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.
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.
