{"id":18443,"date":"2009-12-30T10:43:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-30T10:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/?p=18443"},"modified":"2009-12-30T10:53:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-30T10:53:00","slug":"3am-cult-hero-arthur-cravan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/3am-cult-hero-arthur-cravan\/","title":{"rendered":"3:AM<\/i> Cult Hero: Arthur Cravan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"arthurcravan\"<\/p>\n

“Every great artist has the sense of provocation.”<\/i><\/div>\n

From ‘Living Poetry’<\/a> by Andrew Gallix:<\/p>\n

Fabian Lloyd aka Arthur Cravan (1887-1918) put all his genius into his short life; he put only his talent (and a limited one at that) into his works. As David Lal \u00e9<\/b> writes in the recently-published Last Stop Salina Cruz<\/b><\/i> [3:AM<\/i>‘s Novel of the Year 2007<\/a>]: “His was a life dedicated to wanton destruction, to the extent that he elevated scandal and humiliation into an art form”. <\/p>\n

Almost too bad to be true, he inspired Gide<\/b>‘s Lafcadio – the infamous character who kills a man for no other reason but to exercise his free will – and kick-started the Dada<\/b> insurrection when he crossed paths with Picabia <\/a> in Spain.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/div>\n

After being expelled from an English military academy for spanking a teacher, Lloyd relocated to bohemian Paris where he adopted his pseudonym, partied hard with the likes of Blaise Cendrars<\/a> and managed to become France’s heavyweight champion without fighting a single match. Never one to shy away from self-promotion, Cravan ruthlessly exploited his reputation as a pugilist poet (although his boxing was on a par with his writing skills) and got a lot of mileage out of being Oscar Wilde<\/b>‘s nephew. His antics – including giving lectures during which he insulted, mooned and fired gunshots at the audience – led to rough justice at the hands of an angry mob of avant-garde painters as well as a duel challenge courtesy of poor old Apollinaire<\/b>.<\/p>\n

Significantly enough, he printed his literary journal<\/a> on wrapping paper from a butcher’s shop. The onset of the war marked the beginning of a convoluted vanishing act that led him – in various guises – from Paris to Mexico where he disappeared at sea on a drunken boat of his own making. His body was never found. Cravan, the eponymous colossus of Mina Loy<\/b>‘s novel, had always been larger than life; now, he had taken elusiveness to the point of illusiveness. For decades, he would continue to be spotted in different parts of the world. He is still at large.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More:<\/b> Cravan vs Cravan<\/a> \/ 4 Dada Suicides<\/a><\/i> published by Atlas Press \/ Arthur Cravan, boxer & art critic<\/a> \/ ‘The Provocations of Arthur Cravan’<\/a> by Andy Merrifield \/ Shadow-Box<\/i><\/a>, a novel on Cravan, Mina Loy & Jack Johnson by Antonia Logue \/ Cravan: Mystery Man of the Twentieth Century<\/i><\/a>, a graphic novel that speculates that Cravan was also B, Traven, author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Every great artist has the sense of provocation.” From ‘Living Poetry’ by Andrew Gallix: Fabian Lloyd aka Arthur Cravan (1887-1918) put all his genius into his short life; he put only his talent (and a limited one at that) into his works. As David Lal \u00e9 writes in the recently-published Last Stop Salina Cruz [3:AM‘s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buzzwords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}