Dadas on Art: Tzara, Arp, Duchamp and Others

by Lucy R. Lippard

A protest against the brutality of World War I and a rejection of traditional culture and aesthetics, the Dada movement proclaimed itself as anti-art. In the visual arts, literature, and graphic design, the Dadas shocked and scandalized audiences of the early 1900s with their expressions of disillusionment with politics and society. This select anthology reconstructs the movement's anarchic history and its harsh, vivid spirit by presenting the prose, poetry, and polemic of the artists themselves and their poet friends.
Focusing chiefly on visual artists, this collection ranges from Tristan Tzara's manifesto and Jean Arp's declaration of Dada principles to statements by Man Ray and Jean Cocteau. It features interviews with Hanna Höch and Marcel Duchamp, in addition to articles by Max Ernst, Richard Hülsenbeck, Marcel Janco, Hans Richter, George Grosz, and other prominent figures. Editor Lucy R. Lippard — a well-known feminist art critic, author, and theorist — provides brief biographies for each contributor. These absorbing and provocative insights into Dada philosophy illustrate the movement's enduring vitality and its continuing power to affect modern art.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

178 pages, Paperback

Published February 2, 2007

About the author

Since 1966, Lippard has published 20 books on feminism, art, politics and place and has received numerous awards and accolades from literary critics and art associations. A 2012 exhibition on her seminal book, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object at the Brooklyn Museum, titled "Six Years": Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art", cites Lippard's scholarship as its point of entry into a discussion about conceptual art during its era of emergence, demonstrating her crucial role in the contemporary understanding of this period of art production and criticism. Her research on the move toward dematerialization in art making has formed a cornerstone of contemporary art scholarship and discourse.

Co-founder of Printed matter (an art bookstore in New York City centered around artist's books), the Heresies Collective, Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D), Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention in Central America, and other artists' organizations, she has also curated over 50 exhibitions, done performances, comics, guerrilla theater, and edited several independent publications the latest of which is the decidedly local La Puente de Galisteo in her home community in Galisteo, New Mexico. She has infused aesthetics with politics, and disdained disinterestedness for ethical activism.

Reviews

[Liam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Collection of essays from Dadaist artists stemming from central points in the creation of the movement (Zürich mostly) and some light branches into surrounding countries of Switzerland. Very eclectic people whose essays contain a multitude of things I agree with and don’t, but then again, it’s Dadaism, many of them could just be to dupe me.

[James F · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of primary sources from within the Dada movement; both contemporary manifestos and works, and excerpts from later histories and memoirs by the participants. There are over fifty selections, from twenty two artists and writers. There is a brief biography by the editor introducing each author. The selections are chosen to show the theories which the Dadaists had about the nature of art and the various artistic tendencies within the movement. The book represents well the diversity of the movement; it concentrates more on positive statements than on the intra-group polemics as such.

[Tames · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection of texts written by Dadas

[Anjali]

i want to read this book