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A Redesign of Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris.
23
zurich berlin hannover cologne new york paris DADA:
Transcript
Page 1: DADA: Redesign

Zurich

Berlin

Hannover

Cologne

New York

Paris

Dickerman

zurich

berlin

hannover

cologne

new york

paris

DADA:

Page 2: DADA: Redesign

Copyright © 2005 Board of Trustees, National Gallery of

Art, Washington. All rights reserved. This book may not be

reproduced in whole or in part (beyond that copying permitted

by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and

except by reviewers from the public press), without written

permission from the publishers.

Produced by the Publishing Office,

National Gallery of Art, Washington

www.nga.gov

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Centre Pompidou, Musée

national d’art moderne, Paris, 5 October 2005–9 January 2006;

at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, 19 February–14 May

2006; and at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 18 June–11

September 2006.

ISBN 0–89468–313–6

(softcover: alk. paper)—

1. Dadaism—Exhibitions

2. Arts, Modern—20th Century

I. Dickerman, Leah

II. National Gallery of Art (U.S.)

IV. Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.)

V. Title

The hardcover edition is published by the National Gallery of Art,

Washington, and D.A.P./Distributed Arts Publishers, Inc., 155

Avenue of the Americas, Second Floor, New York, N.Y.

10013–1507. Tel. 212.627.1999, Fax 212.627.9484

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dickerman, Leah, 1964–

Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris

Leah Dickerman; with essays by Brigid Doherty… [et al.] .

p. cm.

Includes bibliographic references and index.

ISBN 1–933045–20–5

(hardcover: alk. paper)—

NX456.5.D3D53 2005

709’.04’062074—dc22

2005017984

Page 3: DADA: Redesign

The exhibition in Washington is made possible through the generous support of the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation and the Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation.

Additional support for the exhibition in Washington has been provided by the Annenberg Foundation and Thomas G. Klarner.

The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Page 4: DADA: Redesign

IX XI XIV XV 1 16 84 154 214

Foreword

Acknow

ledgments

Note to the R

eader

Lenders to the Exhibition

Introdu

ctionLeah D

ickerman

Zurich

Leah Dickerm

an

Berlin

Brigid D

oherty

Hannover

Dorothea D

ietrich

Cologne

Sabine T. K

riebel

Table of Contents

Page 5: DADA: Redesign

274 346 410 416 460 490 504 516

New

YorkM

ichael R. Taylor

Paris

Janine Mileaf

Matthew

S. W

itkovsky

Dad

a Films

Em

manuelle D

e L’Ecotais

Mark Levitch

Chronology

Matthew

S. W

itkovsky

Artists’ B

iographiesA

manda L. H

ockensmith

Sabine T. K

riebel with

Isabel Kauenhoven

Selected B

ibliographyA

urélie Verdier

Index

Credits

Page 6: DADA: Redesign

National Gallery of Art, Washington

19 February–14 May 2006

Centre Pompidou

Musée national d’art moderne, Paris

5 October 2005–9 January 2006

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

18 June–11 September 2006

Page 7: DADA: Redesign

DA DA:ZURICH BERLIN HANNOVER COLOGNE NEW YORK PARIS

Brigid Doherty

Dorothea Dietrich

Sabine T. Kriebel

Michael R. Taylor

Janine Mileaf

Matthew S. Witkovsky

Leah DickermanWith essays by: Edited by:

Page 8: DADA: Redesign

zurich

Page 9: DADA: Redesign

zurichHans RichterChristian SchadArthur Segal

Walter SernerSophie TaeuberTristan Tzara

Emmy HenningsRichard HuelsenbeckMarcel Janco

Francis PicabiaAdya van ReesOtto van Rees

Hans ArpHugo BallViking Eggeling

Page 10: DADA: Redesign

dada: the beginningLeah Dickerman

Dada was launched in Zurich. Its manifestation in that

city was distinguished by its origins within the cabaret,

the primacy given to defining a theory of abstraction

expressed across media, and interest in various forms

of primitivism. Yet, in the activities of a small group of

artists living there during World War I, a certain idea

of Dada developed with enough coherence to travel

and be adopted elsewhere. Zurich was a crucible for

Dada’s revolution. Many of the fundamental ideas and

strategies that later characterized Dada as a movement

grew out of events and activities that took place within

this city of refuge.

Because of Switzerland’s famed policy of

political neutrality, Zurich served as a safe haven for

those escaping the escalating conflagration of World

War I. Iconoclasts of all kinds were attracted to the city:

pacifists, draft dodgers, spies, and profiteers, as well

as political and intellectual refugees of many stripes,

including the Russian Bolshevik exiles Vladimir Lenin

and Grigori Zinoviev and the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin.

§

Page 11: DADA: Redesign

Hugo Ball, co-founder

of the Cabaret Voltaire,

February 5, 1916

Hugo Ball and other dada

artists at the Dada Fair, 1917.

Tristan Tzara, Richard

Huelsenbeck, Francis Picabia

Germaine Everling, 1921.

In relation to Berlin, Munich, Bucharest, and Paris,

where the founding dadaists had spent their pre-war

years, Zurich was by all accounts a conservative city.

Its very tranquility, abundance, and disengagement

from the conflict created at times a feeling of unreal

isolation from the larger European world. At one point in

his memoirs, Richard Huelsenbeck, a founding member

of the Zurich Dada group, writing with cosmopolitan

disdain, labeled the entire country “one big sanatorium.”1

But Huelsenbeck also clearly conveyed the overarching

sense of freedom and relief that accompanied his arrival

in Zurich: “In the liberal atmosphere of Zurich, where the

newspapers could print what they pleased, where there

were no ration stamps and no ‘ersatz’ food, we could

scream out everything we were bursting with.”2 This

sense of refuge was shadowed by a keen awareness

of proximity to threat, felt both geographically and

physically. Hans Arp wrote defiantly: “Despite the

remote booming of artillery, we sang, painted, pasted

and wrote poetry with all our might,”3 while Hugo Ball

drew a more precarious picture, describing Switzerland

as a “birdcage, surrounded by roaring lions.”4

The origins of the Dada movement are

inextricably tied to the short life of the Cabaret Voltaire,

an iconoclastic nightclub that served as the first public

gathering place for Dada artists and writers. The

learned Ball, the Cabaret’s founder with his companion

Emmy Hennings, served as Dada’s earliest intellectual

leader. Ball was a studious figure whose writings

reveal an incredible breadth of cultural erudition. His

diaries serve not only as the most important record for

our understanding of events in Zurich, but also as an

intellectual genealogy, making links between his thinking

and other contemporaries. In Munich before the war,

Ball wrote for Die Aktion, Der Sturm, and other radical

journals and began serious involvement with the avant-

garde theater, working as literary adviser to several

progressive theatrical groups. Along with the playwright

and poet Hans Leybold, Ball cofounded an experimental

journal of his own called Revolution, which launched

1 Richard H

uelsenbeck, Mem

oirs of Dada D

rumm

er (196

9), ed.

Hans J. K

leinschmidt, trans. Joachim

Neugroschel (B

erkeley, 1991), 2

5.

2 Huelsenbeck, D

ada Drum

mer, 14.

3 Jean [Hans] A

rp, Arp on A

rp: Poem

s, Essays, M

emories, ed.

Marcel Jean, trans. Joachim

Neugroschel (N

ew York, 19

72), 2

32.

4 Hugo B

all, Flight Out of Tim

e: A D

ada Diary by H

ugo Ball (19

27), ed. John

Elderfield, trans. A

nn Raim

es (Berkeley, 19

96), 3

4. Entry for 10

October 1915.

£ ¤

18 | 19

§

£

¤

Page 12: DADA: Redesign

proto-dadaist assaults on bourgeois mores. The pub-

lication of one of Ball’s poems, “Der Henker” (The

Hangman), led to the confiscation of the journals; but

at the ensuing trial, the judge declared the poem to be

incomprehensible and therefore harmless. Ball’s Munich

activities brought him into expressionist circles around

the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider), and Vasily Kandinsky,

the group’s leading figure, was to remain a central

and lasting influence on Ball. The two developed plans

to reopen the Munich Artists’ Theater in an effort to

promote a “new form of theatrical expression,” ambi-

tions that were jettisoned with the outbreak of war.

A meeting in a Munich café established a second

important relationship for the founding of Dada: Ball

befriended Huelsenbeck and began a formative

collaboration with the younger man

Hennings, a figure of quite a different type,

sat at the class margins in a way that distinguished

her from her future (and male) Dada colleagues. She

was an experienced professional entertainer, who had

been associatwed with theatrical companies, vaudeville,

cabarets and nightclubs, and avant-garde ventures

from about 1905.5 Contemporary criticism and memoirs

present a consensus about her extraordinary stage

presence. Capturing both her charisma and dissipation,

the Züricher Post ran a piece on the Cabaret Voltaire

declaring: “The star of the cabaret, however, is Mrs.

Emmy Hennings. Star of many nights of cabarets and

poems. Years ago she stood by the rustling yellow

curtain of a Berlin cabaret, hands on hips, as exub-

erant as a flowering shrub; today too she presents the

same bold front and performs the same songs with a

body that has since then been only slightly ravaged

by grief.”6 Like many other female entertainers of her

day, Hennings slipped in an amphibian way between

advanced intellectual circles and a seedy, underworld

“ we want to provoke, perturb, bewilder, tease, tickle to death, confuse...”§ Weimar participants,

autumn 1922

§

Page 13: DADA: Redesign

existence. She worked as a model, nightclub hostess,

and lady of the night, was arrested several times for

prostitution and theft, and suspected of homicide.7

Ball and Hennings had met in Munich in 1913 and

soon became a couple. When World War I broke out,

Ball exhibited considerable patriotic fervor, volunteering

for military service three times, only to be rejected each

time on medical grounds. But his initial enthusiasm was

transformed into keen opposition when he made an

unauthorized visit to the Belgian front and was horrified,

precipitating a personal crisis that nearly ended in

suicide. Soon afterward, Ball moved to Berlin, where

Hennings and Huelsenbeck joined him, establishing the

beginnings of a Dada coterie. Along with Huelsenbeck,

he organized a series of antiwar evenings featuring

aggressive performances that later served as a prec-

edent for events at the Cabaret Voltaire. At one in

February 1915 called “Gedächtnisfeier für gefallene

Dichter” (The Memorial for Fallen Poets), Ball read an

ironic poetic obituary of his close friend Leybold—who

had committed suicide after being injured at the front

in the fall of 1914—in a deliberately unsentimental,

biting manner that in its recited chants négres—poems

intended to capture the rhythm and tonality of African

tribal songs—to the beat of a drum. The pair ended the

evening by handing out a manifesto, which declared,

“We want to provoke, perturb, bewilder, tease, tickle

to death, confuse….”9

5 See H

ubert Van den B

erg, “The S

tar of the Cabaret V

oltaire,” in Dada Z

urich: A

Clow

n’s Gam

e from N

othing, ed. Brigitte P

ichon and Karl R

iha in the series

Crisis and the A

rts: The History of D

ada, vol. 2, gen. ed. S

tephen C. F

oster (New

York, 199

6), 6

9–

88

.

6 Ball, Flight O

ut of Time, 6

3. E

ntry for 7 M

ay 1916.

7 Van den B

erg, “The S

tar of the Cabaret V

oltaire,” in Dada Z

urich, 77.

8 Hans L

eybold, Gegen Z

uständliches: Glossen, G

edichte, Briefe, ed. E

ckhard Faul

(Hannover, 19

89

), 112; and H

ugo Ball (18

86

–198

6): Leben und W

erk [exh. cat.,

Wasgauhalle P

irmasens] (Z

urich, 198

6), 18

.

9 Malcolm

Green, “Introduction,” B

lago Bung, B

lago Bung, B

osso Fataka: First

Texts of Germ

an Dada by H

ugo Ball, R

ichard Huelsenbeck, W

alter Serner

(London, 19

95

), 15.

provoke, perturb, bewilder, tease, tickle to death, confuse...”

20 | 21

Page 14: DADA: Redesign

The Cabaret Voltaire closed in early July 1916.

Huelsenbeck reported that Jan Ephraim “told us we

must either offer better entertainment and draw a

larger crowd or shut down the cabaret.”10 But it is

also clear that Ball was becoming exhausted by his

efforts and no longer wished to continue.11

In the few months of the Cabaret’s existence,

there was increasing discussion, with Tristan Tzara

at the helm, of expanding the group’s reach beyond

Zurich. “There are plans for a Voltaire Society, and an

international exhibition,” Ball wrote in early April. “The

proceeds of the soirées will go toward an anthology

to be published soon.”12 Ball and Huelsenbeck resisted

the idea of “organization,” but it seems that Tzara soon

prevailed, and the publication was soon in the works

with Ball actively involved in its preparation.

Adorned with a luxurious red cover with an

abstract woodcut by Arp, the only issue of Cabaret

Voltaire, published on 31 May 1916, was already distant

from the seedy, nocturnal experience of the cabaret, 13

and, despite the group’s iconoclasm, its purpose was

a self-historicizing one: “[Cabaret Voltaire] was,” Tzara

insisted, “not a journal but a documentary publication on

the cabaret we founded here.” 14 The publication offered

its readers a miscellany of the group’s activities, “which

at that time seemed to us to constitute ‘Dada’”15: an

introduction by Ball, a catalogue of one of the Cabaret

Voltaire exhibitions, a chapter of Ball’s “fantastic novel,”

the simultaneous poem and other contributions by the

same range of modernists whose work had appeared

at the Cabaret (Guillaume Apollinaire, Picasso, Kan-

dinsky, Filippo Marinetti, Blaise Cendrars) and by the

dadaists themselves. As Tzara intended, the printed

anthology also granted a new portability to the contents

and the ideas they represented, allowing them to reach

a broader audience.

Yet the media potential for a new audience

that so captivated Tzara seems to have rankled Ball and

may well account for his opposition to the idea of a Dada

movement. Writing in a later diary entry about the group’s

effort to organize an international Dada event, Ball wrote:

“In the end we cannot simply keep on producing without

knowing whom we are addressing. The artist’s audience

is not limited to his nation anymore…. Can we write,

compose, and make music for an imaginary audience?”16

Ball laments the loss of the intimacy—the shift from a

direct relationship between a performer and audience

physically present before him, and its replacement by

one that would have an international scale, but would be

inherently more mediated and abstract. Perhaps for Ball

there was some sense, as well, that making Dada public,

presenting it as a movement, would transform him into

a propagandist —bringing him uncomfortably close to the

wartime media abuses he deplored.

Ironically, it was most likely Ball who provided

that crucial emblem of movement identity: the word Dada

itself.17 Against the background of heated discussion

about plans for a Voltaire Society, Ball noted in his entry

for 18 April 1916: “Tzara keeps on worrying about the

periodical. My proposal to call it Dada is accepted.”18

The first word appeared in print in Tzara’s La premiére

Aventure céléste de Mr Antipyrine (The First Celestial

Adventure of Mr. Antipyrine) and in the Cabaret

Dada, The Movement

§ First International Dada Messe

Inauguration, Berlin, 1920

ZURICH

Page 15: DADA: Redesign

10 Huelsenbeck, “The D

ada Drum

mer” in D

ada Drum

mer, 1

7.

11 See B

all’s entry for 15 M

arch 19

16: “The cabaret needs a rest. W

ith all the tension the

daily performances are not just exhausting, they are crippling.” B

all, Flight Out of Tim

e, 57.

12 Ball, Flight O

ut of Time, 6

0. Entry for 2 A

pril 19

16.

13 Debbie Lew

er, “From the C

abaret Voltaire to the Kaufleutensaal,”

in Pichon/R

iha, eds. Dada Zurich, 4

8.

14 Tzara to Raim

ondi, 17 M

arch 19

17, D

ada, l’arte della negazione (Rom

e 19

94), 1

10

–1

11.

15 Huelsenbeck, “E

n avant Dada,” in M

otherwell, The D

ada Painters and P

oets, 27.

16 Ball, Flight O

ut of Time, 9

8. E

ntry for 10

February 19

17.

17 John Elderfield provides a com

prehensive discussion of claims to the invention of the w

ord

Dada. S

ee his afterward, “‘D

ada:’ The Mystery of the W

ord,” Ball, Flight O

ut of Time, 2

38

–2

51.

18 Ball, Flight O

ut of Time, 6

3. E

ntry for 18

April 1

91

6.

19 Huelsenbeck, “E

n Avant D

ada,” in Motherw

ell, The Dada P

ainters and Poets, 2

6.

20 Huelsenbeck, “D

ada Lives,” in Motherw

ell, The Dada P

ainters and Poets, 2

79–

28

1.

21 Ball, Flight O

ut of Time, 6

3. E

ntry for 18 A

pril 19

16.

ZURICH

Voltaire in an advertisement for the forthcoming journal.

Huelsenbeck later recounted that it was chosen from

a German-French dictionary while he was visiting Ball19

and that the two delighted in the primal quality of its

infantile sound and its appropriateness as an emblem

for “beginning at zero.”20 Though it resonated with the

fragmentary and abstract phonemes of the sound poetry

performed at the cabaret, the group clearly embraced

its multiple meanings and evocative connotations across

languages. Stressing both this semantic mobility and

richness, Ball added to his first mention of the word:

“Dada is ‘yes, yes’ in Rumanian, ‘rocking horse’ and

‘hobbyhorse’ in French. For Germans it is a sign of foolish

naiveté, joy in procreation, and preoccupation with the

baby carriage.”21 Suggesting basic drives and childlike

behavior, the word was at the same time self-consciously

absurd, even self-mocking, and a subversive anthem

of resistance to more fully instrumentalized speech

and disciplined rationality. Resistance to fixed meaning

remained a key feature; and later dadaist productions

generated countless new definitions.

§

22 | 23

Page 16: DADA: Redesign

and suggesting a kind of “dada hubris.”30 “Just a

word,” declaimed Ball, “and the word a movement.”

A first public event, a first manifesto, but also an ending,

for despite its obscurity, the manifesto was intended

and received, Ball wrote, as a “thinly disguised break

with friends.”32 Ball soon distanced himself from the

group leaving Zurich for the Ticino in the first of several

leave-takings and bringing to a close the period of his

greatest intellectual influence.33

With Ball’s absence and the closing of the

cabaret, Tzara emerged as the new leader, converting

Ball’s persona as cabaret master of ceremonies into

a role as a savvy media spokesman with grand ambi-

tions. Tzara was “the romantic internationalist,” wrote

Huelsenbeck in his 1920 history of Dada.”34 As a result,

it was largely through the filter of Tzara’s efforts and

writing that ideas about Dada were communicated to

an audience outside of Zurich. While Ball had not art-

iculated a specific theory or program for Dada, Tzara’s

writings marked a certain shift, distilling concepts that

had emerged at the Cabaret into discernible principles

capable of being communicated. Departing from the

more mystical aspects of Ball’s thought with its relig-

ious and alchemical imagery, Tzara, as discussed in

the introduction to this volume, offered a declaration of

resistance to various forms of social government. In his

widely distributed “Manifeste Dada 1918,” he wrote, “To

impose your ABC is a natural thing, hence deplorable.”35

Though it may not have been Ball’s intention, the word

Dada offered tremendous media potential. Tzara seems

to have recognized its publicity early on; Huelsenbeck

recalled that Tzara “had been one of the first to grasp

the suggestive power of the word Dada,”22 and he

developed it as a kind of brand identity—a newly vis-

ible phenomenon in both the sphere of culture and

consumer economics.23 (Indeed, Ball hinted that the

word Dada already resonated as a brand name, offer-

ing in a manifesto the slogan: “Dada is the world’s best

lily milk soap.”24) In Zurich Tzara placed “Mouvement

Dada” as a banner headline across a series of posters

announcing evening events, transformed the Galerie

Corray into Galerie Dada, and published three poetry

books under the series title “Collection Dada”25—as

well as launching the journal for which the name had

originally been chosen. And he gave Dada (and Arp’s

abode) the façade of a corporate structure, using

envelopes printed with the return address:

As part of this effort to forge a broader

identity, the group staged the “first public Dada

evening,”27 as Ball wrote, underscoring the word

public, on 14 July 1916 at Zurich’s Waag Hall, an old

guildhouse on one of the city’s main squares. Hennings

read poems, Arp offered a discussion of paper collages;

Ball, Huelsenbeck, Marcel Janco, and Tzara performed

costumed and masked dances. The event also marked

a movement away from the margins of culture, seen

in the shift within the topography of the city from the

seedy Niederdorf, where no respectable citizen would

go, to a central area where the bourgeoisie was part

of the potential audience.28 Yet if it was a step toward

a more mainstream identity, it also made the dadaist

assault on bourgeois pieties all the more direct.

Along with the other offerings of the even-

ing, the core members read manifestos, appropriating

a traditional form of public and political communica-

tion aimed at establishing principles.29 But Ball’s text

turned on the group itself, mocking its ambitions

Very easy to understand…. To make of it an artistic

tendency must mean that one is anticipating

complications. Dada psychology, dada Germany cum

indigestion and fog paroxysm, dada literature, dada

bourgeoisie, and yourselves, honored poets, who are

always writing with words but never writing the word

itself, who are always writing around the actual point.

Dada world war without end, dada revolution without

beginning, dada, you friends and also-poets, esteemed

sirs, manufacturers, and evangelists. Dada Tzara, dada

Huelsenbeck, dada m’dada, dada m’dada dada mhm,

dada dera dada, dada Hue, dada Tza.31

§ Dada portrait of Germaine

Everling, Francis Picabia, 1920

£ Alarm Clock I, Dada 4–5 cover,

Francis Picabia, 1919

¤ Untitled Mask, Marcel

Janco, 1919

¥ Collage with Squares Arranged

According to the Laws of

Chance, Jean Arp, 1916–1917

Administration/Mouvement Dada/Zurich Zeltweg 83.26

Page 17: DADA: Redesign

22 Huelsenbeck, “E

n Avant D

ada,” in Motherw

ell, The Dada P

ainters and Poets, 2

6.

23 The idea of branding emerged in the nineteenth century as the industrialization of

goods moved to centralized factories; in an effort to fam

iliarize a wider custom

er base

beyond the reach of word of m

outh with their products, m

anufacturers adopted brand

names and logos to reassure custom

ers of the reputation and quality of their goods.

24 Ball, “D

ada Manifesto” (1916), reprinted in B

all, Flight Out of Tim

e, 221.

25 These included Tzara’s own La prem

iére Aventure céléste de M

r Antipyrine

(The First C

elestial Adventure of M

r. Antipyrine), and H

uelsenbeck’s Phantastische

Gebete (Fantastic P

rayers) and Schalaben schalabai schalam

ezonai, the first with

woodcuts by Janco, and the latter draw

ings by Arp.

26 A copy of this envelope exists in the collection of the M

useum of M

odern Art, N

ew York.

27 Ball, Flight O

ut of Time, 7

3. Entry for 6

August 1916

.

28 Lewer, “From

the Cabaret Voltaire to the K

aufleutensaal,” in Dada Z

urich, 52.

29 Since the seventeenth century m

anifestos have been used as a genre for political

opposition, as most fam

ously seen in Karl M

arx’s Com

munist M

anifesto.

30 B

all, Flight Out of Tim

e, 83. E

ntry for 6 October 1916.

31 Ball, “D

ada Manifest,” in B

all, Flight Out of Tim

e, 22

0.

32 Ball, Flight O

ut of Time, 7

3. Entry for 6

August 1916.

33 Ball left for the first tim

e at the end of July for Tessin, then for the village

of Vira-M

agadino, and then Ascona. In N

ovember, he returned to Z

urich

for several months.

34 Huelsenbeck, “E

n Avant D

ada,” in Motherw

ell, The Dada P

ainters and Poets, 24

.

35 Tzara, “Dada M

anifesto, 1918,” in Motherw

ell, The Dada P

ainters and Poets, 76.

§ £ ¤ ¥

24 | 25

Page 18: DADA: Redesign

Definitive changes occurred within the group between

late 1917 and what might be seen as the demise of

Zurich Dada around the end of 1919. The ending of

the war allowed for the increased possibility of foreign

travel, facilitating greater contact with the world out-

side of Zurich and offering the first real opening for

an international expansion of Dada as a movement.

The arrival in Zurich of two key figures, French-Spanish

artist Francis Picabia and the German critic Walter

Serner, was influential in these late stage develop-

ments, introducing a new cynically subversive tone.

Having spent much of the war in New York

working closely with Marcel Duchamp and members

of the Stieglitz circle, Picabia left for Europe in 1918,

staying in Barcelona and Paris, all the while publishing

his journal 391, which had already become an inter-

national avant-garde forum. Both the journal and his

own itinerancy made Picabia an important conduit for

ideas. In 1918 he sought treatment for neurasthenia

(and perhaps for alcoholism) in Switzerland, first at

Gstaad, then in the spa town of Bex-les-Bains, where

Dada International

Page 19: DADA: Redesign

he received a letter from Tzara inviting participation in

Zurich Dada, copies of Dada 3, and books of poetry as

gifts.36 The exchange seems to have prompted Picabia

and his wife Gabrielle Buffet to visit Zurich for three

weeks at the beginning of 1918,37 and the encounter

between Picabia and the Zurich group was one of

mutual recognition and embrace. The group descend-

ed upon Picabia en masse in his Zurich hotel room. To

their delight, he smashed an alarm clock (the symbol

par excellence of Swiss efficiency and rationality)

and dipped its inner workings in ink, pressing them

on paper to make monoprints (Réveil matin I [Alarm

Clock]). Thus was European dadaism introduced to

the imagery of dysfunctional machines developed in

New York during the war, bringing together the Zurich

group’s critique of governing systems with New York’s

subversion of icons of industrial capitalism. One of

the clock images was feature on the cover of Dada

4–5, the last issue to be produced in Zurich. The in-

side pages offered another drawing by Picabia titled

“Mouvement Dada”—a diagrammatic rendering of the

avant-garde network linking Zurich, New York, and

Paris in which the movement of ideas was presented

as a circuit of machinic forces. Already experienced in

publishing a journal, Picabia collaborated with Tzara

in editing the issue, and it featured a truly international

roster of contributors including, along with Tzara and

Picabia themselves, Jean Cocteau, Pierre Reverdy,

Raoul Hausmann, Huelsenbeck, André Breton, Serner,

Viking Eggeling, and Hans Richter. While in Zurich,

Picabia also edited the eighth number of 391, which

featured the activities of the Zurich Dada group. «

36 See M

atthew S

. Witkovsky, “P

en Pals” in D

ickerman, The D

ada Sem

inars, 26

9–

29

3.

37 William

A. C

amfield, Francis P

icabia, 26 S

eptember 1918

, in Michel S

anouillet, D

ada á Paris, 2 vols. (P

aris, 199

3), 46

9.

§ Meeting at Weimar, 1922

§ 26 | 27

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berlin

Page 21: DADA: Redesign

berlinRudolf SchlichterGeorg Scholz

Raoul HausmannJohn HeartfieldWieland Herzfelde

Hannah HöchRichard HuelsenbeckHans Richter

Johannes BaaderOtto DixGeorge Grosz

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Ades, Dawn. Dada and Surrealism. London, 1974.

Ades, Dawn. Dada and Surrealism Reviewed [exh.

cat., Arts Council of Great Britain] (London, 1978).

Ades, Dawn. Photomontage. London, 1976.

Aiken, Edward A. “Reflections on Dada and the Cinema,”

Post Script: Essays in Films and the Humanities 3,

No. 2 (Winter 1984): 5–19.

Arnaud, Noël. “Les Metamorphoses Historiques

de Dada,” Critique 134 (July 1958): 579–604.

Backes–Haase, Alfons. Kunst und Wirklichkeit:

Zur Typologie des Dada-Manifests. Frankfurt

Am Main, 1992.

Baker, George. “The Artwork Caught by the

Tail,” October 97 (Summer 2001): 51–90.

Baker, George. “Entr’acte,” October

105 (Summer 2003): 159–165.

Barr, Alfred H., Jr., ed. Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism

[exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art] New York, 1936.

Béhar, Henri, and Michael Carassou. Dada,

Histoire d’une Subversion. Paris, 1990.

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical

Reproduction.” In Illuminations, Trans. Harry Zohn, 217–251

(New York, 1968).

Benson, Timothy O., and Éva Forgács, eds. Between

Worlds: A Sourcebook of Central European Avant-

Gardes, 1910–1930. Cambridge, Mass., 2002.

A

B

Berg, Hubert van Den. Avantgarde und Anarchismus:

Dada in Zurich und Berlin. Heidelberg, 1999.

Berg, Hubert van Den. “Dadaist Subjectivity and the Politics of

Indifference: On Some Contrasts and Correspondences Between

Dada in Zürich and Berlin.” In Subjectivity, ed. Willem Van Reijen

and Willem G. Weststeijn, 29–57. Amsterdam and Atlanta, 2000.

Berg, Hubert van Den, ed. Doesburg/Schwitters.

Holland ist Dada: Ein Feldzug. Hamburg, 1992.

Berg, Hubert van Den. The Import of Nothing: How Dada Came, Saw,

and Vanished in the Low Countries (1915–1929). New York, 2002.

Bigsby, Christopher William Edgar. Dada

and Surrealism. London, 1972.

Bohn, Willard. The Dada Market: An Anthology

of Poetry. Carbondale, Ill., 1993.

Buffet–Picabia, Gabrielle. Recontre Avec Picabia, Apollinaire,

Cravan, Duchamp, Arp, Calder. Paris, 1977.

Buschkühle, Carl–Peter. Kunst in der Revolte: Eine Existenz

philosophische Analyse des Dadaismus. Essen, 1985.

Caradec, François. “Dada Avec/Sans Parangon.”

In Art et Publicité 1890–1990 [exh. cat., Musée

National D’art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou]

(Paris, 1990), 216–227.

Carrouges, Michel, and Jean Clair. Les Machines Célibataires

[exh. cat., Musée des Arts Décoratifs] (Paris, 1976).

Chang, Fang–Wei, ed. Dada Conquers: the History,

the Myth, and the Legacy. Taipei, 1988.

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Coutts–Smith, Kenneth. Dada. London, 1970.

Dachy, Marc. The Dada Movement,

1915–1923. New York, 1990.

Dickerman, Leah. “Dada Gambits,”

October 105 (Summer 2003): 4–12.

Dickerman, Leah. “Dada’s Solipsism,”

Documents 19 (Fall 2000): 16–19.

Dickerman, Leah, With Matthew S. Witkovsky, eds.

The Dada Seminars. Washington, DC, 2005.

Elderfield, John. “On the Dada-Constructivist

Axis,” Dada/Surrealism 13 (1984): 5–16.

Elger, Dietmar. Dadaism. Cologne, 2004.

Elsaesser, Thomas. “Dada/Cinema,”

Dada/Surrealism 15 (1986): 13–27.

Erickson, John D. Dada: Performance, Poetry, and Art. Boston, 1894.

Fischer, Hartwig, ed. Schwitters–Arp [exh. cat.,

Kunstmuseum Basel] (Ostfilern-Ruit, 2004).

Foster, Stephen C., ed. Dada: The Coordinates

of Cultural Politics. New York, 1996.

Foster, Stephen C., and Rudolf E. Kuenzli, eds. Dada Spectrum:

The Dialects of Revolt. Madison, Wisconsin, 1979.

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