DOCSLIB.ORG

Collage”, In: Hannah Höch

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Collage”, In: Hannah Höch Hannah Höch PRESTEL Munich • London • New York Contents 4 Foreword The Album Iwona Blazwick 144 Glued, Not Cut: On the Singularity 8 The Rebellious Collages of Hannah Höch’s Scrapbook of Hannah Höch Ralf Burmeister Daniel F. Herrmann 152 Images 16 On Collage Hannah Höch 1936–45 161 Images 1912–26 171 Diary entry on the visit to the 18 Hannah Höch, Dada and Entartete Kunst exhibition, 1937 the ‘New Woman’ Dawn Ades 172 Diary entries on the arrival of Russian troops and the ceasefire, 1945 30 Hannah Höch, Performance and the Anti-Revue Deborah Lewer 1945–78 38 Images 174 Hannah Höch’s Later Collages: 72 On Embroidery An Endless Process of Renewal Hannah Höch Emily Butler 73 Dada 182 Interview between Edouard Adolf Behne Roditi and Hannah Höch 74 The Painter 194 Images Hannah Höch 232 Catalogue foreword to Reinickendorfer Künstler stellen aus! 1926–36 233 Fantastic Art Hannah Höch 78 Performing the Culture of Weimar Postcolonialism: Hannah Höch’s 234 A Glance over My Life, July 1958 From an Ethnographic Museum Hannah Höch and Its Legacy Brett M. Van Hoesen Appendix 88 The Mess of History, or the Unclean Hannah Höch 241 List of Works in the Exhibition Maud Lavin 246 Biography 247 List of Exhibitions 96 Images 251 Bibliography 140 Catalogue foreword to Hannah 253 Contributors Höch’s solo exhibition at the 254 Image Credits Kunstzaal De Bron, The Hague 254 Acknowledgements 141 A Few Words on Photomontage Hannah Höch 3 Foreword The Beauties of Fortuity: Hannah Höch (1889–1978) Iwona Blazwick Whenever we want to force this “photo-matter” to yield new forms, we must be prepared for a journey of discovery, we must start without any preconceptions; most of all, we must be open to the beauties of fortuity. Here more than anywhere else, these beauties, wandering and extravagant, obligingly enrich our fantasy.1 Hannah Höch From “On Today's Photomontage” Str˘edisko 4, no. 1 4 Part of the modernist revolution, Hannah Höch to the image. This exhibition illustrates her witnessed the rise of the European avant- contribution to the development of collage and gardes; the gradual emancipation of women; photomontage, and to modernism itself. the growth of photography, cinema and the mass media; and the decimation of Europe through We are very grateful to the many authors and two world wars. These epic social changes are contributors to the catalogue who have contri- refracted through her remarkable photomon- buted such original research and have enabled tages. Beyond holding up a fractured mirror to us to revisit her work and draw out its contemp- the sociopolitical changes around her, however, orary signifi cance. This publication charts Höch’s Höch’s aesthetic also transcends history. Her career chronologically, starting from her early formal experimentation offers a liberating and training in traditional printmaking and pattern poetic excursion into the farthest reaches of design, via the satiric acumen of her 1920s works the imagination. and the Ethnographic Museum series, all the way to the poetic abstractions of the post-war Moving from small-town Germany to metro- years, culminating in her own story in one of her politan Berlin as a young woman, Höch became last works, Lebensbild, 1972–73. The catalogue an active member of one of the most avant- includes a host of scholarly essays, but also garde cultural movements of her time: Dada. offers original documents, many of which are Höch’s work signifi cantly infl uenced her con- translated for the fi rst time into English, to offer temporaries, the legends of Berlin Dada from a rich picture of the artist’s life. Raoul Hausmann and Johannes Baader to John Heartfi eld, George Grosz and Kurt Schwitters. This show could not have been realised without She was also in dialogue with other great the enthusiasm of the curatorial team, whose European modernists, including László Moholy- championing of Höch’s work has guided the Nagy, Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg. project from its earliest inception. The project was curated by Daniel F. Herrmann, Eisler Despite the immense contributions that Höch Curator and Head of Curatorial Studies at the made, particularly to the media of collage and Whitechapel Gallery, and Emily Butler, Assistant photomontage, and the reputation that her work Curator. The Whitechapel Gallery was particu- has among artists and art historians all over the larly fortunate in working with Professor Dawn world, there has never been a major retrospective Ades, OBE, as co-curator of the exhibition, of her works in the United Kingdom. The whose immense expertise and knowledge were Whitechapel Gallery is delighted to bring this key to guiding the exhibition and the publication. exhibition of Hannah Höch’s collages to the British public for the fi rst time, introducing an Our thanks go to the whole team at Whitechapel artist whose work is as beautiful as it is relevant, Gallery who have joined forces to produce this and whose masterful command of the medium major exhibition, including Gallery Manager seems as fresh today as it did at the time of Chris Aldgate, supported by Patrick Lears and its creation. Nat Carey, who helped realise the successful display. We are also grateful to Melanie Stacey Höch’s career was long and varied, spanning and Sarah Auld in the Publications department, more than six decades between the 1910s and as well as the team at A Practice for Everyday the 1970s. Her work refl ects the dramatic pace Life who have developed such an elegant design, of change that new technologies brought about in and also everyone at the publishing house tandem with social and cultural revolutions. She Prestel, our co-publishers. focuses on the changing role of women and the proliferation of photography through advertising Any exhibition is a collage of many collabor- and journalism. Her work also draws on how ators, and no exhibition of such international photojournalism expanded to documenting and relevance could have been realised without popularising non-Western cultures. These refl ec- the sincere and passionate support of interna- tions on life are brought into the sphere of art tional experts. We wish to thank in particular through Höch’s fragmentation of the body and Dr Ralf Burmeister, Dr Annelie Lütgens and her use of colour to add geometric abstraction the whole team at the Berlinische Galerie, as 5 Portrait of Hannah Höch 1929 Vintage gelatin silver print Ubu Gallery, New York, & Galerie Berinson, Berlin 6 well as Dr Anita Beloubek-Hammer and Dr We are delighted to have worked on this project Andreas Schalhorn from the Berlin Kupferstich- with the support of the German Embassy in kabinett and their conservation departments, London and the Goethe-Institut. The trustees of who have collaborated closely with us to facilitate the Whitechapel Gallery join me in acknowl- the loan of so many fragile objects. We are also edging the vital fi nancial support of the Arts particularly indebted to the Institut für Aus- Council of England and of our valued members landsbeziehungen and the Landesbank Berlin, and patrons. both of which have generally loaned their many precious works to us. Last but not least, we would like to thank the family of the artist. This project could not have We are grateful to all the institutional and private happened without their full support. It is a lenders listed in the acknowledgements that have pleasure and a privilege for us to present the generously cooperated with us on this major work of Hannah Höch here at the Whitechapel survey. Their support was vital in helping us Gallery, London. realise this exhibition. Our heartfelt thanks go to the Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung, which enabled the production of such a beautiful publication by sponsoring this catalogue. 1 Hannah Höch, “A Few Words on Photomontage”, in: Str˘edisko 4, no. 1, Brno, 1934. Reproduced on p. 141 of this volume. 7 The Rebellious Collages of Hannah Höch Daniel F. Herrmann These phantasms are not escapist, they are attacks, and no longer about creating moods. They set about reality with a hitherto unseen rigour and compare it to the ideal. This art is a call and an exhortation in amongst the ruins of a lost world...1 Hannah Höch, “Fantastic Art”, 1946 8 A spectre was haunting Berlin – the spectre of Exhibiting several confi dent collages, Höch’s Dadaism. It stared from mannequins on the contributions were described by the critic Adolf ceiling and peered down from frames on the walls, Behne as “outstanding works”, which, despite any it sat on pedestals and shouted from posters, perceived shortcomings of the Fair, made “a visit and it promised revolution: “TAKE DADA to the exhibition worthwhile” and received men- SERIOUSLY” – only to add, winking slyly at the tion even before the works of the better known visitor, “it’s worth it.” From 30 June to 25 August Hausmann and Grosz.5 Höch was standing her 1920, the Kunsthandlung Dr Otto Burchard, an ground in a male-dominated environment, using art gallery near the bustling Potsdamer Platz, had collage with defi ning expertise. Her fi rm embrace been turned into the venue for the First Inter- of the medium’s capacity to question traditional national Dada Fair. Its programmatic invitation artistic forms was not just a momentary artistic card set the tone: development. It also foreshadowed an interest in exploring the acerbic, poignant, and beautiful The Dadaistic person is the radical opponent possibilities of collage that would continue of exploitation; the logic of exploitation throughout her entire life’s work. This resolute creates nothing but fools, and the Dadaistic artistic curiosity and a determination to break person hates stupidity and loves nonsense! down intellectual boundaries were to become Thus, the Dadaistic person shows himself to Hannah Höch’s lasting legacy.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Johannes Baader's Postwar Plasto-Dio-Dada-Drama And
    Dada/Surrealism ISSN 0084-9537 No. 21 DOI: 10.17077/0084-9537.1336 Exhibiting Dada and Surrealism pps. 1-16 Johannes Baader’s Postwar Plasto-Dio-Dada-Drama and German War Exhibitions during World War I Katharina Hoins Hamburger Kunsthalle accessible This work has been identified with a http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">Rights Statement In Copyright. Copyright © 2017 Katharina Hoins This work has been identified with a http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">Rights Statement In Copyright. Recommended Citation Hoins, Katharina. "Johannes Baader’s Postwar Plasto-Dio-Dada-Drama and German War Exhibitions during World War I." Dada/Surrealism 21 (2017): 1-16. Available at: https://doi.org/10.17077/0084-9537.1336 Hosted by Iowa Research Online This Theme Essay is brought to you for free and open access by Iowa Research Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dada/Surrealism by an authorized administrator of Iowa Research Online. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Johannes Baader’s Postwar Plasto-Dio-Dada-Drama and German War Exhibitions during World War I Katharina Hoins Figure 1:Johannes Baader, Plasto-Dio-Dada- Figure 2: Trophy arrangement, German Drama, 1920. War Exhibition Freiburg, 1916. “The World War is a newspaper war. In reality, it never existed,” Johannes Baader proclaimed in 1920 in the Dada Almanach, with regard to his assemblage the Plasto- Dio-Dada-Drama. “So one should never believe newspapers. It’s all eyewash. From the first reports of the mobilization, to Liège, the Battle of the Marne, the retreat from Russia and the armistice – the press has created the World War” (Baader, “Germany’s Greatness” 101).
    [Show full text]
  • The Text and the Coming of Age of the Avant-Garde in Germany
    The Text and the Coming of Age of the Avant-Garde in Germany Timothy 0. Benson Visible Language XXI 3/4 365-411 The radical change in the appearance of the text which oc­ © 1988 Visible Language curred in German artists' publications during the teens c/o Rhode Island School of Design demonstrates a coming of age of the avant-garde, a transfor­ Providence, RI 02903 mation in the way the avant-garde viewed itself and its role Timothy 0. Benson within the broader culture. Traditionally, the instrumental Robert Gore Riskind Center for purpose of the text had been to interpret an "aesthetic" ac­ German Expressionist Studies tivity and convey the historical intentions and meaning as­ Los Angeles County Museum ofArt sociated with that activity. The prerogative of artists as 5905 Wilshire Boulevard well as critics, apologists and historians, the text attempted Los Angeles, CA 90036 to reach an observer believed to be "situated" in a shared web of events, thus enacting the historicist myth based on the rationalist notion of causality which underlies the avant­ garde. By the onset of the twentieth century, however, both the rationalist basis and the utopian telos generally as­ sumed in the historicist myth were being increasingly chal­ lenged in the metaphors of a declining civilization, a dis­ solving self, and a disintegrating cosmos so much a part of the cultural pessimism of the symbolist era of "deca­ dence."1 By the mid-teens, many of the Expressionists had gone beyond the theme of an apocalypse to posit a catastro­ phe so deep as to void the whole notion of progressive so­ cial change.2 The aesthetic realm, as an arena of pure form and structure rather than material and temporal causality, became more than a natural haven for those artists and writers who persisted in yearning for such ideals as Total­ itiit; that sense of wholeness for the individual and human- 365 VISIBLE LANGUAGE XXI NUMBER 3/4 1987 *65.
    [Show full text]
  • Dada Africa. Dialogue with the Other 05.08.–07.11.2016
    Dada Africa. Dialogue with the Other 05.08.–07.11.2016 PRESS KIT Hannah Höch, Untitled (From an Ethnographic Museum), 1929 © VG BILD-KUNST Bonn, 2016 CONTENTS Press release Education programme and project space “Dada is here!” Press images Exhibition architecture Catalogue National and international loans Companion booklet including the exhibition texts New design for Museum Shop WWW.BERLINISCHEGALERIE.DE BERLINISCHE GALERIE LANDESMUSEUM FÜR MODERNE ALTE JAKOBSTRASSE 124-128 FON +49 (0) 30 –789 02–600 KUNST, FOTOGRAFIE UND ARCHITEKTUR 10969 BERLIN FAX +49 (0) 30 –789 02–700 STIFTUNG ÖFFENTLICHEN RECHTS POSTFACH 610355 – 10926 BERLIN [email protected] PRESS RELEASE Ulrike Andres Head of Marketing and Communications Tel. +49 (0)30 789 02-829 [email protected] Contact: ARTEFAKT Kulturkonzepte Stefan Hirtz Tel. +49 (0)30 440 10 686 [email protected] Berlin, 3 August 2016 Dada Africa. Dialogue with the Other 05.08.–07.11.2016 Press conference: 03.08.2016, 11 am, opening: 04.08.2016, 7 pm Dada is 100 years old. The Dadaists and their artistic articulations were a significant influence on 20th-century art. Marking this centenary, the exhibition “Dada Africa. Dialogue with the Other” is the first to explore Dadaist responses to non- European cultures and their art. It shows how frequently the Dadaists referenced non-Western forms of expression in order to strike out in new directions. The springboard for this centenary project was Dada’s very first exhibition at Han Coray’s gallery in Zurich. It was called “Dada. Cubistes. Art Nègre”, and back in Hannah Höch, Untitled (From an 1917 it displayed works of avant-garde and African art side by Ethnographic Museum), 1929 side.
    [Show full text]
  • Dada and Surrealist Journals in the Mary Reynolds Collection
    Documents of Dada and Surrealism: Dada and Surrealist Journals in the Mary Reynolds Collection... Page 1 of 26 Documents of Dada and Surrealism: Dada and Surrealist Journals in the Mary Reynolds Collection IRENE E. HOFMANN Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, The Art Institute of Chicago Dada 6 (Bulletin The Mary Reynolds Collection, which entered The Art Institute of Dada), Chicago in 1951, contains, in addition to a rich array of books, art, and ed. Tristan Tzara ESSAYS (Paris, February her own extraordinary bindings, a remarkable group of periodicals and 1920), cover. journals. As a member of so many of the artistic and literary circles View Works of Art Book Bindings by publishing periodicals, Reynolds was in a position to receive many Mary Reynolds journals during her life in Paris. The collection in the Art Institute Finding Aid/ includes over four hundred issues, with many complete runs of journals Search Collection represented. From architectural journals to radical literary reviews, this Related Websites selection of periodicals constitutes a revealing document of European Art Institute of artistic and literary life in the years spanning the two world wars. Chicago Home In the early part of the twentieth century, literary and artistic reviews were the primary means by which the creative community exchanged ideas and remained in communication. The journal was a vehicle for promoting emerging styles, establishing new theories, and creating a context for understanding new visual forms. These reviews played a pivotal role in forming the spirit and identity of movements such as Dada and Surrealism and served to spread their messages throughout Europe and the United States.
    [Show full text]
  • The False Gods of Dada
    The false Gods of Dada: on Dada Presentism by Maria Stavrinaki A new book on the movement draws lessons on the dangers of eclecticism by Pac Pobric | 13 May 2016 | The Art Newspaper Artists at the First International Dada Fair in Berlin, June 1920. In the final chapter of the art historian Maria Stavrinaki's new book, Dada Presentism, she imagines the origin of Dada as an immaculate conception. "Who, in fact, did invent Dada?" she asks. "Everyone and no one." Amidst the devastation of the First World War, with Enlightenment optimism in ruin, Dada arrived as a miraculous redeemer. Stavrinaki echoes the German Dadaist Richard Huelsenbeck, who wrote in his 1920 history of the movement that "Dada came over the Dadaists without their knowing it; it was an immaculate conception, and thereby its profound meaning was revealed to me." Throughout her book, Stavrinaki hews closely to this clerical line, offering essentially theological claims about the movement. In the collages of Raoul Hausmann and the masks of Marcel Janco, Stavrinaki sees God-like reconciliation of all opposites. The Dadaists were both Futurists, with all the attendant utopian aspiration that implies, and Primitivists, insofar as they were fascinated by mythical history. "For those intellectuals and artists who found neither comfort in the past nor in the future, the only remaining choice was to gain a foothold in the present", Stavrinaki writes—a present characterised, above all, by its openness to all possibility. Dada's "presentism"—its absorption of all that had come and all that was to be— allowed for omniscience and absolute artistic opportunity.
    [Show full text]
  • Raoul Hausmann and Berlin Dada Studies in the Fine Arts: the Avant-Garde, No
    NUNC COCNOSCO EX PARTE THOMAS J BATA LIBRARY TRENT UNIVERSITY Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/raoulhausmannberOOOObens Raoul Hausmann and Berlin Dada Studies in the Fine Arts: The Avant-Garde, No. 55 Stephen C. Foster, Series Editor Associate Professor of Art History University of Iowa Other Titles in This Series No. 47 Artwords: Discourse on the 60s and 70s Jeanne Siegel No. 48 Dadaj Dimensions Stephen C. Foster, ed. No. 49 Arthur Dove: Nature as Symbol Sherrye Cohn No. 50 The New Generation and Artistic Modernism in the Ukraine Myroslava M. Mudrak No. 51 Gypsies and Other Bohemians: The Myth of the Artist in Nineteenth- Century France Marilyn R. Brown No. 52 Emil Nolde and German Expressionism: A Prophet in His Own Land William S. Bradley No. 53 The Skyscraper in American Art, 1890-1931 Merrill Schleier No. 54 Andy Warhol’s Art and Films Patrick S. Smith Raoul Hausmann and Berlin Dada by Timothy O. Benson T TA /f T Research U'lVlT Press Ann Arbor, Michigan \ u » V-*** \ C\ Xv»;s 7 ; Copyright © 1987, 1986 Timothy O. Benson All rights reserved Produced and distributed by UMI Research Press an imprint of University Microfilms, Inc. Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Benson, Timothy O., 1950- Raoul Hausmann and Berlin Dada. (Studies in the fine arts. The Avant-garde ; no. 55) Revision of author’s thesis (Ph D.)— University of Iowa, 1985. Bibliography: p. Includes index. I. Hausmann, Raoul, 1886-1971—Aesthetics. 2. Hausmann, Raoul, 1886-1971—Political and social views.
    [Show full text]
  • De Stijl Presentation Cdul
    Dadaism and De Stijl In Europe The Emergence of Dadism during WW1 and the Rebirth of Order with the De Stijl Design and the World in Transition: Before and after WW1 , new concepts and forms emerged in the form of art and design movements: 1. Art Nouveau 2. Expressionism 3. Futurism 5. Cubism Influencing these emergent trends were new ideas, technologies, materials and political and social change and upheaval. Seen as part of a desire to return to order, the De Stijl movement was a natural response to the chaos that corresponded with the events of WW1. The Emergence of Dadaism • Dadaism was a cultural movement that was concentrated on anti-war politics which then made its way to the art world through art theory, art manifestoes, literature, poetry and eventually graphic design and the visual arts. The movement, although Dadaists would not have been happy calling it a movement, originated in Switzerland and spread across Europe and into the United States, which was a safe haven for many writers during World War I. An anti-art movement, Dadaists attempted to break away from the styles of traditional art aesthetics as well as rationality, of any kind. They produced a great many publications as a home for their writings and protest materials which were handed out at gatherings and protests. The visual aesthetics associate with the movement often include found objects and materials combined through collage. Marcel Duchamp, Fountain 1917 Quite literally inverting Reality, a urinal upended and signed by Duchamp with the Name ‘Mott’, the plumbing supply chain that sold it to him.
    [Show full text]
  • Dada Futures: Inflation, Speculation, and Uncertainty in Der Dada No
    UC Berkeley TRANSIT Title Dada Futures: Inflation, Speculation, and Uncertainty in Der Dada No. 1 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4043n8kj Journal TRANSIT, 10(2) Author Beals, Kurt Publication Date 2016 DOI 10.5070/T7102031160 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Beals: Dada Futures: Inflation, Speculation, and Uncertainty in Der Dada No. 1 Dada Futures: Inflation, Speculation, and Uncertainty in Der Dada No. 1 TRANSIT vol. 10, no. 2 Kurt Beals Introduction In June 1919, shortly before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the Berlin Dadaists Raoul Hausmann and Johannes Baader published the first issue of their magazine Der Dada.1 Although it comprised a mere eight pages, Der Dada No. 1 was hardly thin on ambition. Like the treaty itself, the magazine claimed to usher in a new era: Its first page proclaimed, “Die neue Zeit beginnt mit dem Todesjahr des Oberdada,” a reference to Baader, who had intentionally fed false rumors of his own demise to the German press (Fig. 1). From the very beginning, then, this magazine presented itself as a decisive break with the past, and heralded a radically different future. On subsequent pages, the magazine tackled topics ranging from politics to economics to religion, its tone veering from the polemical to the plainly satirical, punctuated by non-sequiturs, chaotic typography, and Hausmann’s rough-hewn woodcuts. One common thread amidst this diversity was a concern with the future, and above all with its manifest uncertainty. As the present article will demonstrate, such uncertainty gave rise to a distinctive attitude towards the future that can be recognized throughout the issue: an attitude of speculation.
    [Show full text]
  • Francis Picabia's Anti-Art Anti-Christ
    Jésus-Christ Rastaquouère: Francis Picabia’s Anti-Art Anti-Christ Sarah Hayden Jésus-Christ Rastaquouère was published in Paris in the autumn of 1920.1 After protracted, ultimately abortive, negotiations with René Hilsum and Bernard Grasset, it was produced at Francis Picabia’s own expense under the ‘Collection Dada’ imprint of Paris bookseller-publishers, Au Sans Pareil, and distributed by Jacques Povlovsky’s Librairie-Galerie La Cible.2 The fact that Ezra Pound was an early proponent of Picabia’s writing is not surprising; the fact that his enthusiastic early reading of Jésus-Christ Rastaquouère has not been succeeded by extensive further scholarship certainly is. Having dismissed Picabia in 1916 as a proponent of ‘modern froth’,3 by 1921 Pound was willing to praise his prowess ‘not exactly as a painter, but as a writer’.4 In the same year, Pound 1. Francis Picabia, Jésus-Christ Rastaquouère (Paris: Au Sans Pareil, 1920), hereafter JCR in the text. Translators and critics have offered various glosses on the book’s title. See Michel Sanouillet, Francis Picabia et 391, vol. 2 (Paris: Eric Losfeld, 1966), p. 123, and Francis Picabia, I am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose and Provocation, ed. and trans. by Marc Lowenthal (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2007), p. 223. Picabia also used the ‘rasta’ prefix in his visual art of this period, including Tableau rastadada (1920) (collage on paper, 19 x 17 cm), and Le Rastaquouère (1920). The latter of these was exhibited at the Salon d’automne, Paris, October 1920. For an illuminating treatment of the Tableau rastadada, see George Baker, ‘Long live Daddy’, October, 105 (2003), 37–72.
    [Show full text]
  • Dada Was an Artistic and Literary Movement That Began in 1916 in Zurich, Switzerland
    QUICK VIEW: Synopsis Dada was an artistic and literary movement that began in 1916 in Zurich, Switzerland. It arose as a reaction to World War I, and the nationalism, and rationalism, which many thought had brought war about. Influenced by ideas and innovations from several early avant-gardes - Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, and Expressionism - its output was wildly diverse, ranging from performance art to poetry, photography, sculpture, painting and collage. Dada's aesthetic, marked by its mockery of materialistic and nationalistic attitudes, proved a powerful influence on artists in many cities, including Berlin, Hanover, Paris, New York and Cologne, all of which generated their own groups. The movement is believed to have dissipated with the arrival Surrealism in France. Key Ideas / Information • Dada was born out of a pool of avant-garde painters, poets and filmmakers who flocked to neutral Switzerland before and during WWI. • The movement came into being at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in February 1916. The Cabaret was named after the eighteenth century French satirist, Voltaire, whose play Candide mocked the idiocies of his society. As Hugo Ball, one of the founders of Zurich Dada wrote, "This is our Candide against the times." • So intent were members of Dada on opposing all the norms of bourgeois culture, that the group was barely in favour of itself: "Dada is anti-Dada," they often cried. • Dada art varies so widely that it is hard to speak of a coherent style. It was powerfully influenced by Futurist and Expressionist concerns with technological advancement, yet artists like Hans Arp also introduced a preoccupation with chance and other painterly conventions.
    [Show full text]
  • Readings: War Poetry and Dada
    017_War-Poetry_Dada.doc READINGS: WAR POETRY AND DADA Background Various war poems Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front Background: Eugen Weber, Dada Tzara, Dada Manifesto Tzara, "Lecture on Dada" Interpretations of Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare… GROVEART.COM DADAISM Artistic and literary movement launched in Zurich in 1916 but shared by independent groups in New York, Berlin, Paris and elsewhere. The Dadaists channelled their revulsion at World War I into an indictment of the nationalist and materialist values that had brought it about. They were united not by a common style but by a rejection of conventions in art and thought, seeking through their unorthodox techniques, performances and provocations to shock society into self-awareness. The name Dada itself was typical of the movement’s anti- rationalism. Various members of the Zurich group are credited with the invention of the name; according to one account it was selected by the insertion of a knife into a dictionary, and was retained for its multilingual, childish and nonsensical connotations. The Zurich group was formed around the poets hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, tristan Tzara and richard Huelsenbeck, and the painters hans Arp, marcel Janco and hans Richter. The term was subsequently adopted in New York by the group that had formed around marcel Duchamp, francis Picabia, Marius de Zayas (1880–1961) and Man ray. The largest of several German groups was formed in Berlin by Huelsenbeck with john Heartfield, raoul Hausmann, hannah Höch and george Grosz. As well as important centres elsewhere (Barcelona, Cologne and Hannover), a prominent post-war Parisian group was promoted by Tzara, Picabia and andré Breton.
    [Show full text]
  • Dada Comes to the Museum of Modern Art
    DADA COMES TO THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART MoMA Installation Is a Dynamic Multimedia Display of Over 400 Works by Nearly 50 Artists from the Influential Avant-Garde Movement Dada June 18–September 11, 2006 The Joan and Preston Robert Tisch Gallery, sixth floor NEW YORK, June 13, 2006—Dada, on view at The Museum of Modern Art from June 18 to September 11, 2006, is the first major museum exhibition in the United States to focus exclusively on Dada, one of the most influential avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century. Responding to the disasters of World War I and to an emerging modern media and machine culture, Dada artists led a creative revolution that both boldly embraced and caustically criticized modernity itself. Pursuing innovative strategies of art making that included abstraction, chance procedures, collage, photomontage, readymades, performances, and media pranks, the Dadaists created an abiding legacy for the century to come. The exhibition features over 400 works in a dynamic multimedia display that includes films, paintings, photographs, printed matter, sound recordings, and objects. Among the nearly 50 artists represented are Hans Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, George Grosz, Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, Hannah Höch, Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Hans Richter, Kurt Schwitters, Sophie Taeuber, and Tristan Tzara. This exhibition surveys the many forms of Dada artistic production as developed in Berlin, Cologne, Hannover, New York, Paris, and Zurich, the six principal cities where Dada took hold between 1916 and 1924. It presents an expansive view of Dada, including Zurich’s experiments in radical abstraction, New York’s irreverent readymades and machine portraits, Berlin’s scathing political montages, Cologne’s hallucinatory imagery, Paris’s relentless critiques of painterly traditions, and Kurt Schwitters’s carefully composed recyclings of society’s detritus in Hannover.
    [Show full text]