Lettrie à ouvrir des horizons nouveaux

Lettrism, an artistic movement born in postwar France, sought the liberation of language by destroying the ability of letters to convey meaning or act as representations of something other than themselves. Sabatier’s pages integrate images, utterances, hieroglyphs, musical notes, fragments of text, letters, and even complete words. Forms are dispersed across the surface, challenging the traditional manner in which pages are read, words are spoken, and language is interpreted. The term “lettrie” refers to a Letterist poem, which group members believed was a blank form that could “open new horizons” for both the author and the reader, as well as society at large. Like many Letterist works, the title, Lettrie à ouvrir des horizons nouveaux, also evokes a variety of things, such as characters from the alphabet, writing, literature, lettré (being well read), and decorative letters found in books, as well as the Letterists themselves.