analogousto, yet the inverse of a telescope, which would reduce to our focusthe forms of entities hitherto visually illimitable, of whose substancethe astronomical illuminations arethe diamond atoms and electrons"(Loy 1942: 10). These were the very Instruments she was busymaking herseif, from her early poetry to her late assernblages. "lrnust live in my lantern," she comments in "Songs to Joannes,""Trimming subliminal flicker / virginal to the beilows / of Experience/ Coloured glass" (Loy 1996: 53). And she did just that. It wasnever sufficient for Loy simply to gesture towards the "tonnage / ofconsciousness" äs she writes about Gertrude Stein (ibid.: 94). Loy'sexperiments aimed at enlivening language, multisensually pushingthe boundaries of consciousness and artistic representation. Shepersonified Bergson's notion of "entering into the thing" so intuitivelyand accurately that it can make her work unnerving, even slightlydelirious, but always luminous and füll of life.

Acknowled gme ntsl wish to thank Irene Gammel, Lesley Higgins, and Nicola Spunt fortheir helpfut feedback on this paper.

Photographs have been reproduced with the kind permission ofRoger Conover, Mina Loy's editor and literary executor. Loy's SurrealScene, Figure 1, is reproduced frorn promotional material of the2004-6 exhibition Accommodatlons of Desire: Surrealist Works onPaper by Julien Levy. Figures 2, 3 and 4 are reprinted from CarolynBurke's Becoming Modern: The Ufe ofMina Loy (1996).

Notes1. Pound slightly revises his definition of "logopoeia" in his 1929

essay "How to Read" wherein it simply becomes known äs "thedance of the intellect."

t8

Suzanne Zelazo

A9?oo

l

2. Reasoning from a similarvantage point, Sara Danius's The Sensesof Modernism; Technology, Perception, and Aesthetics (2002)documents the discursive relationship between high rnodernistfiction and technologies of perception. For Danius, technology inthe modernist era challenged the validity and veracity of humansensory experience, creating a divide between knowing andperceiving.

3. As a founding member of Berlin Dada, Hausmann worked acrossmany genres, and his contributions were eclectic. In addition tobeing an early and highly innovative practitioner of photomontage,Hausmann was also a poet, a publisher, a fashion designer anda painter. Hoch was sirnilarly varied in her artistic practice, andher feminist explorations of photomontage position her äs oneof Loy's predecessors. See, for example, her controversial CutWith a Kitchen Knife (1919), which explores the tensions betweengenders, domesticity and artistic contribution äs well äs theprivate and public through cultural commentary.

4. Carolyn Burke's Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy (1996)provides an essential context for a renewed appreciation ofLoy. In addition to his numerous critical readings of Loy's work,Roger Conover's editions of her poems and writings, The LastLunar Baedeker (1982) and The Lost Lunar Baedeker (1996),revived interest in - and put back into circulation - Loy's 1923poems from the Contact edition of Lunar Baedecker [sie], äswell work by the artist that had not until then been published.Virginia Kouidis's Mina Loy: American Modernist Poet (1980)was the first book-length critical analysis of Loy's writing. MaerraShreiber and Keith Tuma's Mina Loy: Woman and Poet (1998) isa rieh and varied collection of essays by Loy schoiars that offersa comprehensive overview of Loy's life and work. Alex Goody'sModemist Articulations: A Cultural Study of Djuna Barnes, MinaLoy, and Gertrude Stein (2007) is an important precursor to thiscurrent multisensual approach to Loy's aesthetics in that Goody'stext resists Singular rnodes of analysis. Goody reasons, "Barnes,Loy, and Stein's literary and cultural practice, äs modernists,is fundarnentally heterogeneous and discontinuous and thusdeserves to be read in a way that acknowledges and attempts toanalysethis"(2007:2).

5. Linda Dalrymple Henderson's The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art (1983) provides an invaluablehistorical account of the popularization of the fourth dimensionamong artists and inteilectuals in the early twentieth Century.

6. Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, and Djuna Barnes were followersof Russian mystic George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, äs were numerousother Left Bank artists (Washington 1993: 288). Gurdjieff'steachings encouraged a move away from the increasing mech-anization of the modern world and embraced primitivism. H.D.'s

9.

10.

11

12.

ReferencesBellamy, DodiBergson, He

,'sTheSenses'.hetics (2002)gh modernisttechnology incity of humanknowing and

;orked acrossIn addition tolotornontage,designer andpractice, and

>n her äs one.troversia! Cutiions betweens weil äs the

•?a/.oy(1996}•preciation of>f Loy's work,igs, The Lastdeker (1996),- Loy's 1923'Cker [sie], äs3n pubüshed.'. Poet (1980)Titing. MaerraDoet(1998)isars that offersAlex Goody'sBarnes, Mina•Cursor to thisi that Goody'sons, "Barnes,; modernists,DUS and thusd attempts to

:on and Non-an invaluableth dimensioni Century,verefollowersare nurnerousi). Gurdjieff'saasing mech-itivism. H.D.'slented in her

writings such äs Tribute to Freud (1956). Mabel Dodge Luhan,patron of the arts and herseif a writer, was iargely responsible forintroducing Loy to a number of spiritual investigations, includingthe work of Fredric Meyers who was one of the founders of theSociety for Psychical Research (Burke 1996: 144).

7. For a thorough documentation of the aggressive "breaking"characterizing much male modernism, see Higgins 146-51.

8. There are nurnerous commonalities between the Baronessand Loy. Both were rnembers of the Arsenberg circle in NewYork, and had very close and enduring relationships with DjunaBarnes. Both women practiced highly experimental visual andliterary art that challenged gender hegemony and explored thebody äs textual terrain. Similarly, Ernily Dickinson experimentedin her manuscripts with the use of the dash. See JeromeMcGann's Black Riders: The Visible Language of Modernism fora discussion of Dickinson's typographical innovations, 26-41.

9. The concept of 'defamiliarization' comes from Viktor Shklovsky's1917 essay 'Art äs Technique.' The term refers to literature thatdisrupts normative perception through a change of context,thereby creating new ways of seeing. For Shklovsky, the artist'sresponsibility is to heighten Sensation in the face of routine(Shklovsky 1989: 741-2).

10. Cornell's 1936 Portrait ofMina Loy is testament to the reciprocitybetween the two artists' pursuits, their mutua! attempt toovercome the mundane through metaphysics and their shareddesire to probe and represent the multidimensionality ofconsciousness.

11. Surrealism was a literary and ärtistic movement which grewout of Dadaism. Founded in 1924 with the publication of AndreBreton's Manifestes of Surrealism, the anti-art movementwas highly influenced by Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis. Inparticular, Breton privileged Freud's conceptsoffree-association,dream analysis and a liberation of the unconscious. The mostfamous visual artist of the movement is Salvador Dali (1904-89),but other members include Max Ernst, Joan Miro and ManRay.

12. There is certainly an affinity here with Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) and his Merz work. Merz, Schwitters's own ärtisticmovement created in 1919, emphasized the found object. Merzencompassed all his varied ärtistic endeavors including collage,painting, sound poetry and happenings. A similarity can also beseen in the photomontage techniques of Raou! Hausmann andHannah Hoch.

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