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Through the analysis of narratives, paintings and objets surréalistes by Breton, Aragon, Dalì, and others, Malt examines how the object emerges as psychologically and historically marked in the surrealist context, functioning as both fetish and fetishized commodity. Responding to recent debates about the role of the uncanny and the representation of the body in surrealist art and literature, Malt's study offers new perspectives on familiar works such as the paintings of Salvador Dalì as well as illuminating relatively neglected ones such as Breton's poèmes-objets. ... Read more

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This book is the first to make the case that women's changing role inEuropean and American society was critical to Dada. Debates about birthcontrol and suffrage, a declining male population and expanding femaleworkforce, the emergence of the New Woman, and Freudianism were amongthe forces that contributed to the dadaist enterprise.

Among the female dadaists discussed are the German émigréBaroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven; Berlin dadaist Hannah Höch;expatriate poet and artist Mina Loy; the "Queen of Greenwich Village,"Clara Tice; Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, the lesbian couple who ranthe Little Review; and Beatrice Wood, who died in 1998 at the ageof 105. The book also addresses issues of colonialist racism,cross-dressing and dandyism, and the gendering of the machine. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Making dada out of almost nada...
The poop: The premise behind this collection of academic essays is that women have been marginalized to the fringes of Dada history. While it's quite possible that women have been undervalued throughout art history, it is also true that there is sometimes good reason for this and it has nothing to do with patriarchal politics or prejudice. Such is the case with Dada--at least that's my conclusion after reading *Women in Dada.* Although the authors generally make the case that women made some interesting contributions to Dada, they are, at best, minor contributions, and, for the most part, do belong among the footnotes of a history of the movement.

Indeed, some of the artists and writers discussed had, by the authors' own admission, only the briefest and most tangential involvement with Dada, which of itself explains why they've been marginalized in the conventional telling of Dada history.

The scoop: *Women in Dada* is a book worth reading if you're seriously interested in either Dada or woman/gender studies, but probably not for the casual reader of either. This collection bears all the trademarks of post-graduate school critical writing: interpretations teased and sometimes tortured beyond all reasonable assumptions into the semblance of something new for the purpose of saying something new, furthering an agenda, advancing a personal philosophy, etc., in other words, Derridean-style deconstruction without apology. The constant re-interpretation of old material is what academic writing has always been about--part of the vicious publish-or-perish cycle--and, ostensibly, what keeps art and literature by those long dead relevant to our time.

These subsequent re-interpretations can be interesting, illuminating (or annoying) and serve to prove that art and literature can be thought of as a kind of eternal Rorschach that tells us more about ourselves in our reaction to a work than it does the original artist or his/her original intent--a jumping-off place for original creation based on contemporary reactions.

For me, this book was most rewarding by my reading it as a sort of negative of the negative of the untold history of Dada that the authors were trying to provide--a restoring of the original Dada picture by means of where the shadow history borders on that of the major figures of Dada, who are all well-represented here.

If that makes sense. If not, try this: you get a lot of info about Duchamp, Picabia, Schwitters, Arp, Ball, etc, even if they aren't the main focus of these essays.

Also--this book is nicely formatted, well-made, and generously illustrated throughout, altho the plates are in money-saving black-and-white.

So, let me close in Dada-fashion by saying, and not irrelevantly, I trust: Unconventional on criticize broken decides life.....reenacted!

Interesting collection of essays
While this book contains essays on the lesser discussed women of Dada, it also covers gender and identity in Dada - including Marcel Duchamp.It is also worth pointing out that while most of the women covered are Dadaists, not all are.Specifically, Georgia O'Keefe doesn't really fall into the Dada category.I would recommend this for those interested in the intersection of gender and early twentieth century art. ... Read more

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Duplessis provides a historical introduction to surrealism and examines its techniques and its use in poetry, painting, architecture, and theatre. ... Read more

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In Irrational Modernism, Amelia Jones gives us a history of New York Dada, reinterpreted in relation to the life and works of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Jones enlarges our conception of New York Dada beyond the male avant-garde heroics of Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Francis Picabia to include the rebellious body of the Baroness. If they practiced Dada, she lived it, with her unorthodox personal life, wild assemblage objects, radical poetry and prose, and the flamboyant self-displays by which she became her own work of art. Through this reinterpretation, Jones not only provides a revisionist history of an art movement but also suggests a new method of art history.

Jones argues that the accepted idea of New York Dada as epitomized by Duchamp's readymades and their implicit cultural critique does not take into consideration the contradictions within the movement—its misogyny, for example—or the social turmoil of the period caused by industrialization, urbanization, and the upheaval of World War I and its aftermath, which coincided with the Baroness's time in New York (1913-1923). Baroness Elsa, whose appearances in Jones's narrative of New York Dada mirror her volcanic intrusions into the artistic circles of the time, can be seen to embody a new way to understand the history of avant-gardism—one that embraces the irrational and marginal rather than promoting the canonical.

Acknowledging her identification with the Baroness (as a "fellow neurasthenic"), and interrupting her own objective passages of art historical argument with what she describes in her introduction as "bursts of irrationality," Jones explores the interestedness of all art history, and proposes a new "immersive" understanding of history (reflecting the historian's own history) that parallels the irrational immersive trajectory of avant- gardism as practiced by Baroness Elsa. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Irrational Art History; or, Queering up Dada
Amelia Jones, author of _Postmodernism and the Engendering of Marcel Duchamp_ and _Body Art_, has (yet again!) pushed the limits of critical theory and historical investigation in art history and visual culture._Irrational Modernism_, which is Jones's intervention into early twentieth century modernism and studies on Dada, marks the beginning of an embodied and invested art history -- one that moves away from the hegemonic practices of the historians and theorists associated with the journal October.Of course, it almost goes without saying, that Jones's style and theoretical approach is something that only a brilliant feminist and queer art historian could do.It is refreshing to have a history that starts and ends with a woman (the Baroness, et al.), and it is theoretically and historically important to have a history that counters hegemonic discourses and theories in art history (specifically, the ones practiced by east-coast art historians) because the time is right to think "our" way out of the dead-end that has been set up for "us."Indeed, Jones, using the figure of the Baroness and neurasthenia, leads us on a path that takes us away from the traditional roads that have been mapped out before, and Jones situates herself and the reader in an affect that can lead to other ways and modes of being-in-the-world.With Jones and the Baroness, we go on a derive, flaneurie, embodied stroll, and we enter into other worlds and spaces -- as well as other alternative histories and memories -- that de-naturalize the world of Dada as we presently "know" it.
It is not difficult to states that this book, _Irrational Modernism_, will be important to anyone doing contemporary and modern art history, critical theory, lgbt studies, and woman's studies. I highly suggest it to anyone who desires to think their way out of the present rut that "we" are in -- the dead-end that art history and visual studies has been facing for some time now.Jones's book asks many questions and gives many answers that can lead us to a more productive space.Without a doubt, this book will be know as a landmark text - the first compelling and productive art historical book on twentieth century art and art history for the twenty-first century, as Nicholas Mirzoeff has stated. ... Read more

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Dal. Picasso. Ernst. Magritte. Maddox. Breton. Artaud, Fondane, Masson--all are to be found in this gallery of surrealist artists. Focussing on surrealist visuality--defined as the visual expression of internal perception or, in Andr Breton's words, internal representation--the contributors to this handsomely illustrated volume shed new light on one of the twentieth century's most exciting cultural movements.

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This is a comprehensive, illustrated study of the achievements of British Surrealists in all fields, whether poetical, artistic or political, and makes a major contribution to the understanding of this key 20th century movement. ... Read more

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This is the first book-length study of the unique collaborations between surrealist painters and authors that resulted in illustrated books. Hubert examines the interrelationships between the visual and verbal arts as both were freeing themselves from outer codification and mimesis. ... Read more

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Angelika Hoerle (1899-1923) and her artist husband Heinrich Hoerle were protagonists in the Dada movement in Cologne, alongside Max Ernst and Johannes Baargeld. Between 1919 and her tragic death from tuberculosis in 1923, Hoerle built an outstanding oeuvre of Dada collages, caricatures, linocuts and drawings-some of which was acquired by Katherine Dreier and Marcel Duchamp's famous Societe Anonyme collection, with other works going to the Art Gallery of Toronto, and the rest of which was sadly destroyed by the Nazis as "degenerate art." Hoerle brought to Cologne Dada's ranks a fully formed Marxist and feminist politics, and when Dada proved too dogmatic to contain her, she and Heinrich formed the breakaway "Stupid Group." The Comet of Cologne Dada situates Hoerle among the artistic and political ferment of Weimar Germany, as a key figure whose artistic drive and political conscience were unthwartable and exemplary. ... Read more

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Written in 1936, this work was compiled by a key Surrealist entrepreneur to promote the movement in America. It includes: sculpture by Duchamp and Oppenheim; photographs by Atget and Man Ray; poems by Peret and Picasso; paintings by Arp, Magritte and Miro; and essays by Breton and Bachelard. ... Read more

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Many people associate Surrealism with politics but it was also permeated by occult ideas, a fact often overlooked by art historians. This fascinating book concerns itself with magical subculture and the central role it played in the development of a great art movement. It also shows how many surrealists and their predecessors were steeped in magical ideas: Kandinsky, with his involvement in Theosophy; the sorcery of Salvador Dali; the alchemy of Pablo Picasso, and; the Shamanism of Max Ernst and Leonora Carrington. ... Read more

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This study analyzes the aesthetic thrust of what are considered the three most important avant-garde movements in the 20th century, defining both similarities and differences in their poetics. In essays like "A Will to Art", "Modern Drama and Nonverbal Poetics," "Le Chapelet du hasard: Ideas of Order in Dada-Surrealist Imagery", "Three Modes of Semantic Accrual", and "The Aesthetics of Ambiguity", Eric Sellin explores the inner workings of the creative impulses and the resulting poetic structures which inhere in the creative works of these early avant-garde movements. ... Read more

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To the Dadaists, a successful provocation had little meaning in itself. Content was less important than audience reaction. And what really consummated a Dada event was indignant commentary in the press--so much so that some legendary works occurred exclusively in newspapers, which trustingly printed the Dadaistsí invented stories. AndrÈ Bretonís recently discovered, unpublished album, Dossier Dada tracks his own publicity and press coverage, an intrinsic part of his work, from 1916 to 1924. Breton, a central figure in the Dada movement and later the driving force behind the Surrealists, included not only newspaper and magazine articles in which he was mentioned but all of his own original documentation for the events covered--invitations, posters and letters. At 12 by 15 inches across and about 8 inches thick, the album is, among its other distinctions, the largest known Dada collage. The more manageable 80 pages reprinted here have been chosen to present an almost complete chronicle of the public pieces and publications of the Dadaists in Paris. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The best general work on Dada -reissue it NOW!
An excellent, comprehensive overview of the Dada movement, extending well beyond the dates in the title!Although the translated text is occasionally a bit clunky, it is quite readable and informative - and even without it, the extensive collection of photos and high-quality reproductions of key Dada art pieces would make this book an important reference work on their own...a shame it is currently unavailable!One hopes this problem will soon be rectified. ... Read more