![]() ![]() They had nowhere else to go: the catastrophe of the Great War was raging around them in the trenches and battlefields of Europe.Įl Lissitzky (Lasar Markovich Lissitzky), “Kurt Schwitters.” c. Most of them went to Zurich-either as draft dodgers or as intellectual exiles-because it offered them a relatively safe haven where they could live cheaply and bide their time. For example, the artist Hans Richter-who used the term “anti-art”-never stopped being an artist, but through his “anti-art,” he found a way of expressing radical opposition to those conventions associated with European “bourgeois intellectualism.” Artists, such as Hans Arp, Hugo Ball, Marcel Janco, Tristan Tzara, Richard Huelsenbeck, and Emmy Hennings-whose works and documents are also included in the Zurich section of the current exhibition-may have been euphoric rabble rousers in 1916, but they were also fundamentally artists searching for a way to express their dissatisfactions with society inside the geographical and ideological parentheses of Switzerland. The implication is that culture and politics are equally contained within the realm of power, that is, a preemptive elitism administrated by the ruling class. It would be more accurate to say that Dada was against aesthetics, specifically the kind of aesthetics in which art is delimited in terms of power. ![]() It is often assumed that artists who aligned themselves with the Dada movement in the early twentieth century were against art, but this is not entirely accurate. Indeed, Dad(a) and Mom(a) are finally together again on their own terms with all their subversive children running around, mucking-up institutional art, and challenging the comforts of bourgeois culture. Even so, the selection of work and the installation of the exhibition at MoMA are mind-boggling. Given that the texts were not written in English, it was assumed that the majority of Americans would not find it of value-an unfortunate, but regrettably practical decision. Many of the personal letters, journals, notes, and other forms of printed documentation included in Paris did not make it overseas. While the American version of the exhibition is substantial, it offers less than the original, more extensive exhibition in Paris. Originally organized by the Centre George Pompidou in Paris under the curatorial guidance of Laurent Le Bon, “Dada” was given two venues in the United States-one earlier this year at the National Gallery in Washington DC and now at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. “A point that I want very much to establish is that the choice of these ‘ready-mades’ was never dictated by aesthetic delectation.” ![]() James Thrall Soby Fund, 1966 © 2006 Man Ray Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Metronome with cutout photograph of eye on pendulum, 8 7/8” x 4 5/8” (22.5×11.6 cm). Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky), “Indestructible Object (or Object to Be Destroyed),” 1964 (replica of 1923 original). ![]()
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