more dada notes

went to the show this time with my friend from high school pat clifford who runs a homeless shelter in cincinnati... (and completely spaced on doug lang's reading at the writer's center! rrr...)

This world of systems has gone to pieces. (hugo ball)

Art needs an operation. (tristan tzara)

Every word that is spoken and sung here [the Cabaret Voltaire] says at least one thing, that this humilitating age has not succeeded in winning our respect. (hugo ball)

[originally i was just going to note quotations but this plan did not last long -- ed.]

the cabaret voltaire was not open more than 7 months (it closed july 1916)

Q: "L'amiral cherche une maison à louer" (performance piece by tzara, janco and hulsenbeck) -- do i have a copy of the text somewhere? (ram and mp3 files on ubu) A: yes! poems for the millenium vol 1, 308-09!

pat wonders where he read that governments consulted with artists during WWI for tips on effective camouflage patterns/techniques [UPDATE: pat sends the following link, patrick wright's review of DPM: Disruptive Pattern Material; An Encyclopedia of Camouflage: Nature – Military – Culture by Hardy Blechman & Alex Newman]

arp/taueber collages -- pure shape/color abstraction

picabia -- joke mechanical schematics

Q: picabia's "Poèmes et dessins de la fille née sans mère" -- do i have the text somewhere? A: french here

schad too (like picabia) mechanizes/schematizes

tauber marionettes -- kleist & psychoanalysis?

schadographs -- the other photographic process like man ray's from last trip -- (early dumpster diving) -- here light equalizes, a pure harmony of lights and contrasts

taueber's gouache mosaics --> almost pointilist (seurat)

a french mom holds her blonde baby boy in her arms and says to him (of the tauebers): "ohh, tous ses couleurs! et ici, regards, le soliel! qu'est-ce que tu pense?"

richter's oils -- expressionist

segal's futurism (and he wrote an ethical philosophy based on the essential equality of all things?)

Free yourself from the demands of the times (1st dada intl poster)

berlin -- why does defeat yield burlesque? (above and beyond grotesquery)

berlin -- heartfield, grosz, dix, schlichter, höch, hausmann, scholz, baader


höch collages (and those of the berlin group in general) bring in specific content

how much of this exhibit comes from the dada archives in iowa? what do they have there?

towards a taxonomy of collage (its diction, grammar, syntax, texture, etc.)

hausmann's "the new material in painting" -- do i have this text somewhere?

hausmann (& grosz) oils reproducing the effects of their collage to an ernstian proto-surreal effect

Everything had broken down in any case and new things had to be made out of fragments: and this is Merz. (kurt schwitters)

Merz --> (com)merce --> mersh

hulsenbeck thought schwitters insufficiently political

anna blume vs. rrose sélavy

schwitters' collages the most varied? his use of oils on some collages prettys them up, makes them painterly, expressionist. content is almost dissolved out and you're almost back at the pure abstraction of arp. (unlike the berlin collages whose content always remains explicit is sometimes overly saturated.)

had he continued to live in/with it, Merzbau would have become a kind of installation/endurance art piece. it outgrew him.

his lithos return to the monochrome abstractions of the schadograph (almost approaching mondrian)

i wonder if there exists anything like a full history of these little mags?

need to make one visit just to watch films and write

Trespassers will not be prosecuted (inscribed on a drawing at the dada-early spring exhibit, 1920)

cologne was occupied by the british

ernst & baargeld met arp in zurich


ernst's "Fiat Modes" has the picabian mechanical/schematic feel -- rubbings from printing plates

Why am I not a brave bird? (poster for dada-early spring, 1920)

baargeld even more picabian than schwitters (is it the handwriting?) -- in his "Venus at the King's Game" the body parts look distended, photoshopped!

more transvestitism: baargeld's "Ordinäre Klitterung: Kubischer Transvestit vor einem vermeintlichen Scheidewege" and ernst's "dadamax" (collage with corpse head over a woman's body)


ernst's photomontages the most calculated -- that is, between the abstraction of schwitters and the content-saturation of the berlin group, ernst takes two or three content areas (and forms: teaching aids, catalogues, diagrams, schematics) to source from and collage into


ernst's "The Gramineous Bicycle Garnished with Bells the Dappled Fire Damps and the Echinoderms Bending the Spine to Look for Caresses" --> dali / tanguy (the appearance of indeterminate organic forms)

overpainting

by about here i get saturated out -- the ernst is so rich and then to turn the corner and walk into new york...

DADA cannot live in New York. All New York is DADA and will not tolerate a rival (man ray)

R. Mutt = armut (German, "poverty")

the bookstore had this, see if rod can order:
Chanson Dada: Tristan Tzara Selected Poems by Tristan Tzara, Translated by Lee Harwood
Paperback: 144 pages
Publisher: Black Widow Press (November 1, 2005)
ISBN: 0976844907