Fashionable Ladies, Dada Dandies Author(S): Brigid Doherty Reviewed Work(S): Source: Art Journal, Vol

Fashionable Ladies, Dada Dandies Author(s): Brigid Doherty Reviewed work(s): Source: Art Journal, Vol. 54, No. 1, Clothing as Subject (Spring, 1995), pp. 46-50 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777506 . Accessed: 26/03/2012 07:53

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http://www.jstor.org FashionableLadies, Dada Dandies

Brigid Doherty

n Berlin, as in Paris, London,and New York,skirts got shorterin the 1920s, exposing legs swathed in shiny, synthetic silk stockings. "Legs have emergedafter cen- turies of shrouding,and adult womanat last frankly admits herself to be a biped ... her ankles, calves, and knees (all the more dazzling in their suddenly revealed beauty after their long sojourn in the dark) [are] her chief erotic gebennddanah vonihr ene Reie ser scner Hemden Zwnen Sie e niraotenn beiorienften Firren arlbetten bezogenzu lassen, wenn 46 weapons,"Iwrote the psychoanalystJ. C. Flugel in his 1930 if-iren study, ThePsychology of Clothes.After the First WorldWar, Flugel argues, men's fashion did not keep pace with the modernizationof women'swear. Tailorsfailed to answerde- mandsfor increased comfort,convenience, and cleanliness, and manymen succumbed to cowardiceand clubby conform- ism in refusing to give up their stuffy suits. Flugel's account of the attentionto the limbs that characterizedwomen's fashions of the 1920s was writtenat a momentwhen reactionary dressmakersand authoritieson haute couture had already regroupedto launch a campaignaimed at loweringhemlines, and his text speaks in the name of the sartorialemancipation of both womenand men. In 1924 Raoul Hausmann, previouslya central figure in Berlin Dada, contributedan essay called "Fashion"to G, a Hemden sind weit und blusenadig Constructivistmagazine edited and published in Berlin by

Hans Richter.2 it shared con- 51 Hausmann, seems, Flugel's - I- - I: : - III 1i- I -- ::i cerns about the repressive vestimentaryregime of the suit. "Fashion,"published in English for the first time in this FIG. 1 Raoul Hausmann, "Fashion," G, no. 3 (June 1924): 51. Berlinische Galerie, Berlin. issue, takes a modern,functionalist approach to dress, call- ing for the rationalizationof clothing design in the interest of freedomof movementand, ultimately,hygiene.3 The layout the body is not merelya propertyof the fabric itself, but is a of "Fashion"-a clean sans-serif font, innovativepairings of result of the functionalistconstruction of the garment.In case blocksof text and photographicillustrations, eye-catching yet we do not immediatelydiscern this fact fromthe drapeof the discreet use of boldface and oversized type-is typical of sleeve's voluminousfolds, a little arrowat the armpitpoints it 1920s Germanmodernism. One of the illustrations(fig. 1) out. On the final page of "Fashion"(fig. 2) we again see shows Hausmann-shown from the back with his head in Hausmann himself-now photographed full figure and profileand his trademarkmonocle exposed-raising his arm placed at left without caption, frame, or background- matter-of-factlyto demonstratethe freedom of movementhe showing off an overcoat of his own design. His confident, enjoys in his loosely cut striped shirt ("shirtsare wide and upright pose emphasizes the careful cut of the coat's back blouselike,"reads the caption). For Hausmann, "fashionis yoke and deep, architectonicpleats. (Below the hem of his the function of the body made visible," and the illustration dark, ankle-length trouserswe glimpse his sensible rubber- underscoresthe point graphically.4We see howthe motionof soled shoes and hygienic, light-coloredsocks.) The clothes his arm shows in the give of the generoussleeve, and we are Hausmannwears are markedlydifferent from the frockcoats madeaware that this ability to accommodatethe movementof and tubelike trousershe criticizes in "Fashion,"but preach-

SPRING1995 ing practical reformand modeling functionalistfashion are only part of his aim here. On my reading, the sobriety is HU T E superficial, and the functionalismdoes nottell the full story.5 JLKO "Fashion"is, above all, an extended, splenetic com- plaint. Laced with breaks marked by broad typographical dashes, with rhetorical eruptions followed by exclamation points, and with breakneck-paced run-on sentences that exemplifyaspects of the tailoringthey describe, "Fashion"is a performativetext, a manifesto written for a magazine and still waitingto be declaimed. When, forexample, Hausmann gripes aboutthe inability of Germantailors to producea suit 2201 Hobg. jacket whose sleeve from a well- 2Elit21o('k aMtOU9 1 Ste1112 202 ,Todes, w SeOl drapes gracefully 8o2n1 0 an hesretzen2 Mtten 2k2nt mfman t a0 be, Gr eJa W-0es lt 0011 constructed his sentence imitates the continuous s211210 in roin, dern gelbse001210z o11222l02 shoulder, 00211 Vor emKrego1 warg. esohier 101011101, oale 211120 11011sio U1115~ter821102120l 22101211211 22tr00211 ?,Cele2ottfA,11 21211toffewurden o112Enland2 geschiollI, cut of a tailor'sscissors and the 2121011 at$ glschen 022a1n ,l:)e careful trail of his stitches diou!1itr 02e 0111kleiner 22111181201inOdr ogend 2e1110122e212 1121 1m lg22 ego22210110 0o11.i 01 102order200 Mk, ft i 0110 without to heed to the rules of In the 5 212S(1bg2220011102Anzug, Ric Both2er1110nd2Watson, der pausing pay grammar. 110210 onglisch. 1022221102221, 0011021 12 12 08n. D0r 2ii•ii~~iii!!{i~ !~ii•i! :•~l•!:•!!;;~ ~~!!:!•i•~~!iiddeutsheHo ler'It a01181older u 21pfnl~co1O 11ModeO,r iii!:i:•••:ii~::~•}i!•~ii::i:!i~:i~ iiii•iiii'i!•••!ii Eridedac l, er aubt m111211, 2lihs efigarillt0log (6 01a i ,• form of a broadside German tailors, tar)stleto)nt. Oder01,selt es In Berlin1121oviele 001222101 against reactionary g121, 2Kaftan 0et2die1Parole, Der D0e12ts0heoht c202 02 strkliedas 02Klaiungbesit112en mul0201 011221i~,Viellelicht 011211120011811 01211, wel 01 201221112211 11002 12ktio- "Fashion"is a bitterlycomic account of the flawed bodies of ne1011 oh m1o1112mat0 111die l01101112011211202 1p01 02,11121 2111112110101,D0O2 20100111tsc2e110111M1iitbr wa, 1011211man 201101, 11121112112, 202 21 01011b0202011 112112,(21 0011111 ooozu?) Vor l01111ihml 200021 Mode i121boo 21221122, middle-class men Mode st that has more to do with Dadaist satire wamoeglndie s102c2111111g20202110 eatztsi sd 121110fu1111bb01unei'itr --1111 01122200211 2211, hoi~t 0111mode t001112b22111012211 exp 1120211.00essonex than it 11211211dieoW-W022011 02221012 1110111212 210, He-fen'.lt does with modernistreform. When the text investi- 211200 002101, 212e01122202011 012, Die 21220110die2 21 112201 - 11111201, 211221 111011be0101112121, olWoho lot 0112d0001 Aerk?A mar)2112ber 202111011 1rauen m2111K~lper- 47 gates the stuffiness of male dress, it finds an ultimate cause b011111112212, 1121101, 20ie 11211t,01112122, 2i2 y21222b1 lnr2o1r1o11112t, 2i2 2 Quadratlats011811 1112 010111110110 in the male body itself. The German gentleman "barely 11102 1111110102 2102111211 ,11201 , 11. Ne11O,212

functions"because his posture has been stiffenedby military 1101112du 00100, his bloated with 011112, body. discipline, belly beer. For Hausmann, the moo 11210i0111112,.dal 021202111,0. German gentleman is not modern:just watch him trudge 22l211e`11121,, along the streets of the metropolis-or, better yet, capture him in cinematic slow-motion-and you'll see that he does FIG. 2 RaoulHausmann, "Fashion," G,no. 3 (June1924): 52. Berlinische not knowhow to move, thathe does notunderstand that "to be Galerie,Berlin. dressed is to have a consciousness of the body." To the German gentleman Hausmann opposes the well-dressed ionablefemale bodies, especially their legs ("[woman's]chief ladies of Berlin'swealthy West Side, representativesof the eroticweapons," as Flugel called them), plays a centralrole. much discussed Neue Frau (New Woman)of WeimarGer- "Fiat Modes, pereatars" (Let there be fashion, mayart many. Contemptfor "Germanness,"as embodied in beer- perish)proclaims the bannerheadline on Hausmann'sepony- bellied bourgeois men, not commitmentto functionalistre- mousphotomontage. The title is takenfrom a 1919 portfolioof form, drives Hausmann'stext and establishes the relationsof lithographsby MaxErnst, and it names an allegiance to mass body, gender,and modernitythat result in his celebrationof culture and an abandonmentof art that we have come to fashionableladies. expect of Berlin Dada's ironical announcements.Pasted on According to Flugel, male narcissistic and exhibi- top of the frontispiece of Ernst's Fiat Modes, pereat ars tionistic desires, inhibited as they are by the sober conven- portfolio, the next layer of Hausmann'sFiat Modes is a tions of modernmen's wear, usually get displaced in one of reproduction of his own 1920 watercolorKutschenbauch twopossible ways:through the voyeuristicviewing of women's dichtet (Coachbelly composes poetry). Elements of fashion bodies (scopophilia)or throughthe projectionof male exhibi- are already present in Kutschenbauch dichtet, where tionistic desire onto women, which, he adds, necessarily Kutschenbauchthe mannequin-poetasterwrites verse by involves "an element of identification."6Following Flugel, cranking the handle of a coffee grinder while a headless Kaja Silvermanhas called the latter strategy "male identi- tailor's dummy lurks behind him on the tilted floor of a fication with woman-as-spectacle"and has argued for its Chiricoesque interior. Our view of most of Kutschenbauch centrality in the organizationof male sexuality and for its dichtetis obscured by two moremontaged layers: an irregu- importanceto feminism as potentially destabilizing where larly cut page of typographyin which each line is a contin- conventionalgender roles are concerned.' It seems to me that uousspill of letters, numbers,and punctuationmarks, and on whenHausmann praised fashionableladies as the lone oppo- top of that an accumulation of women'sheads, legs, and nents of the culture of "clodhoppersand beer bellies" he athletic bodies clipped from newspaperand fashion photo- despised, his praise containedsuch an identification.In the graphs. The petite high-heeled shoe of one of the manylegs analyses that follow I look closely at two Dada photomon- stands carefully balanced on Kutschenbauch's coffee tages, Hausmann'sFiat Modes (fig. 3) and Hannah H6ch's grinder,anchoring the mass of bodies to the montage'sback- Da-Dandy (fig. 4), in which the spectacular display of fash- groundlayers and to the bottomof the picture. Eclipsing the

ART JOURNAL graceful calves seem to be walking at a brisk pace, kicking the image into action. As I see it, this collection of women's AR * bodies dense with extra legs is neither the result nor the representationof a voyeuristic fantasy of visual possession and photographicdismemberment. On the contrary,Fiat Modes seems to me to be a picture in which Hausmann ...... identifieswith the athletic and fashionablefemale bodies he assembles. Arrangingthem, he imagines himself performing their fragmentaryacrobatics. Hdch's Da-Dandy shows another cluster of female bodies in stylish attire. Here the bust of a man is described in profile by the overlapping heads and upper bodies of womenmodeling the latest fashions:little black dresses that expose the arms and close-fitting hats of exotic fabric and lace that cover modish Bubikopf bobs. This dandy is a composite,"a la Arcimboldo,of pieces of severalwell-dressed modernwomen: graceful, bare, bracelet-ringedarms; pearl encircled necks; and rouged, powdered,and lipstickedfaces with mix-and-match and mouths. Hoch has 48 montaged, eyes delineated his profile with a red contour,accentuating the elegant silhouette of forehead, nose, and chin against the black-and-whitephotographic background of a tranquilland- scape. Completingthe dandy's compact body are a pair of slender ankles with feet lodged in two-tone high-heeled pumps. These little legs, which descend fromthe half moon

OWN.

?4,7, FIG. 3 RaoulHausmann, Fiat Modes, ca. 1920, photomontage.Location unknown. owi.? 41 . At:: body attached to those big legs are several female athletes crossing the finish line of a foot race. Above a racerwith her arms thrust wide in victory appears the head that belongs to the legs below. Hausmann'ssource for this figure was a newspaperphotograph of a youngAmerican whose snug, full- body swimsuit made her the talk of a Spanish sea resort in 1920.8 Fromthe look of her sleek cap and cowl, this modern womanmight be equally well outfittedfor a test flight or fora spin in the little vehicle that exits, upside down,from behind her buttocks. At the centerof Fiat Modesis a woman'sbroad, smiling face. Herbody has been taken apartand then compressedby Hausmann'scutting and pasting, and nowa pair of glamorous legs crossed below the knee emergeat her collarbone, making her lap lie just belowher chin (the well-matchedshadows that run aroundthe jaw and downinto the space between the knees heighten this uncannily convincing elision of the torso),while the figure'sremaining shoulder and a pendulous breast proceed organicallyfrom the other side of her neck. Her ear sproutsgiant legs, and unlike the confidentlypoised FIG. 4 HannahH6ch, Da-Dandy, ca. 1920, photomontage,113/ x 91i6inches. but static limbs that make up the woman'slower body, these Private collection.

SPRING1995 of black sequined fabric that is the dandy's derriere, walk "backward"as if turned by the montagedbody's extraordin- ary torsion in the opposite direction of the figure's facial profile.As the title's stutteringpun says, this man is a Dada- dandy. And thoughthe facial features are not precisely his, perhapsthis picture is a representationof Hausmann,H6ch's loverduring the Dada years. As such it is a witty image of his identificationwith fashionableladies, an image that at the same time takes its own ironic distance from the dandy's fantasy. As the illustrations in G indicate, Hausmann was happyto serve as a mannequinfor modern fashion. He did not sufferfrom those psychosartorialafflictions of modernmas- culinity, the repression of narcissism and the erosion of exhibitionism,and his pleasure in the spectaculardisplay of his own body was evidentwhen in 1926 he danced a number dedicated to men'swear at HerwarthWalden's famous Sturm gallery. A photographof the performanceof Hausmann's tribute to "Oxford that found its into the Berlin bags" way 49 newspapers(fig. 5) shows him midstep, gesturing expres- sively with his hands and letting the wide legs and well-cut pleatsof his trousersspeak forthemselves and forthe dancing body they enclose.9 u~ ?I

Appendix F"AE Fashion

A cap is a head covering. A suit is a clothing-object. Shoes FIG.5 "TheOberdada Dances the OxfordBags," from Neue BerlinerZeitung, November 1926. BerlinischeGalerie, Berlin. are foot casings. Saying that may call to mind very much or 26, verylittle. In Germany,for example, a cap is a thing that one can'tmanage to get ontoone's head. It's a "something,"quite to say, they had no drape to them at all. They pulled when I like a cow pat, made of a kind of stair carpeting. A suit exists sat or walked. They formeda splendidpair of bow legs all by only to spoil everyform and everymovement. German tailors, themselves. even the so-called good ones, make the shouldersprettily Of course, I knowthat there are manytailoring "firms" sloping and narrow,the neck twice as wide as necessary, the in Berlin, but not one that has a clue whata suit is. Afterall, jacket beautifully bulging in the region of the stomach(for a I'm neither a film actor nor a profiteer!These people make dignified man has to have a belly). Trousersare tubes, broad suits as though they were working with sheet metal, all at the bottom,narrow over the thigh; they'rea kilometerwide padding, padding, padding. Fine forpeople who discovered behind and have to be fastened to the body with a the use of pajamas or a trouserpress only six months ago. clothesline-for suspenders don't help; they pull the leg Whatdistinguishes the Americanor English suit is this: it is sheath up to the armpits, but don'tmake it any narrower.Of constructedto fit the humanbody and holds it togetheron the course, I'm well awarethat there are "American"tailors here. outside. The suit is wide where the humanbody is wide, and I've even been to one. However,instead of cutting the shoul- narrowat the feet, neck, and hands. In between it's loose, der wide enough to reach out past the armpitin such a way loose, loose in a way that no Germantailor will ever compre- thatit becomes broadand roundby virtueof the cut itself with hend. In an English or Americansuit one can stand on one's a little arc downtoward the arm and the sleeve pouringdown head, and it will hold its shape and still look good. If those like a waterfall-this gentlemanjust stuffed in two kilos of gentlemenwould just foronce go to any Americanfilm of their padding. The sleeve was a husk with no drape at all, it choice in orderto free themselvesfrom the conceit that they pinchedwith everyfree movement,it made dreadfulcreases have any ability at all. There they could see suits from all at the back when the arm was motionless. The trousers- walks of life; even the tight-fitting,vaguely Biedermeier-style well, I can hardly bring myself to speak of them. Although suits that have been popular in America for the last three they came up to my navel, fromthere on they just sat; that is years are not mere tubes; they allow complete freedom of

ART JOURNAL movement.They could also learn what a sleeve looks like, that he knowshow to move. (He thinks: Why bother?)Above whata pair of trousersis, and a wholelot more.Cap makers of all I say to him: Fashion is not nonsense, fashion is the Berlin, off to an American film with you! Shoe manufac- functionof the body madevisible-and to be dressed means turers, off to the cinema! Or get yourselvessubscriptions to to havea consciousnessof the body. Which is whatthe ladies Americanor English fashion magazines!Shoes, say the ex- from the fashionable West End have, at least more than perts, are sharp as needles or else very wide. Not true! In the "gentlemen." On the Kurfiirstendamm and the Berlin, the only shoes one can buy and actuallywear are from Tauentzienstrasseone sees women who are dressed. The Wichert's,where they're made by handon Americanlasts and undergarmentsthey wear-or could wear-can be found at then fitted with plantation-rubbersoles. Grtinfeld's.With respect to form, undergarmentsare not generally as sophisticated here as in England or America. OTHERWISE But one sees women who have a consciousness of their go to one of the fashionableshopping streets, buy yourselfa bodies, women who function, who exercise-they are the shirt. It will hang downto yourknees. Unless you'rea portly only opposingpole to that contemplativeGerman inwardness police sergeant from the provinces-try buying yourself that finds its highest expression in clodhoppersand beer some underpantsin Berlin! Whereveryou go-they'll be bellies. three times too wide and the "smallest size" will gentleman's Raoul Hausmann come up to yournose! In Americaeven the richest man buys G, no. 3, Berlin, June 1924. his clothes off the rack. There, clothing is all well cut and simple, i.e., decent in form. Here, it's ridiculousto speak of 50 fashion:"A frock coat is elegant,"your wife is sure to tell you. But believe me, you'lldo better to join the "BerlinKnicker- bocker Club" I'm planning! (Actually, I wouldn'tthink of Notes foundingsuch a club: knickerswould be wornall day long in Translationof "Fashion"in the appendix to this article is by the author. even at the So: underwearis out of the 1. J. C. Flugel, The Psychology of Clothes (1930; reprint, New York:International Berlin, theater!) Universities Press, 1971), 161-62. question in Berlin. Pajamas-men can't wear women'spa- 2. Hausmannwould return to the subject of men'sfashion in the early thirties, writing a numberof reform-minded as well as an outline foran film about jamas a la orientale-so you'rebetter off not buying pajamas essays experimental clothing. These later works, all unpublished, belong to the Raoul HausmannArchive in Berlinat all. -Shirts! I gave the firmWolff and Glaserfeld of the Berlinische Galerie, Museumfor ModerneKunst, Photographieund Architek- an excellent American pattern, and they made me a set of tur, Berlin. I am indebted to WolfgangErler and Eva Zuchner of the Berlinische Galerie for their generosity in making newly acquired unpublished materials avail- beautiful shirts. If you can't do so yourself, force your shirt able to me as soon as they had been catalogued. I am grateful to MarthePrevort for her suppliersto ordertheir goods only fromfirms who are in the kind permissionto publish the translationof "Fashion"that accompanies this article. 3. Other1920s critics of modernmen's wear made similar demandsin the interest of know. comfortand hygiene. In England, the Men'sDress ReformParty encouraged tailors to imitate certain aspects of contemporarywomen's fashion-such as the use of lighter fabrics and the of lines and looser cuts-in the of HATS AT ILKO adoption simpler making men's clothing. Also in England during the same period, a related organizationdevoted to or Habig's. women'swear, the Sensible Dress Society, campaigned against the reactionary But no caps! It'll kill you, putting a thing like that on movementto abandon the short skirt, while in the United States the Fashionof the MonthClub was organized to fight the battle over hemline recidivism on this side of yourhead! the Atlantic. See Flugel, Psychology of Clothes, 165-66, 206-11. One buys overcoats at ILKO.--Yes-it's very hard 4. Ibid., 52. The of Hausmann's as it in G is also to be dressed at all Berlin!Before the warit was 5. Constructivist design "Mode" appeared just in easier, ultimately at odds with the essay's content. In a 1946 letter to Kurt Schwitters, mostly because the sale of fabric wasn'tsuch an outrageous Hausmannexpressed his oppositionto modernist,Bauhaus-style typography and his racket back then. textiles were sent to continuing allegiance to the typographic principles of the Dadaist sound poem (German England, (Lautgedicht). "I am against Tschichold and Bauhaus-typography,"he wrote in stamped, and sold here as English, but theywere good-now English, "it'sa poorthing. Typographyought to be optophonetic."Raoul Hausmannto Kurt Hausmann Documentationdu they're and A little tailornear the Schwitters, September2, 1946, C2/677, Mus~e pure crap very expensive.) national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou,Paris. PotsdamerStrasse has some fairly good English fabric: he 6. Flugel, Psychology of Clothes, 118-19. charges 260 marks for a passably made suit. Rice Brothers 7. Kaja Silverman,"Fragments of a FashionableDiscourse," in TaniaModleski, ed., Studies in Entertainment:Critical Approaches to Mass Culture(Bloomington: Indiana and Watson, the best custom tailors in England, charge 12 UniversityPress, 1986), 141. pounds. But unfortunatelythe German"gentleman" has no 8. "SwimmingSeason in San Sebastian: The Peculiar Bathing Suit That Made This AmericanLady a Seaside Celebrity,"Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung 29, no. 46 (Novem- feeling for fashion. Either he believes that being squeezed ber 14, 1920): 540. into something narrow(a la militaire) is elegant, or since 9. The caption in Neue Berliner Zeitung mistakenly refers to Hausmann as the In Dada moniker to while Hausmann in Oberdada. fact, that belonged JohannesBaader, there have been so manypeople fromthe Balkans Berlin, was knownas the Dadasoph. he thinks that caftans are the orderof the day. The German man has not grasped the constructiveelement that clothing BRIGID DOHERTY, doctoral candidate in art history at the must have. Perhaps because he himself barely functions. Universityof California,Berkeley, is completinga dissertation SometimeI'd like to film the Tauentzienstrassein slow moon montageand the representationof modernityin tion. One can see that a Germanwas in the military-but not BerlinDada.

SPRING1995