Dadaism Books

The Posthuman Dada Guide: tzara and lenin play chess (The Public Square)

Andrei Codrescu

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"This is a guide for instructing posthumans in living a Dada life. It is not advisable, nor was it ever, to lead a Dada life."--The Posthuman Dada Guide

The Posthuman Dada Guide is an impractical handbook for practical living in our posthuman world--all by way of examining the imagined 1916 chess game between Tristan Tzara, the daddy of Dada, and V. I. Lenin, the daddy of communism. This epic game at Zurich's Café de la Terrasse--a battle between radical visions of art and ideological revolution--lasted for a century and may still be going on, although communism appears dead and Dada stronger than ever. As the poet faces the future mass murderer over the chessboard, neither realizes that they are playing for the world. Taking the match as metaphor for two poles of twentieth- and twenty-first-century thought, politics, and life, Andrei Codrescu has created his own brilliantly Dadaesque guide to Dada--and to what it can teach us about surviving our ultraconnected present and future. Here dadaists Duchamp, Ball, and von Freytag-Loringhoven and communists Trotsky, Radek, and Zinoviev appear live in company with later incarnations, including William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gilles Deleuze, and Newt Gingrich. The Posthuman Dada Guide is arranged alphabetically for quick reference and (some) nostalgia for order, with entries such as "eros (women)," "internet(s)," and "war." Throughout, it is written in the belief "that posthumans lining the road to the future (which looks as if it exists, after all, even though Dada is against it) need the solace offered by the primal raw energy of Dada and its inhuman sources."

Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales (Oddly Modern Fairy Tales)

Kurt Schwitters

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Kurt Schwitters revolutionized the art world in the 1920s with his Dadaist Merz collages, theater performances, and poetry. But at the same time he was also writing extraordinary fairy tales that were turning the genre upside down and inside out. Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales is the first collection of these subversive, little-known stories in any language and the first time all but a few of them have appeared in English. Translated and introduced by Jack Zipes, one of the world's leading authorities on fairy tales, this book gathers thirty-two stories written between 1925 and Schwitters's death in 1948--including a complete English-language recreation of The Scarecrow, a children's book illustrated with avant-garde typography that Schwitters created with Kate Steinitz and De Stijl founder Theo van Doesburg. Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales also includes brilliant new illustrations that evoke the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.

Schwitters wrote these darkly humorous, satirical, and surreal tales at a time when traditional German fairy tales were being co-opted by the Nazis. Filled with sharp critiques of German life during the Weimar and early Nazi eras, Schwitters's tales are rich with absurdist events and insist that not everyone--and perhaps not anyone--lives happily ever after. In "Lucky Hans," the starving protagonist tries to catch a rabbit only to have it shed its fur like a coat and run off naked into the forest. In other tales, a sarcastic gypsy stands in for a fairy godmother and an army recruit is arrested for growing to monstrous size.

Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales is a delightfully strange and surprising book.

The Artwork Caught by the Tail: Francis Picabia and Dada in Paris (October Books)

George Baker

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The artist Francis Picabia—notorious dandy, bon vivant, painter, poet, filmmaker, and polemicist—has emerged as the Dadaist with postmodern appeal, and one of the most enigmatic forces behind the enigma that was Dada. In this first book in English to focus on Picabia's work in Paris during the Dada years, art historian and critic George Baker reimagines Dada through Picabia's eyes.

Such reimagining involves a new account of the readymade—Marcel Duchamp's anti-art invention, which opened fine art to mass culture and the commodity. But in Picabia's hands, Baker argues, the Dada readymade aimed to reinvent art rather than destroy it. Picabia's readymade opened art not just to the commodity, but to the larger world from which the commodity stems: the fluid sea of capital and money that transforms all objects and experiences in its wake. The book thus tells the story of a set of newly transformed artistic practices, claiming them for art history—and naming them—for the first time: Dada Drawing, Dada Painting, Dada Photography, Dada Abstraction, Dada Cinema, Dada Montage. Along the way, Baker describes a series of nearly forgotten objects and events, from the almost lunatic range of the Paris Dada "manifestations" to Picabia's polemical writings; from a lost work by Picabia in the form of a hole (called, suggestively, The Young Girl ) to his "painting" Cacodylic Eye, covered in autographs by luminaries ranging from Ezra Pound to Fatty Arbuckle.

Baker ends with readymades in prose: a vast interweaving of citations and quotations that converge to create a heated conversation among Picabia, André Breton, Tristan Tzara, James Joyce, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and others. Art history has never looked like this before. But then again, Dada has never looked like art history.

The Dada Cyborg: Visions of the New Human in Weimar Berlin

Matthew Biro

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Editorial Review:

In an era when technology, biology, and culture are becoming ever more closely connected, The Dada Cyborg explains how the cyborg as we know it today actually developed between 1918 and 1933 when German artists gave visual form to their utopian hopes and fantasies in a fearful response to World War I.

In what could be termed a prehistory of the posthuman, Matthew Biro shows the ways in which new forms of human existence were imagined in Germany between the two world wars through depictions of cyborgs. Examining the work of Hannah Höch, Raoul Hausmann, George Grosz, John Heartfield, Otto Dix, and Rudolf Schlichter, he reveals an innovative interpretation of the cyborg as a representative of hybrid identity, as well as a locus of new modes of awareness created by the impact of technology on human perception. Tracing the prevalence of cyborgs in German avant-garde art, Biro demonstrates how vision, hearing, touch, and embodiment were beginning to be reconceived during the Weimar Republic.

Biro’s unique and interdisciplinary analysis offers a substantially new account of the Berlin Dada movement, one that integrates the group’s poetic, theoretical, and performative practices with its famous visual strategies of photomontage, assemblage, and mixed-media painting to reveal radical images of a “new human.”

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

David Hopkins

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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.

Doom Patrol, Book 5: Magic Bus

Grant Morrison

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"Make a Wish" 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Grant Morrison's unstoppable reworking of the Doom Patrol thunders towards its inevitable conclusion in the penultimate book, "Magic Bus" (vol. 5 of 6). Morrison's runs rarely end with anything less than the apocalypse; this one is no exception, and probably the model for some of his other stories. The book starts off with the resolution of the "Brotherhood of Dada" storyline left unfinished at the end of "Musclebound" and then sets about exploring the principal characters. Morrison has left the self-conscious oddity of the Pentagon Horror and Judge Rock storylines behind and begins focusing on the wheels that have been turning in the background over the course of the series. Most notably, Rebis gets an issue all to him/her/itsel(ves). That issue ("Aenigma Regis") ranks among Morrison and Case's best work - Morrison's ideas about the rich inner life of his compound hero (one part male test pilot, one part female doctor, one part sexless alien being) functions on a level that the writer seems to have invented for this book; it is personal and mythic and smartly Freudian all at the same time.

Ultimately, this is "man-in-a-can" Cliff Steele's story. As a formerly human brain encased in an only vaguely humanoid robot body, Cliff's spiraling depression started the story, and his tortuous return from it has been happening in the background for the last four volumes. Now, his deep friendship with Crazy Jane and complete devotion to the Chief are landing him in tighter spots than we'd previously imagined they could. The rude, uninterested version of the character from "Crawling from the Wreckage" is gone - in his place is a completely changed man. Cliff's evolution is quiet, but there's a narrative perfection about his development, particularly the slow growth of his platonic, protective love for Jane.

Also witness the redemption of Crazy Jane, the fruition of the Chief's hidden master plan, and (most interestingly), the fate of The Candlemaker, Dorothy Spinner's horrifying familiar. The Candlemaker sets the stage for the final volume, which brings the comic book to its scary, loving, wonderfully satisfying ending.

Editorial Review:

Originally conceived in the 1960s, a reinvigorated Doom Patrol burst out of the utterly unique imagination of writer Grant Morrison again in the 1990s.

Featuring the final fate of the Brotherhood of Dada and the rise of the unstoppable Candlemaker, DOOM PATROL VOL. 5 also includes a delightful tribute to legendary comic-book artist Jack Kirby as well as a new cover by the incomparable Brian Bolland.

The DADA Reader: A Critical Anthology

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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.

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

Hans Richter

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

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

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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.

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

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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.