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Arthur Cravan (born May 22, 1887, Lausanne, Switzerland) was known as a pugilist, a poet, a larger-than-life character, and an idol of the Dada and Surrealism movements. His real name was Fabian Avenarius Lloyd,^[1] the second son of Otho Holland Lloyd and Hélène Clara St. Clair. He had a brother, Otho, born 1885. His father's sister, Constance Mary Lloyd, was married to the Irish poet Oscar Wilde^[2]. He changed his name to Cravan in 1912 in honour of his fiancée Renée Bouchet, who was born in the small village of Cravans in the department of Charente-Maritime in western France. Why he chose the name Arthur remains unclear.

He was last seen at Salina Cruz, Mexico in 1918^[3] and most likely drowned in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico in November 1918.^{[citation needed]}

Contents 1 Biography 2 Speculation 3 References 4 Quotes 5 Popular culture 6 External links 7 Notes

[edit] Biography

He was born and educated in Lausanne, Switzerland, then at an English military academy from which he was expelled after spanking a teacher.^{[citation needed]} After this he travelled widely throughout Europe and America during World War I using a variety of passports and documents, some of them forged.^[4] He declared no single nationality and claimed instead to be "a citizen of 20 countries".

Cravan set out to promote himself as an eccentric and an art critic though his interest lay in showing off a powerful, striking personal style rather than discussing art. he would stage various public spectacles and stunts with himself at the centre, once acting on the front of a line of carts where he paraded his skills as a boxer and singer, although he never pursued either of these activities on stage with anyone else. His style of looking for the striking and shocking had some roots in the contemporary cult of the young man of action (athletes, soldiers, flamboyant artists) but strongly prefigured dadaism and even rock'n'roll attitudes - Cravan's way of flaunting the brazen and semi-ridiculous had more than a passing resemblance to the showmanship of Little Richard or Marc Bolan a half-century later. From 1911 to 1915 he put out a critical magazine, Maintenant! ("Now!") which appeared in five issues; it was gathered together and reprinted by Eric Losfeld in 1921 as J'étais Cigare in the dadaist collection "Le Désordre" ^[5] The tone was designed to cause sensation; in a piece about the 1912 arts salon he opined that a self-portrait by Marie Laurencin made you feel she needed some shagging, a remark which drove her lover and influential modernist critic Guillaume Apollinaire to fury and a bid for a duel. But his rough vibrant poetry, and provocative, anarchistic lectures and public appearances (often degenerating into drunken brawls) also earned him the admiration of Marcel Duchamp,Francis Picabia,André Breton, and other young artists and intellectuals.

After the outbreak of the First World War Cravan left Paris to avoid getting drafted.^[5] At a stopover in the Canary Islands a boxing match was arranged with the reigning world champion Jack Johnson to raise money for Cravan's passage to the United States. Cravan was touted on the posters as "European champion"; Johnson, who didn't know who the man was, knocked him solidly out and in his autobiography noticed that Cravan must have been out of training. In retrospect, the incident has been claimed as an archetypal example of the "anyone can reinvent himself" philosophy that's present in many later artistic movements: Cravan didn't need to be a professional boxer to lay a claim on being world champion, just like Bob Dylan, Madonna or Johnny Rotten didn't need to prove they were great singers in the normal sense of music ´criticism to go ahead and claim to be singers.

His personal style, thus, involved continuous re-invention of his public persona and various outrageous statements and boasts. His pride in being the nephew of Oscar Wilde even produced hoaxes - documents and poems - Cravan wrote and then signed "Oscar Wilde". In 1913 he published an article in his self-edited review Maintenant claiming that his uncle was still alive and had visited him in Paris. This rumour was taken up even by the New York Times. In fact, the two of them never met.

After arriving in New York in 1914, he moved on to South America three years later for the same reason when the United States entered the war. In Mexico City he met his future wife Mina Loy. After their marriage in 1918 they planned a trip from Mexico to Argentina.^{[citation needed]} Without enough money for both of them to book passage on the same vessel, Loy took the trip on a regular ship^[6] and Cravan set out alone on a sailboat to Argentina.^[7] Cravan never arrived^[8] and it is presumed that he capzised in a storm raging at sea in the following days.^[9]

Intermittent and spurious reports of his sighting continued for many years.^{[citation needed]}

One report has it that he returned to New York and then Paris, took the name Dorian Hope, a vagrant poet who sold forged Oscar Wilde manuscripts in the early 1920s.^{[citation needed]}

His only daughter, Fabienne Lloyd, was born in England on April 5, 1919 and later went to the United States together with her mother. Her descendants live in Aspen, Colorado.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Speculation

A biographical graphic novel on the life of Arthur Cravan has been published by Dark Horse Comics. Titled Cravan and written by the company publisher, Mike Richardson, illustrated by Rick Geary, this biography puts forth the idea that Arthur Cravan and B. Traven might be one and the same.

[edit] References

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (March 2009)

• Arthur Cravan, Œuvres, éditions Ivrea, Paris, 1992.
• André Breton, Anthology of Black Humor, 1940.
• Man Ray, Self-Portrait, 1963.
• Julien Levy, Memoir of an art Gallery, New York, 1977.
• Robert Motherwell, The Dada Painters and Poets, éd. Motherwell, New York, 1951.
• 4 Dada Suicides: Selected Texts of Arthur Cravan, Jacques Rigaut, Julien Torma & Jacques Vache (Anti-Classics of Dada) by Jacques Rigaut, Julien Torma, Jacques Vache, and Arthur Cravan. Roger Conover (Editor), Terry J. Hale (Editor), Paul Lenti (Editor), Iain White (Editor). (1995) Atlas Press ISBN 0-947757-74-0
• 'Nonbattles and Counterthoughts: Arthur Cravan takes Manhattan' by Dafydd Jones in 'Dada New York: New World for Old', Martin I. Gaughan (editor), volume 8 (2003) in Crisis and the Arts: The History of Dada series. ISBN 9780816173563.
• 'To Be or Not To Be ... Arthur Cravan' in 'Dada Culture: Critical Texts on the Avant-Garde', Dafydd Jones (editor), volume 18 (2006) in Avant-Garde Critical Studies series. ISBN 978-90-420-1869-3.
• A new English translation of Arthur Cravan's Maintenant is being prepared for publication by Dedecus Press. Issue 1 is available in loose leaf format. Stephen McNeilly (Editor), Tomasz Stephenson (Translator), James Wilson (Translator). ISBN 978-0-9555472-4-9

[edit] Quotes

• "Every great artist has the sense of provocation."

[edit] Popular culture

Arthur Cravan features as the focus for the novel Last Stop Salina Cruz (2007) by British novelist David Lalé. The novel tells the story of a young man following in the footpaths of the modernist legend across France, Spain, USA, Mexico and finally Salina Cruz.

• Review of Last Stop Salina Cruz on The Independent
• Last Stop Salina Cruz on Amazon
• Living Poets as literary insipiration on the Guardian

• "Shadow Box" by Antonia Logue (Bloomsbury paperbacks 2000) - A fictional version of the interweaving of the lives of Craven, Loy and Jack Johnson the first black heavyweight champion of the world.

[edit] External links

• Scans of Cravan's Maintenant, numbers 3 and 4.
• "Living Poetry" by Andrew Gallix
• French wikipedia article which has fuller list of works and references

[edit] Notes