Dadaism Books

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

Dorothea Dietrich, Brigid Doherty, Sabine Kriebel, Janine Mileaf, Michael Taylor, Matthew Witkovsky, Hans Jean Arp, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Francis Picabia, Max Ernst

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Now available in paperback, this lavishly illustrated and astonishingly comprehensive volume stands as the definitive study of the influential but deliberately elusive international Dada movement of the early twentieth century. Organized according to the primary city centers where this shifting, quintessentially avant garde movement emerged, Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris features the work of 40 key artists, both infamous and lesser-known, including Louis Aragon, Hans Arp, Hugo Ball, Andre Breton, Otto Dix, Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Hoch, Man Ray, Tristan Tzara and Kurt Schwitters, to name just a few, in media spanning painting, sculpture, photography, collage, photomontage, prints and graphic work. Dynamically designed with an uncommon intelligence suited to the complexity of the movement itself, it contains hundreds of reproductions of works which, until the major traveling exhibition of 2005 and 2006 for which this book was originally produced, had for the most part never been seen in one place together. Documentary images, topical essays and an invaluable illustrated chronology of the movement make this volume uniquely essential, along with witty chronicles of events in each city center; a selected bibliography; and biographies of each artist accompanied by Dada-era photographs.

Dada: Art and Anti-Art (World of Art)

Hans Richter

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Jackdaws Love My Big Sphinx Of Quartz 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 23 people found this review helpful.

dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada mulberry dada dada dada dada dada dada
....lymph node....
dad dad dad dad dad dad dad dad dad
+a +a +a +a +a +a +a +a +a


merz

You Are There 4 out of 5 stars.
12 of 13 people found this review helpful.

Hans Richter lived on the fringes of Zurich's Dada movement, and here offers a personal narrative of the Dada movement and its eventual successor, Surrealism. This was the first book I'd ever read on Dada and I found it quite sufficient -- all the personalities are introduced, and their motivations and how they came together are revealed. Richter is best in the earliest sections, while discussing the birth of the influential Cabaret Voltaire and how the First World War helped amplify Dada's influence in Europe. The book peters out a bit in later chapters, but is still a detailed look at the subject. If you are simply seeking an understanding of the movement, this book is a fast and entertaining read.

Editorial Review:

"Where and how Dada began is almost as difficult to determine as Homer's birthplace," writes Hans Richter, who was associated with the movement from its early days. Here, through selections from key manifestos and other documents of the time, he records Dada's history, from its beginnings in wartime Zurich to its collapse in the Paris of the 1920s. Dada led on from Expressionism, Cubism, and Futurism, and in turn prepared the way for Surrealism. It was enlivened by bizarre and extravagant personalities, notably Tristan Tzara, Francis Picabia, Hans Arp, Kurt Schwitters, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and Man Ray, whose contributions are fully discussed. The spirit of Dada reappeared in the 1960s in movements such as Pop Art, which are surveyed in the final section.

Dada and Surrealism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

David Hopkins

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The avant-garde movements of Dada and Surrealism continue to have a huge influence on cultural practice, especially in contemporary art, with its obsession with sexuality, fetishism, and shock tactics. In this new treatment of the subject, Hopkins focuses on the many debates surrounding these movements: the Marquis de Sade's Surrealist deification, issues of quality (How good is Dali?), the idea of the 'readymade', attitudes towards the city, the impact of Freud, attitudes to women, fetishism, and primitivism. The international nature of these movements is examined, covering the cities of Zurich, New York, Berlin, Cologne, Barcelona, Paris, London, and recenlty discovered examples in Eastern Europe. Hopkins explores the huge range of media employed by both Dada and Surrealism (collage, painting, found objects, performance art, photography, film) , whilst at the same time establishing the aesthetic differences between the movements. He also examines the Dadaist obsession with the body-as-mechanism in relation to the Surrealists' return to the fetishized/eroticized body.

Dadaism (Basic Art)

Dietmar Elger

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent Book; Covered What Was Vital 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I did my senior research paper on Dadaism and found this book to be exceptionally helpful. This book covered the Dada scene In Europe: Hanover, Cologne, Paris, Zurich. As well as within America from Man Ray, Francis Picabia, and Marcel Duchamp. Though all of these section were quite condensed but provided what was vital for my research paper. This section covered about 7+ pages of this information. The rest were illustrations of Dadaist works like Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and much much more. It also included mini biographies of the Dadaists.

Overall this book was exceptionally helpful for the time schedule I forced myself under.

Editorial Review:

Detailed introduction to Dadaism with 30 photographs plus timeline of most important political, cultural, scientific and sporting events. Body of book contains 35 of most important works of epoch with interpretationand artist biography.

The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology, Second Edition (Paperbacks in Art History)

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Anti Unincorporated 5 out of 5 stars.
33 of 35 people found this review helpful.

Dada not only wrote and painted, it talked, drank, agitated, danced, babbled, burbled, shocked, indulged in self-loathing, took notes, held exhibits, dressed up, hooted, wrote scathing criticisms of itself, whistled, made noises with its skin, fell in love with itself, mailed letters, and then committed suicide. Huelsenbeck, Tzara, Breton, Ball, Duchamp et al. enacted Dada selves out of hatred for war, but their hatred and iconoclasm continued when they discovered that the monster that lives off of war didn't die on Armistice Day (the one in 1918). They became anti-everything that was Modern, Reasonable, Commonsensical, Appropriate, in other words, everything that would help humans hide from (while justifying) their own self-destructiveness. They tried to open up the unconscious and display it for Europe and America. This book charts that process better than most. The best of the essays about Dada is "The Dada Spirit in Painting" by Georges Hugnet, but the best pieces here are by those who, in writing and painting, were being Dada: Eluard's and Huelsenback's poems, Ball's "Dada Fragments," Tzara's "Seven Dada Manifestoes," Ribemont-Dessaignes' "History of Dada," and Breton on Duchamp.

Editorial Review:

The Dada Painters and Poets offers the authentic answer to the question "What is Dada?" This incomparable collection of essays, manifestos, and illustrations was prepared by Robert Motherwell with the collaboration of some of the major Dada figures: Marcel Duchamp, Jean Arp, and Max Ernst among others. Here in their own words and art, the principals of the movement create a composite picture of Dada--its convictions, antics, and spirit.

First published in 1951, this treasure trove remains, as Jack Flam states in his foreword to the second edition, "the most comprehensive and important anthology of Dada writings in any language, and a fascinating and very readable book." It contains every major text on the Dada movement, including retrospective studies, personal memoirs, and prime examples. The illustrations range from photos of participants, in characteristic Dadaist attitudes, to facsimiles of their productions.

The DADA Reader: A Critical Anthology

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The revolutionary Dada movement, though short-lived, produced a vast amount of creative work in both art and literature during the years that followed World War I. Rejecting all social and artistic conventions, Dadaists went to the extremes of provocative behavior, creating “anti-art” pieces that ridiculed and questioned the very nature of creative endeavor. To understand their movement’s heady mix of anarchy and nihilism—combined with a lethal dash of humor—it’s essential to engage with the artists’ most important writings and manifestos. And that is is precisely where this reader comes in.

Bringing together key Dada texts, many of them translated into English for the first time, this volume immerses readers in some of the most famous (and infamous) periodicals of the time, from Hugo Ball’s Cabaret Voltaire and Francis Picabia’s 391 to Marcel Duchamp’s The Blind Man and Kurt Schwitters’s Merz. Published in Europe and the United States between 1916 and 1932, these journals constituted the movement’s lifeblood, communicating the desires and aspirations of the artists involved. In addition to providing the first representative selection of these texts, The Dada Reader also includes excerpts from many lesser-known American and Eastern European journals.

Compiled with both students and general readers in mind, this volume is necessary reading for anyone interested in one of the most dynamic and influential movements of the twentieth century.

Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries (A Calderbook, Cb 358)

Tristan Tzara

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

This book does not define Dada. It is Dada. 5 out of 5 stars.
11 of 18 people found this review helpful.

All manifestos are the biographies of feeble and bitter love. Dada is, therefore, an impotent rapist. Still, Tzara is a charming and likable fellow.

If you want to know what Dada is, then Dada wants nothing to do with you. Approach this book at your own peril.

Dada is against death. Definition is death. This book does not commit murder. Therefore it does not define Dada. It is Dada....

not an academical book if that's what you're looking for 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 13 people found this review helpful.

you won't find an explanation of what dada is, simply because it cannot be explained. dada is the anarchism in a french female-boxer soul. is an excellent literary book. not a college research book.

DADA mucht gut! Tzara--boomboom himmel! 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 12 people found this review helpful.

MMMMMMMMMMM plastic fishy. Tzara lights yer neighbor's curtain on fire. Yummy blasphemy, beautiful bedroom eyes darting with paranoia all around a crowded room. Devilish leer, "small and dark", this is IT.

not very helpful 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 28 people found this review helpful.

I checked this book out from my local library because Dadaism was mentioned in my Design class, and it sounded interesting. I wanted to learn more about it. I found this book to be very confusing and not very informative at all. It seems that they wrote this so abstract on purpose (which they may have). Although the final essay, lecture on dada, was informative and the essay was, on poetry, was very good. I'd recommend this book just for those two lampistries.

Dada & Surrealism A&I (Art and Ideas)

Matthew Gale

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This introductory survey traces the origins and development of two revolutionary 20th-century art movements: Dada and Surrealism. It explores the full range of artistic production, including film, photography and painting. The art is situated within a context of ideas. Against the background of the slaughter of World War I, the Dadas embarked upon a total reconsideration of nationalism, materialism and the basis of art. Hugo Ball and Tristan Tzara in Zurich, Richard Huelsenbeck and Raoul Hausmann in Berlin, Francis Picabia and Andre Breton in Paris - all emphasized the freedom of the individual in their art. Dada has no consistent style and was never an organized movement. Surrealism, on the other hand, was a clearly constituted movement with a recognized charismatic leader, Andre Breton. In an attempt to reconcile the rational and irrational sides of existence, the movement explored dreams, trances and automatism. The results include the paintings of Max Ernst, Joan Miro, Salvadore Dali and Rene Magritte.

Max Ernst and Alchemy : A Magician in Search of Myth (Surrealist

M. E. Warlick

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Surrealist artist Max Ernst defined collage as the "alchemy of the visual image." Students of his work have often dismissed this comment as simply a metaphor for the transformative power of using found images in a new context. Taking a wholly different perspective on Ernst and alchemy, however, M. E. Warlick persuasively demonstrates that the artist had a profound and abiding interest in alchemical philosophy and often used alchemical symbolism in works created throughout his career.

A revival of interest in alchemy swept the artistic, psychoanalytic, historical, and scientific circles of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Warlick sets Ernst's work squarely within this movement. Looking at both his art (many of the works she discusses are reproduced in the book) and his writings, she reveals how thoroughly alchemical philosophy and symbolism pervade his early Dadaist experiments, his foundational work in surrealism, and his many collages and paintings of women and landscapes, whose images exemplify the alchemical fusing of opposites. This pioneering research adds an essential key to understanding the multilayered complexity of Ernst's works, as it affirms his standing as one of Germany's most significant artists of the twentieth century.

Theatre in Dada and surrealism

J. H Matthews

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Good comparative work about movers and shakers 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is quite a good book. I used it to research a paper on DADA and Surrealist theatre, and as there are not too many books available out there (in English anyways) on this particular aspect of DADA and Surrealism. It's broken down by artist. Each of these artists were involved in many other aspects of the avant-garde in Switzerland, France and Germany, but most other books will hardly mention their "theatre" work. Of course they were not attempting to produce regular theatre, but what they did accomplish in performance is well explained and detailed. Another good book for this sort of thing is "PERFORMANCE: LIVE ART 1909 TO THE PRESENT" by Roselee Goldberg (and it has pictures!), but it lacks some of the detail this work has. For any DADA or Surrealist enthusiast, this is an excellent filler-in on many details not easily found in other sources, and for a theatre and performance enthusiast, it is an interesting description and breakdown of art movements many people do not know about today. Oh, and it's also fairly readable and is of course, also somewhat biographical. A good and informative source.