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So it was with TABU.
We have neither created nor invented the idea, it is ours
through a violent revelation, through an inexpressible shock.
It has improsed itself.
Addressing itself only to the mind, TABU is a philosophical
religion, without ethics; but of this we shall speak in the near
future.
We wish today to be content with quetsions of Art correspond
ing to the new idea.
Up to this time the arts have all been sensual, as have religions.
We no longer wish to produce an art for the body but for the
mind.
We wish through forms, through colours, through it matters
not what means, to express the mystery, the divinity of the uni
verse, including all mysteries.
Andre Salmon, who last year in a criticism called us the re-
newers of a religious art, understood the hidden meaning of our
new artistic manifestation.
We do not contend that the art TABU is superior to the sen
sual arts of all the successive and different schools up to this
time, but we do think that we are bringing a new form of expres
sion and new possibilities.
The world cannot be content always to be readjusting the same
coat, making only partial changes; it needs a new coat from time
to time.
Francis Picabia, the finest of the minds of the vanguard, sees
in the appearance of TABU one of the benefits brought by
DADA, and without doubt he is right, since DADA has made
possible the famous cleaning up of conventions and conveniences
approved of making a clean and free place for new ideas.
JEAN CROTTI