Ricciotto Canudo

Ricciotto Canudo (2 January 1877, Gioia del Colle – 10 November 1923, Paris) was an early Italian film theoretician who lived primarily in France. In 1913 he published a bimonthly avant-garde magazine entitled Montjoie!, promoting Cubism in particular. Involved in numerous movements yet confined to none, Canudo exuded seemingly boundless energy. He ventured into poetry, penned novels (pioneering a style emphasizing interpersonal psychology, which he dubbed sinestismo), and established open-air theatre in southern France. As an art critic, he unearthed talents like Chagall, curating a Chagall exhibition in 1914. In that same year, alongside Blaise Cendrars, he issued a call for foreigners residing in France to enlist in the French army. Among the 80,000 who responded was Canudo himself.

He saw cinema as "plastic art in motion", and gave cinema the label "the Sixth Art", later changed to "the Seventh Art", still current in French, Italian, and Spanish conceptions of art, among others. Canudo subsequently added dance as a precursor to the sixth—a third rhythmic art with music and poetry—making cinema the seventh art.

Canudo is often regarded as the inaugural aesthetician of cinema, thus making his "Manifesto" pertinent for an English-speaking readership. Several of Canudo's concepts found resonance with two prominent early French film experimenters—Jean Epstein and Abel Gance.

Work
In his manifesto The Birth of the Sixth Art, published in 1911, Canudo argued that cinema was a new art, "a superb conciliation of the Rhythms of Space (the Plastic Arts) and the Rhythms of Time (Music and Poetry)", a synthesis of the five ancient arts: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry (cf. Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics).

Canudo later added dance as a sixth precursor, a third rhythmic art with music and poetry, making cinema the seventh art.

Paragraph 1
The theory of seven arts has rapidly gained ground in all minds and is spreading throughout the entire world. To the total confusion of genres and ideas it has brought the preciseness of a rediscovered source. I don't glory in this discovery - all theory carries with it the discovery of the principle which governs it - I declare its radiance just as in affirming it, I was declaring its necessity. If the numberless and nefarious shopkeepers believed that they could raise the value of their industry and their commerce by appropriating the term "Seventh Art," they didn't accept the responsibility imposed by the word "Art." [...]

Paragraph 2
[...] We see that in reality two arts have sprung from the human brain to permit man to stop all the fleeting experiences of life, struggling thereby against the death of aspects and forms and enriching future generations with the aesthetic experience. At the dawn of humanity, it was a question of perfecting life by elevating it above ephemeral realities, by affirming the eternity of things which stir men. Men wanted to create hearths of emotion capable of spreading over all generations what an Italian philosopher called "aesthetic oblivion" - that is to say, an enjoyment of life superior to life - of a multiple personality by which each person could transcend himself. [...]

Montjoie!
Between 1913 and 1914, he published a bimonthly avant-garde magazine entitled Montjoie!, organe de l'impérialisme artistique Francais. Participating artists included Guillaume Apollinaire, Maurice Raynal, Albert Gleizes and Joseph Csaky. The magazine paid special attention to poetry, prose, articles on art, literature, music and history. The contributors included André Salmon, Abel Gance, Igor Stravinsky, Erik Satie, Fernand Léger, Guillaume Apollinaire, Blaise Cendrars, Alfredo Casella, Raoul Dufy, Stefan Zweig, Robert Delaunay, Max Jacob, and Emile Verhaeren.

The first issue was published on 10 February 1913. The second included an essay signed by Igor Stravinsky presenting his new ballet The Rite of Spring as a religious work of faith grounded in a pagan, pantheistic conception. A special issue in the second volume of Montjoie!, published on 18 March 1914, was devoted entirely to the 30th Salon des Indépendants. The article written by André Salmon included photographs of works by Joseph Csaky, Robert Delaunay, Marc Chagall, Alice Bailly, Jacques Villon, Sonia Delaunay, André Lhote, Roger de La Fresnaye, Moise Kisling, Ossip Zadkine, Lucien Laforge and Valentine de Saint-Point. Publication of the magazine stopped in June 1914, on the eve of the First World War.

In 1920, he established an avant-garde magazine Le Gazette de sept arts, and a film club, CASA (Club des amis du septième art), in 1921. His best-known essay "Reflections on the Seventh Art" ("Réflexions sur le septième art") was published in 1923 after a number of earlier drafts, all published in Italy or France.

Other writings

 * La ville sans chef, Paris 1910
 * Music as a religion of the future, London 1913
 * L'usine aux images, Paris 1926. (A collection of his essays)