Dada

Author(s): Georges Hugnet and Margaret Scolari

Source: The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art, Vol. 4, No. 2/3, Dada and Surrealism:
Essays by Georges Hugnet (Nov. - Dec., 1936), pp. 3-18
Published by: The Museum of Modern Art
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4057867
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Dada
by Georges Hugnet

Just two years before the War there ap- and yet greeted by us from the beginning
peared symptoms of a certain disregard of of the world as an inseparable companion.
those rules which automatically accom- No one has a right to ignore DADA.
pany all forms of art no matter how novel. It happened: just as if one day the Bebe
Cubism, marvellous in certain aspects, and Cadum had come down from its poster to
yet already so unartistic and unpoetic, was, sit beside you in the 'bus. Tristan Tzara
under the leadership of certain wastrels, gave a name to this delicious malaise:
drifting towards an odious estheticism. Fu- DADA. Dada was born from what it hated.
turism, noisy and attractive in some of its At first it was commonly thought to be an
aims, added to the confusion. artistic and literary movement or a mal du
With the advent of the War and in its siecle. But Dada was the sickness of the
atmosphere of breakdown, Dada was born. world.
It subverted all values and made a clean
1. Zurich
sweep of everything. It was in a given place
and at a precise date that Dada acquired In Zurich in 1916 Hugo Ball founded a
a name and legal status, but its attitude of literary nightclub: the Cabaret Voltaire.
revolt, its desire for escape, its thirst for Here Dada manifests itself in such confu-
destruction existed already in various men sion that it's hard to tell it apart from its
and in various places: first in New York, enemy, Art, and, indeed, it embarks on an
then in Zurich, Berlin, Cologne, Paris, evolution not unlike that of Cubism and
Hanover. Futurism. But Dada draws advantage from
Dada is ageless, it has no parents, but the confusion and profits from the fer-
stands alone, making no distinction be- mentation of the neutral city, which har-
tween what is and what is not. It approves bors refugees, anarchists and revolution-
while denying, it contradicts itself, and aries. Those who seek safety in Zurich are
acquires new force by this very contradic- not conscious of what's going on in their
tion. Its frontal attack is that of a traitor midst, they are ignorant of the force that
stealing up from behind. It undermines right among them is gaining consistency
established authority. It turns against it- and is about to explode.
self, it indulges in self-destruction, it sees Arp, van Rees and Mme. van Rees, who
red, its despair is its genius. There is no had exhibited together in 1915, hung their
hope, all values are levelled to a universal works on the walls of the Cabaret Voltaire
monotony, there is no longer a difference together with those of Picasso, Eggeling,
between good and evil-there is only an Segal, Janco, Marinetti. On February 8th,
awareness. Dada is a taking stock, and as 1916, with the help of a paper-knife slipped
such it is as irreparable as it is ridiculous. at random into a dictionary a name was
It knows only itself. found for the new state of mind-DADA.
Dada has a history only because we are Thanks to Richard Huelsenbeck, a Ger-
willing to believe it, because it has clapped man just in from Berlin, a celebration was
on a hat and a celluloid collar and has sat organized. Dada, from then on, has but one
down beside us unknown, misunderstood aim, to be subversive and, like Cubism,

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Futurism, negro music, exasperating to the dent at last, came to reinforce Tzara's work
public. of destruction and systematic demoraliza-
But Dada is neither modern nor mod- tion. (For Eggeling see Cubism and Ab-
ernistic, it is immediate. stract Art, plate 182.)
The first Dada publication is printed by The Dada activities in Zurich from 1916
the Heuberger press and is given the name to 1918 shook off their literary character
Cabaret Voltaire. It brings together Apol- and directly attacked the conventions and
linaire, Picasso, Modigliani, Arp, Tzara, stale sensibility of a public which in the
van Hoddis, Huelsenbeck, Kandinsky, face of such effrontery wavered between
Marinetti, Cangiullo, van Rees, Slodky, rage and amazement. On the stage of the
Ball, Hennings, Janco, Cendrars. The se- cabaret keys were jangled till the audience
ries of Dada publications continues with protested and went crazy. Serner instead
two books: La premiere aventure celeste of reciting his poems placed a bunch of
de M. Antipyrine [the first heavenly ad- flowers at the feet of a dressmaker's man-
venture of Mr. Fire-extinguisher] by Tris- nequin. Some marionettes and some masks
tan Tzara illustrated by Janco-and phan- of Sophie Tiiuber-Arp, curious objects in
tastische gebete [fantastic prayers] by painted cardboard, recited the poems of
Richard Huelsenbeck with woodcuts by Arp. Huelsenbeck screamed his verses
Hans Arp. Two numbers of a periodical louder and louder while Tzara followed
directed by Tristan Tzara, Dada It and the same crescendo on a kettle drum. For
Dada 2t appear in 1917. Despite certain hours on end they went through gymnastic
symptoms of incipient orderliness they exercises which they called noir cacadou.
persist in a confusion which serves to make Tzara invented chemical and static poems.
Dada increasingly conscious of itself as the Static poems were made by rearranging
only absolute in a world where values, chairs upon which posters, each with a
feelings and sincerity are relative. Dada word, had been placed. For these perform-
utilizes for its own ends what has been ances Janco designed paper costumes of
done already and then turns against it every color, put together with pins and
threateningly. above all spontaneous. Perishable, pur-
Although when Dada first began in Zur- posely ugly and absurd, these materials,
ich, the manifestations organized by poets chosen by the hazard of eye and mind sym-
were the most characteristic and the most bolized in showy rags the perpetual revolt,
effective, we are here concerned with Dada the despair which refuses to let itself de-
painting. Dada painting fought Cubism, spair. (cf. Janco, No. 400; Tiuber-Arp,
Futurism and Expressionism alike; it de- Nos. 511, *512).
manded total abstraction or, at least, ab- Dada spread like a spot of oil. New
solute purity of construction. Eggeling names kept cropping up-Picabia, Rever-
wanted to utilize moving pictures, but in dy, Birot, Derm6e, Soupault, Huidobro,
the service of abstraction. Yet, it was not Savinio. For the Anthologie dadat (Dada
until after the appearance of Duchamp's Nos. 4 and 5) Arp devised a singular cover,
works, after the coming of Picabia, after important because it marks a sharp sepa-
the exhibitions in Cologne and Hanover ration between Dada and modernism. This
of Arp, Max Ernst, Baargeld and Kurt breach, soon to be accentuated by Picabia,
Schwitters, that Dada painting, indepen- was ultimately made total by the Dada

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spirit of Berlin, Hanover, Cologne, repre- his persistent intent not to imitate nature.
sented by Grosz, Heartfield, Schwitters, He was thus separated to an extent from
Baargeld, Max Ernst, and Arp. One might Tzara and Huelsenbeck, partisans of sys-
nearly say, despite the spirit of disorder tematic disorder and of that total confu-
which distinguishes it, that the cover of sion of the arts by which they were finally
Dada 4-5t was to Cubism what the words to be annihilated. Nevertheless, we must
drawn from a hat by Tristan Tzara were note here certain experiments undertaken
to the poetry of the early XX century. In by Arp, all the more important inasmuch
Picasso's papiers coll6s and his card- as they harmonize with experiments which
board objects, in the extraneous textures were later to play an important role in the
introduced into his paintings as early as exploration of the unconscious. Arp traced
1912 (newspaper, imitation wood and mar- on paper every morning the same drawing
ble) the materials used are still lyrical ele- and thus obtained, whether inspired or
ments not detached from reality. With not, a series of drawings, the variations of
Arp, on the other hand, and even more which were practically automatic. He also
with Ernst, newspaper, wallpaper, photo- trusted to the laws of chance when he
graphs, and vignettes, picked up at ran- cut out with deliberate absentmindedness
dom, taken ready-made and unaltered pieces of paper colored on one side, placed
from their normal context and redistrib- them, colored face down, on a piece of
uted easily and blindly, integrate what was cardboard, shook them, shuffled them,
borrowed in a recreation of the object and strewed them around, and finally turned
transpose its superficial reality into a su- them over and pasted them on a card-
perior reality. In 1920 in Cologne Ernst's board, preserving the pattern of shapes
own collages* as well as those resulting and the arrangement of colors which he
from his collaboration with Arp will had obtained by chance (cf. Arp, Nos.
achieve their intensity under the coverall *264, *265, *267).
name of Fatagaga (fabrication de tableaux In 1919 in Zurich a nucleus of painters
garantis gazometriques) (cf. Ernst, No. of disparate tendencies united under the
330). name of Association des artistes revolu-
If one excepts certain collages, Arp's tionnaires upon the instigation of Hans
most significant works of this time, inas- Richter, a former member of the German
much as they embark upon an active de- expressionist group Die Aktion, which al-
struction in the Dada spirit, are his illus- ready during the War had established the
trations for two works of Tzara: 25 po- principle that the artist must take an ac-
emes-j- and Calendrier cinema du coeur tive part in politics (at that time they
abstrait.t These illustrations are much were to oppose the War and support the
freer than those for Richard Huelsenbeck's Revolution). When revolution broke out
book, which were rigid, formal, aiming at in Munich and Budapest the Association,
purity of forms. For Arp abstract art was fearing that the artists would be ignored,
the main preoccupation as evidenced by tried to involve in the revolution the more

*"Collage," the French word meaning a "pasting," or incongruous effect. The term papier colle is
has now become a generally accepted international usually confined to Cubist works of 1912-14 and
term for pictures composed partially or entirely similar compositions in which a formal rather than
of pasted pieces of paper, etc., often with a bizarre a Dada or Surrealist interest predominates. Ed.

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esthetically revolutionary painters. Cer- the train, both of which show interests
tain of the Dadaists saw fit to take part in other than those of stylization and beauty
this movement, which lasted only a few of forms. The bride, The King and Queen
weeks, but enlisted the participation of traversed by swift nudes and the Choco.
Richter, Eggeling, Segal, Janco, Arp, Hel- late grinder were painted in Munich and
big and Baumeister. It was taken up short- Paris in 1912-1913; the synchronized
ly afterwards by the Russian painters un- movements contrast with the static ele-
der the name of Constructivism* and re- ments, and the machine style, instead of
sulted in a decorative art of limited inter- adorning itself with futurist estheticism,
est (Lissitzky, Tatlin, Malevich, Gabo, Pev- serves to transform nudes or figures (cf.
sner). Doubtless the Zurich Association Duchamp, Nos. *216, *217, *218; also Cub-
realized soon enough that the radical ism and Abstract Art, plate 40).
methods of Dada, represented by Serner It is at this epoch that Duchamp, doubt-
and Tzara, were more efficacious even from less exasperated by the turn that painting
a revolutionary point of view. Be that as was taking, selected a series of objects
it may, it should be remarked that abstract which he called "ready-made," amongst
art proved inactive and sterile. It was one them a rotating bottle drier, 1914, and a
of the weaknesses of Dada's beginning. bicycle wheel, both of which he signed. In
the first New York Independents' exhibi-
2. New York
tion, 1917, he entered a porcelain toilet ac-
In New York at the same time and even cessory with the title Fontaine and signed
somewhat earlier Marcel Duchamp, Fran- it R. Mutt in order to test the impartiality
cis Picabia and Man Ray were accomplish- of the jury of which he was himself a mem-
ing a revolution of the same type. They ber. By this symbol Duchamp wished to
gave no name to the movement they were signify his disgust for art and his complete
creating and of which they were half un- admiration for ready-made objects. But R.
aware. They didn't care much really. For Mutt's entry was thrown out of the show
various reasons, mainly their proud de- after a few hours' debate and Duchamp,
tachment, they figure as pre-Dadaists, as making the issue a question of principle,
authentic Dadaists. When they discover tendered his resignation. Later he sent a
Dada it is really Dada that discovers them. snow shovel, a typewriter cover and a hat-
Marcel Duchamp, a painter first influ- rack to an exhibition at the Bourgeois gal-
enced by Cezanne, then by Cubism, began leries, where Matisse and Picasso were be-
as early as 1913 to feel bored with the new ing shown. Ready-made objects were thus
estheticism, the new attitude of pictorial consecrated and put on the same footing
formalism which already had been swal- as masterpieces (cf. Duchamp, No. *221).
lowed whole as an artistic dogma. Even in Around 1920 Duchamp was making ob-
1911 and 1912 Marcel Duchamp, turning jects of painted glass, starred with cracks,
from Cubism, painted the Nude descend- and sumptuous toys endowed with move-
ing the stairs and the Sad young man in ment. One of these, spun by a motor, near-

*The Russian movement, called Constructivism in Dada phase in 1914 as is proven by the Private
1920, began about 1914 and was, like Dada, under of the First Division, No. 564, a collage with post-
the joint influence of Futurism and Cubism. Male- age stamp, thermometer, etc. (see also Cubism and
vich, the Suprematist, passed through a proto- Abstract Art, plate 111-139.) Ed.

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ly decapitated Man Ray. Duchamp
was also working on an immense
glass pane, The bride, which can be
said to recapitulate his work, lim-
ited in quantity but concentrated, -U
compact, of capital importance. Out P DE ZAAS

of disdain and a kind of haughty de-

tachment he stopped producing A SBe t
works of art about 1923 and devoted
The Dada MovemenC,b
himself to chess. In New York Du-
champ published two periodicals
which had three issues in all: The
blind man and Wrong-wrong, 1917.
These reviews together with 291,
Picabia's New York publication,
give the measure of the peculiar
negativistic spirit, detached and
humorous, which was to leave a
deep mark on the period (cf. Du-
champ, Nos. *220, 222; also Cubism
and Abstract Art, plate 193).
Before speaking of Picabia's de-
parture in 1917, it is important to
consider the work of Man Ray in
New York, for Man Ray became the
principal American participant in
the Dada movement and belongs
today to the Surrealist group. In
1916 and '17 Man Ray constructed
objects containing elements extran-
eous to painting, objects of every-
day use. This effort was parallel to
that of Duchamp. Man Ray paints
the elements of a world that really
belongs to him, of a world where
reality has the ineluctability of a
dream. Interested in photography,
he exploits its every possibility and
follows the lead of accidents and
chance discoveries. (He experi-
ments, but Man Ray objects to any
of his work being called experi- Atholge Dada Movement,nd en by Frnitiai,pbiheeditor
mental, everything is a completed Tristan Tzara, to the exhibition of Fantastic Art, Dada
achievement.) Without the aid of and Surrealism.

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a camera he devises strange photographic In 1917, after having left New York,
images which he calls "rayographs," 1921 Picabia published in Barcelona several
(cf. Ray, Nos. 467-469, *470, 471-*474). issues of a review entitled 391 f in memory
Thanks to Duchamp and Man Ray the of his 291 in New York.
mechanically made and everyday object His illustrations are sensational. His
enters the realm of painting and sculpture drawing Novia for the cover of the first
with all the honors due to its rank. Mon- number represents parts of an engine. La-
strous toys are constructed, amusing and ter he contribues to Dadat a drawing made
murderous, no longer made to hang on a by dipping cogwheels in ink and applying
wall but to penetrate everyday life. In them to paper. It was out of a kind of an-
Duchamp's house, when impelled by bore- archical sense of humor that Picabia un-
dom or despair, one could push with one's dertook his work of demoralization both
thumb the wheel of a bicycle, throw into in his publications and in his exhibitions.
action the antennae of an object which His mechanical drawings mingled with in-
described the curves of a spiral-a game for scriptions are meant to revolt the art-lover.
the eye, strictly and insanely mathemati- Bored no less by Cubist stylization than by
cal. One could also catch one's foot and Futurism (that peculiar brand of Impres-
kill oneself on a clothes hanger nailed to sionism produced by the cult of the ma-
the floor. Duchamp opens the era of po- chine) Picabia sublimates the machine-
etic experience where casual, concrete made object and recreates it outside its
things are the poetry you take in your original purpose according to the laws of
hand. In 1913, in Paris he had painted chance very much as had Duchamp, who
three pictures entitled Trois stoppages constantly insisted upon not creating works
etalon (three standard stops) which at- of art and who towers in his magnificent
tempted to give a new appearance to the detachment over the entire epoch (cf. Pi-
measure of a meter. This is how they were cabia, Nos. 460, *461).
done: Duchamp took three threads, each a As early as 1913 Picabia had abandoned
meter long, which he dropped from the the new forms assumed by painting as is
height of a meter one after the other on to proven by his work of the "orphic" period
three blank canvases. Scrupulously he such as Udnie jeune flle americaine. This
traced the contours of the threads with a painting is conceived according to an anti-
thin trickle of varnish-a purely acciden- static pictorial theory whereby the move-
tal design (cf. Duchamp, Nos. 222, 223, ment of time and memory is transposed
*224; Ray, No. *476). into color (cf. Picabia No. *459).
In different ways Duchamp, Picabia, In Zurich Picabia, feeling himself at
Man Ray, were haunted by the laws of ease and appreciated by those around him,
chance while elsewhere at the same time, contributed a great deal to the moral
though in mutual ignorance, other men importance of the Dada movement; he
were similarly haunted. The latter found helped to exteriorize it, to establish its
a name for the state of mind which was to power and its dictatorship. His pictorial
blaze a new trail and take possession of and poetic activity, his very personal spirit
the world to give it a new basis and a new of negation made him at this period a fig-
conscience. Dada puts the world with its ure of primary importance to the develop-
back to the wall. ment of Dada.

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 In Berlin as elsewhere we notice the
3. Berlin
persistent desire to destroy art, the delib-
Wherever it spreads Dada takes on a dif- erate intent to wipe out existing notions
ferent color. In Berlin it is above all of beauty, the insistence upon the great-
political. Richard Huelsenbeck, who had est possible obliteration of individuality.
been made Commissioner for Fine Arts Heartfield works under the direction of
during the German Revolution, gathers a Grosz while Max Ernst and Arp sign each
group of intellectuals under the banner of other's paintings at random. Dada rejects
Dada. In the wake of some preparatory narrow individualism, it is a communal ac-
articles, a lecture, a manifesto signed by tivity. Der dada gives publicity to the other
the Berlin group and by the Zurich Dada- Dada magazines: Dada and Der Zeltweg
ists, the periodicals Club Dada, der dada of Zurich; Die Schammadet of Cologne;
(1918) make their appearance. We find in DADAphone,t Proverbe,t 391,t and Can-
them the names of Raoul Haussmann, Rich- nibalet of Paris, all of which are active at
ard Huelsenbeck, George Grosz, F. Jung, approximately the same time.
Johannes Baader, Heartfield, Walter Mehr- Berlin Dada takes on an increasingly
ing, Gerhard Preiss, Tristan Tzara, Francis revolutionary character. It inclines more
Picabia and others. The works of Du- sharply towards Communism. A continu-
champ, Charlie Chaplin, Erik Satie are ous preoccupation with actuality, an in-
discussed. The typography, by Raoul stantaneous and ruthless revolutionary ex-
Haussmann, as untidy and arbitrary as it pression, a negation of artistic values to-
was in Zurich, is enriched with dishevelled gether with caricatures of a popular na-
layouts in which vignettes, Hebrew char- ture combine to make the Berlin Dada
acters and ink-blots are scattered at ran- movement sterile when compared to the
dom. The illustrations consist of collages exhilarating aspects of the movements of
of newspapers, photographs, photomon- Zurich, Cologne, and Paris, all of which
tages composed without much seriousness functioned more completely under the
by Haussmann and Heartfield. One senses sign of the marvellous, under the lyrical
an effort to be daring, outrageous, and at fulguration of Dada.
the same time entertaining and funny in After various activities, some individual,
the humorous exploitation of current an- some communal, after the spreading of
ecdote. The drawings and deformed pho- propaganda, the disseminating of pros-
tographs of Grosz contribute an aspect of pectuses, the organizing of lecture tours,
caricature, sometimes ferocious, neverthe- the opening of a Dada nightclub, Dada in
less curious rather than new. The field of 1920 reached its zenith in Berlin and in
the plastic arts is not restricted to the the same year its decline and fall. The
painters: handmade poetry belongs to all most important pictorial manifestation of
(cf. Haussmann, No. *383; Grosz, Nos. 380, Dada in Berlin took place in that year and
*381, *382; Baader, No. *289). consisted of an exhibition of 174 items.
This confusion of genres, of techniques The catalogt establishes and clarifies the
and media, and the systematic explora- position of Dada by many prefaces and
tion of every possibility for purposes of statements and confirms the aims of the
plastic representation are one of the char- struggle already undertaken. It is repeated
acteristics of Dada. that "Dada is political" and all should be

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sacrificed to the present and the imme- force describing a trajectory toward ex-
diate; contemporary allusions, now out- tinction. The following are the titles with
dated, escape the reader and some of the which Baader chose to design himself:
works now seem incomprehensible. "Surdada, president of the Justice of the
The Berlin Dadaists invited to their world, secret president of intertellurgical
great 1920 exhibition almost all those superdadaist nations, agent for headmas-
who, to their knowledge, participated in ter Hagendorf's school desks, ex-architect
Dada both in Germany and abroad: Baar- and writer." In November 1918 he had
geld and Max Ernst (Cologne), Rudolph managed to climb, unobserved, into the
Schlichte (Karlsruhe) ,W. Stuckenschmitz pulpit of the Berlin Cathedral, from which
(Magdeburg), Hans Citroen (Amster- he proclaimed that Dada would save the
dam), Otto Schmalhausen (Antwerp), world. At the congress of the Weimar Con-
Hans Arp, Francis Picabia and many oth- stitution he launched a tractt signed by
ers. Max Ernst called himself Dadamax "The Central Council of Dada for the
Ernst and exhibited Dadafex maximus and World Revolution," in which appeared
Codex national et index de la delicatesse such phrases as: "the President of the ter-
du Dada Baargeld; Otto Schmalhausen, restrial globe sits on the saddle of Dada.
who called himself Dada-oz, exhibited the The Dadaists against Weimar." To finish
head of Beethoven with moustache and off the day he had processions of children
squinting eyes, which calls to memory Du- sing and dance around the statues of
champ's mustachioed Mona Lisa. With the Goethe and Schiller. All Baader's activities
exception of Haussmann (called Dadaso- bear the imprint of that particular lyric
phe) and Hanna Hich, who contributed insanity which is typical of Dada in its ex-
collages, objects and drawings not unlike pansive moods, when it comes out into the
those of Arp and Picabia, the exhibits of open, absurd and profound, grave and
the Berlin Dadaists all reveal the same in- grotesque, but always human in the most
tentions. Grosz, Heartfield and Baader direct manner possible (cf. Baader, No.
were particularly subversive, though the *289).
latter's revolutionary inclinations were
4. Cologne
sharpened by his personality and insanity.
Practically all Grosz' drawings and col- Since 1910 Hans Arp and Max Ernst had
lages dealt with politics and propaganda; exhibited off and on with painters whose
Heartfield, under the direction of Grosz, work differed widely from theirs. They
at that time marshal of Dada, had con- met in Cologne in 1913 and became friends.
structed various mannequins, one of which, Extraordinary as it may seem, Arp was at
to be hung from the ceiling, represented this time under the combined influence of
a German officer with a pig's head (cf. Cubism and of the earliest experimenters
Hoch, No. *395). in abstract painting (p. 12) or, to be more
One of Johannes Baader's exhibits was precise, under the influence of Kandinsky.
labelled: The baggage of Surdada upon Arp became a collaborator of the Munich
his first flight from the madhouse, 17 Sep- Der blaue Reiter,t an artistic anthology
tember 1899, Dada relic. Historical. This edited by Kandinsky. He also joined the
entry draws attention to a singular aspect more advanced group Moderner Bund,
of Dada-unbridled insanity, an anarchical also expressionist in tendency. Finally we

10

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should mention that Paul Klee exerted a he energetically opposed the Berlin Dada
certain influence upon Arp (cf. Arp, Nos. movement because he disapproved of its
*264, *265, *267; also Kandinsky, Nos. exclusively propaganda spirit. Baargeld
*226, 228 and Klee, Nos. *231, 232). and Ernst refused a priori to extinguish
As for Max Ernst, connected for a time their poetic light and to tie up all their
with the expressionist Sturm group in Ber- energy in political agitation. Their dissent
lin (directed by Herwarth Walden) he posed a problem which is still unsolved.
painted with no particularly defined in- Having clarified their stand, Baargeld
tention. He must, however, have admired and Ernst published in 1919 Bulletin D,t
Picasso's papiers colles, and pictures with which also served as a catalog to an exhi-
extraneous objects pasted or nailed upon bition, and, in February 1920, Die Scham-
them. Ernst sensed in these technical in- made,t subtitled Wake up dilettantes. In
novations the sign of a new freedom: at these two bulletins we find besides the
the same time he had a foreboding that in names of Ernst and Baargeld those of Arp,
the game they played the stake was really Picabia and Tzara with some new names,
the creation of a spiritual world whose ex- the names of the contributors to Littera-
istence was then only potential. Later, in ture,t the Parisian Dada periodical: Ara-
1919, at the height of the Dada period in gon, Breton, Eluard, Ribemont-Dessaignes,
Cologne, other influences are noticeable in Soupault. The unity of Bulletin Dt and of
Ernst: one, somewhat removed, of Archi- Die Schammadet - rare indeed in Dada
penko in his sculpto-paintings, another, publications-should be admired no less
more obvious, of de Chirico visible for in- than the excellent selection of contributors
stance in Fiat modes, an album of litho- when there were so many to choose from.
graphs by Ernst (Cologne 1920) (cf. Ernst, It is interesting to observe the influence ex-
Nos. 327, 328; also Picasso, No. *251 and erted upon the Cologne group by Parisian
de Chirico, Nos. *190, *196, *211). Dada, which was by this time in full ac-
Immediately after the War Ernst met tion. (A cursory mention should be made
Baargeld, who also lived in Cologne. Baar- at this point of the movement called Stu-
geld was a painter and a poet. The history pid, born of Dada in Cologne, and which
of Dada in Cologne may be summed up in included the painters H. Hoerle, Angelina
their two names with the addition of Arp's. Hoerle, A. Riiderscheidt and the sculptor
The Ventilator, a Dada paper, mainly po- F. W. Seiwert.)
litical, distinctly subversive, threatening In 1919, Baargeld and Ernst, increas-
and Communist, met with a great success. ingly absorbed in spontaneous or auto-
Sold at the gates of factories, it reached a matic painting, embarked together with
circulation of 20,000. Its life was brief only Arp upon a new experiment, peculiarly
because it was forbidden by the British Dada in spirit and extremely important
Army of Occupation in the Rhineland. (quite how important, the authors don't
Baargeld soon found himself heading realize to this day). In this experiment it
both the Communists and the Dadaists of was not so much the result that counted
Cologne. It was he who established the as the intention and the intention was
Communist party in the Rhineland and to destroy individuality. I have already
allied it with the German Communist par- spoken of the pictorial collaborations of
ty. Nevertheless, together with Max Ernst Arp and Ernst called Fatagaga; now Baar-

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geld and Ernst start collaborating on paint- selected with careful foresight. The loca-
ings in mutual ignorance. They begin to tion was both accessible, in the center of
discover in a drawing another drawing the the city, and outrageous, for it was in a
contours of which appear slowly out of little glass-enclosed court to which access
the tangled lines-like an apparition, like could be gained through the lavatory of a
a prophecy, like the messages in table tap- cafe. This was wise; visitors were assured
ping. We are confronted here with a proc- -visitors or victims, it didn't matter.
ess not quite comparable to that of per- The blue posters, arranged by Ernst
ceiving an image in a spot on the wall as with doves and charming cows cut out of
Leonardo da Vinci did; nor yet does it books of object lessons, hardly led one to
consist of lifting an object out of its nat- foresee what this show of young painters
ural environment. Other forces are at
work: accident and surprise at their most
inscrutable and intense, the discovery of
second sight in the spirit itself. The proc-
ess is somewhat analogous to Dali's theory
of the paranoiac image (cf. Baargeld, Nos.
*292, *294 and Baargeld and Ernst, No.
*297).
Ernst, led by his restless fancy, began at
this time to cut out engravings and vig-
nettes used for illustrations, and to put
them together again arbitrarily in order
to create the unexpected. This led to the
astonishing series of collages flung by Max
Ernst in the path of poetry. On the same
principle he combined a set of stencil
drawings consisting of tracings of frag-
ments of machinery, of sections of archi-
tectural and scientific drawings cut up and
put together again. In 1920 he sent one of
these to the Paris Section d'or, an exhibi-
tion of dissident Cubists who refused it
because it was not handmade (cf. Ernst,
Nos. *330, *332, *341, *343; *346; Trophy,
hypertrophied, No. 336, was sent to the
Section d'or).
But to return to Cologne. A sensational
exhibition was held in 1920 which includ-
ed only Arp, Baargeld and Ernst. In all
the history of Dada I know of no single
Trophy, hypertrophied, by Max Ernst, Cologne
event that seems to me more weighty or
1920; rejected by the Cubist Section d'or ex-
compelling. It marks the heroic period of hibition, Paris. Given to the Museum by Tris-
the movement. The exhibition hall was tan Tzara.

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would be. I can just imagine those first (a Czechoslovak Dadaist) and by Kurt
brave, gullible visitors in search of artistic Schwitters. It was Schwitters who said the
sensations. In the center of the room stands last word for Dada.
a little girl in a religious costume reciting Poet and painter, Schwitters occupies a
shocking poems. In a corner rises Baar- particular place in the history of Dada.
geld's Fluidoskeptrik, an aquarium full Avoided by the Berlin group, which was
of fuchsia-red fluid at the bottom of which interested only in political action and
lies an alarm clock; a marvellous lock of which distrusted his uncertain and merely
hair floats negligently in the water like the poetic attitude, he found himself isolated
mnilky way, and from the surface there in Hanover. With regard to political mat-
emerges a handsome arm of turned wood. ters, Schwitters maintained a prudence
Near the Fluidoskeptrik stands an object which was judged bourgeois; he was not
by Ernst in hard wood to which a hatchet invited to contribute to the great Berlin
is chained; visitors are invited to chop at exhibition of 1920, which had included
the object if they wish, like cutting down almost all the other German Dadaists. As
a tree. Naturally, as the beer drinking cus- a imatter of fact, Haussmann and Huelsen-
tomers of the cafe came drifting in, the beck openly declared their opposition to
exhibition received some severe treatment him.
-the objects were broken, the aquarium Schwitters labelled all that he painted
destroyed and the red fluid spilt-and all or constructed, all his statements and
to the complete triumph of Dada. A pro- books and poems with the new word Merz,
test for obscenity was lodged with the po- a term with no meaning, just the fragment
lice. The police came and had to admit of a word which was to become a symbol.
that what had excited most indignation Like Ball and Tzara,* Schwitters wrote
was an etching by Durer. The exhibition long poems consisting only of sounds
was reopened. Here again, Dada's action which he recited, singing and whistling, in
was both demoralizing and destructive, a most extraordinary way. His genuine and
revolutionary and antireligious. exciting personality reveals itself more
Dada died in the same year in Berlin fully in his life and works than in the
and in Cologne. In 1922 Max Ernst left for role he attempted to play with his maga-
Paris; Arp had merely passed through zine. He managed to create around him-
Cologne on his way from Zurich to Paris; self an atmosphere of evasion and in this,
as for Baargeld, he soon gave up painting too, he was truly Dada.
and all public activity. He died in 1927 in His strange house evoked the impos-
an avalanche. sible. When he walked on the street, he
would pick up threads, papers, pieces of
5. Hanover glass-the discarded royalties of vacant lots
Dada came to the surface again about -so that in his house there were piles of
this time in Hanover. A publisher, Paul little sticks and pieces of wood, tufts of
Stegeman, started a Dada almanac, Der hair, old rags, disused unrecognizable ob-
Marstall, and also published books or al- jects, all of which were like fragments of
bums by Arp, Huelsenbeck, Serner, Vagst life itself. With these witnesses stolen from

*For Tzara, Schwitters organized a lecture tour to lecture, there was dancing around a mannequin in
Jena, Weimar and Hanover. In this city, after the one of the galleries.

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the ground he constructed sculptures and it. Finally they were partisans of evasion
objects which are by far the most disquiet- and of revolt at any price. Already Jacques
ing things produced at the time. To the Vach6, a friend of Breton's, out of a per-
principle of the object he added a feeling sonal, dangerous, disintegrating and lucid
of respect for everyday life in the form of humor had managed to induce in the group
dirt and deterioration. Under his influence a habit of disorganization of thought, logic
Arp composed some objects of the same and life. Arthur Cravan, in his periodical
kind. But when compared to the ordinar- Maintenant, 1913-15, Marcel Duchamp and
ily meticulous, mechanical neatness of Francis Picabia had attacked the serious-
Arp's objects, so baffling by their immac- mindedness and the estheticism of modern
ulateness, and to the fantastic quality of art; this appealed, of course, to the con-
Ernst's creations, Schwitters' work seems tributors to Litt&rature, whose habit of
to be endowed with the unreasonableness mind was a negation of reality. On the
of dreams, with total spontaneity, with an other hand, the revolutionary aspects of
ineluctable acceptance of hazard. Schwit- Rimbaud and Lautreamont swung them
ters made a model for a full scale monu- towards less anarchical and facile meth-
ment to humanity composed of many ma. ods in the struggle they were planning. In
terials used pell-mell-wood, plaster, wo- truth, their poetic temperaments inclined
men's corsets, musical toys, Swiss chalets. them towards the marvellous, towards the
Certain parts of the monument were to fathomless depths of the subconscious re-
move and emit sounds. Schwitters' ex- cently probed by Freud, rather than to a
tremely individual collages were made of total disorder. They needed, however, some
scraps of paper picked out of the mud, of way of making a clean slate and of getting
trolley car tickets, of stamps and of paper rid of what was in their way. Dada, a phe-
money withdrawn from circulation (cf. nomenon of the postwar crisis, they wel-
Schwitters, Nos. *494, *670, *671). comed as a way of salvation. Here was a
monster who would create the necessary
6. Paris
void. Here was a first class offensive arm.
Breton, Soupault, Eluard, Aragon, Ribe- And so, although the word Surrealism was
mont-Dessaignes and the other contribu- already currentlyused between Breton and
tors to the Paris periodical Litt&raturet Soupault (authors of automatic texts, pub-
(founded in 1918) were immediately at- lished in 1921 with the title Les champs
tracted by the program of Dada. This magn6tiquest), the group of Litt&rature,
seems only natural if we consider their deeming no other action possible for the
sympathies. Their poetic and critical tra- moment, surrendered to Dada, glittering
dition lay between Lautreamont (Ducasse) scarecrow which stood at the crossroads of
and Rimbaud on the one hand, Jarry and the epoch.
Apollinaire on the other. They continued The Premier vendredi de Litterature
the spiritual liberation first systematically was a confused meeting. This Friday, the
undertaken in the middle of the 19th cen- 23rd of January, 1920, gathered a large
tury; consequently they were by principle audience which came to watch Dada put
resolutely modern insofar as the spirit can at liberty. First, modern poems were re-
rise above contemporary and already com- cited. Then masks declaimed disarticu-
promised thought and pass judgment upon lated poetry by Breton. Under the title

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Poeme Tzara read a newspaper article ac- Archipenko, Gleizes, Survage, and other
companied by bells and rattles. The audi- Cubists. They had already refused a draw-
ence grew angry and hissed. To wind ing by Ernst because it had been mechan-

up the hullabaloo, some paintings were ical in execution. The Section d'or, em-
shown, amongst them a very shocking one barrassed by the subversiveness of the Da-
by Picabia entitled, like some of his writ- daists, wanted to make a clean break with
ings of the time, LHOOQ. After this meet- them. The Closerie des Lilas incident
ing, which was meant merely to start the marks the practical rupture of Dada with
ball rolling, activities and publications art movements.

became more abundant and outrageous. Dada reaches its highest degree of in-
In February, 1920, Bulletin Dadat is tensity in Paris. It causes much talk and
published, the sixth number of the peri- agitation. Poetry, painting and life march
odical Dada, now permanently established together on one front. Dada is ALL-and
in Paris. The same names figure in it: Pi- makes itself as conspicuous as possible, no
cabia, Tzara, Breton, joined by Duchamp, matter how. Various issues of the maga-
Dermee, Cravan. The Bulletin takes an zines DADAphone,t Cannibale,t 391,t
anti-pictorial and anti-literary position. "Z",t define the state of mind of Dada.
Printed over drawings by Picabia were We find in them reproductions of works
declarations, alarming proclamations, gra- that have a great succes de scandale; the
tuitous and wantonly contradictory defini- Mona Lisa with a mustache by Duchamp;
tions. There is a list of Dada presidents. In the famous inkspot that Picabia entitles
large type we read: "The real Dadaists are Sainte Vierge, and the toy monkey which
against Dada. Every one is director of he calls Portrait of Cezanne. Litt&raturet
Dada . . ." prints twenty-three Dada manifestos.
The Bulletin Dadat serves as a programn Because this brief history of Dada has
to the second manifestation which took to do primarily with painting, I shall omit
place on the 5th of February at the Salon many extremely interesting events of this
des Independants. Thirty-eight lecturers period. The Dada spirit was most conspic-
were in line. Newspapers had announced uously proclaimed in theatrical and public
in all seriousness the presence of Charlie performances which were more shocking
Chaplin. Various tracts and manifestos verbally than visually. Two of these Dada
were chanted in such a mad confusion that public soirees must, however, be men-
the lights had to be extinguished to bring tioned, one at the Theatre de l'oeuvre and
the meeting to an end. The audience flung one at the Salle Gaveau, for as a result of
coins at the lecturers. these, Dada was first characterized as Ger-
Shortly afterwards Paul Eluard launches man and as Bolshevistic.
a monthly sheet called Proverbe.t Its tone But, returning to painting, we must de-
is different from that of all the other pub- scribe some of the most important Dada
lications and it is concerned with a revi- exhibitions of the years 1920 to 1922, after
sion of language. which Dada came to an end. Tristan Tzara
About this time Dada is excluded from organized at the Sans Pareil a show of the
the Section d'or at a riotous meeting held recent works of Picabia, mechanical draw-
at the Closerie des Lilas. We have spoken ings and pictures in which real objects are
of this group of artists, which included incorporated. This was followed by a Max

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Ernst exhibition with a catalogt introduc- Dumb Canary and the Emperor of Chinat
tion by Breton. The invitation to the show (1916), two astonishing plays that prove
welcomes "le petit et la petite . . ." and him to be a very pure Dadaist. His work
announces: " at 10 p.m. the Kangaroo; at represented geometrical and mechanical
10.30 high frequency; at 11 distribution of forms in motion and were somewhat in-
prizes; from 11.30 on intimacies." Max fluenced by Picabia (cf. Ribemont-Des-
Ernst's collages and his imaginative paint- saignes, Nos. 481-484).
ings based on mechanical inventions, util- A Man Ray exhibition reveals to Paris
ize, in the pictorial field, automatic proc- his pictorial and photographic researches.
esses not unlike those of Breton and Sou- At this time, a series of his rayographs
pault in Les champs magnetiques.t They are published in an album entitled Les
contributed to Dada painting a new and champs delicieux. In these amazing pic-
particular vision which foreshadows Sur- tures, reality assumes a face which is at
realism (cf. Picabia, Nos. *462, 463, 465; the same time actual and mysterious (cf.
Ernst, Nos. *343, etc., *349, 350, 351). Ray, Nos. 471-*474).
From the point of view of setting and Breton writes a preface to a retrospec-
arrangement the Ernst exhibition was a tive show of de Chirico. In this, as in most
grand success. This is what a contempo- of his other writings, Breton seems to de-
rary journalist wrote about it: "With char- pend very little on Dada: "During our
acteristic bad taste the Dadaists make their time a few wise men, Lautreamont, Apol-
appeal this time to the human instinct of linaire, have held up for universal admira-
fear. The scene is in a cellar with all the tion the umbrella, the sewing machine,
lights in the shop extinguished. Moanings the top hat." Breton points out that a new
are heard through a trap door. Another modern mythology is coming into being.
wag, hidden behind a cupboard, insults Haunted by Surrealism, liberated by the
the more important visitors. . . . The Da- anarchy of Dada, Breton builds something
daists, with no neckties and wearing white new and finds in de Chirico, who is more
gloves, walk around the place. Breton Surrealist than Dada, a world to be ex-
crunches matches. G. Ribemont-Dessaignes plored (cf. de Chirico, Nos. *190-*215).
keeps on remarking at the top of his voice, At the Galerie Montaigne other activi-
'It's raining on a skull.' Aragon mews like ties are staged to bring the Dada season to
a cat, Ph. Soupault plays hide and seek a close, among them an important perma-
with Tzara, Benjamin Peret and Char- nent exhibition. The works of painters and
choune never stop shaking hands. On the poets are shown together. A very fine cata-
threshold, Jacques Rigaut counts out loud logt lists works by Arp, Baargeld, Du-
the cars and the pearls of the lady vis- champ, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Ribemont-
itors." Dessaignes, and publishes poems of Tzara,
The ensuing week the Ribemont-Des- Eluard, PWret, Arp and Aragon. Dada was
saignes exhibition was announced as a meeting opposition within its own ranks,
Breeding course of microcardiacal ciga- for Breton, who was opposed to activities
rettes and of electrical mountain climbing, of this kind on the part of an anti-literary
preface by Tristan Tzara. Ribemont-Des- and anti-artistic group, had refused to par-
saignes, whose name I find for the first ticipate. Among the most remarkable en-
time in 391t in 1917, had written the tries sent by the poets was a mirror of

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 No 7.
Soupault's entitled Portrait of
an unknown, and a piece of
GA LE RI E MONTAIGNE
asphalt which bore the title IC, 1aMontaigne0
Cite du Retiro. Certain paint-
ings by Duchamp supposed to *bAT IPst Its 16 & o 3 I aTI3o.
be in this exhibition were re-

NUL_ C>
placed by sheets of paper mark-
ed with numbers which corre- [<w. AMORa
sponded to the Duchamp en- riestcensb 4
tries in the catalog. Duchamp,
IGNORE
who had been asked to take
part in the exhibition, had just
D~D 19~~i est- ce iui -oeutwiepalre
cabled from New York: "Nuts." rlnn ~~rn l
In order to maintain itself,
Dada tried to invade life more [NICHRCIiF

E TION LNERN
directly and intimately. Dada
visits and walks were organized
in Paris. But a new affair, "Le
Congres de Paris," precipitated

Dada
events which were to bring
about the end of Dada. Tired of
the organized pranks of Dada,
Breton consented to take part
in this Congress, of which the
aim was to determine the direc-
tion and the defense of the mod-
ern spirit. In the midst of un-
certainty Breton was intent up-
on taking stock and seized this
occasion against the opposition
of his friends who were still Cover of the catalog of the "Salon Dada," Galerie Mon-
attached to Dada. Dissensions, taigne, Paris, 1922. From the Library of the Museum of
rivalries,personal quarrels,con- Modern Art.

tradictory tendencies accelerated disinte- cate a systematic research in the realm of

gration. A play by Tzara, Le coeur a gaz, poetry and criticism, and in the world of
brought confusion to its zenith, arbitrarily the subconscious and of hypnotic sleep. A
uniting and separating poets and painters. new period begins. Picabia, still faithful
Finally, Breton managed to bring together to Dada, but in an increasingly light and
again around Litt&ature,t now definitely humorous manner, leaves this circle, which
taking its leave of Dada, a nucleus of ex- grows in size and which will constitute by
Dadaists joined by some new poets. Re- 1924 the initial group of the Surrealists in
productions of Picasso, Max Ernst, Du- the true sense of the word, who are gath-
champ, de Chirico, whose works appear in ered around Breton when he issues the
a new light, mingle with texts which indi- Premier manifeste du Surrealisme.t

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Hector and Andromache, about 1916, by Giorgio de Chirico.

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