Dada in Paris [Hardcover]

Michel Sanouillet (Author), Sharmila Ganguly (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2, 2009

The long-awaited publication in English of the definitive book on Paris Dada.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An illuminating account of the ragged emergence and decline of Dada in the Parisian literary world, and the volatility of the human relationships behind the magazines 391, Dada, and Literature in particular."--Clive Phillpot, freelance writer and curator, and former art librarian

Michel Sanouillet is a French art historian and one of the leading scholars of the Dada movement. He is Dean Emeritus of the University of Nice, Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, and founder and first president of the International Association for the Study of Dada and Surrealism.

About the Author

Michel Sanouillet's Dada in Paris, published in France in 1965, reintroduced the Dada movement to a public that had largely ignored or forgotten it. Over forty years later, it remains both the unavoidable starting point and the essential reference for anyone interested in Dada or the avant-garde. This first English-language edition of Sanouillet's definitive work (a translation of the expanded 2005 French edition) gives English-speaking readers their first direct access to the author's monumental history (based on years of research, including personal involvement with most of the Dadaists still living at the time) and massive compilation of previously unpublished correspondence, including more than 200 letters to and from such movement luminaries as Tristan Tzara, André Breton, and Francis Picabia. In the years after Dada's relatively brief Paris flowering in the 1920s, its members were often depicted as opportunistic youths, hedonistic jokers engrossed in a monstrous solipsism. Sanouillet was the first to see them instead as the most gifted and sensitive representatives of a generation, intent on finding a new way of living, writing, and feeling. Dada in Paris offers a behind-the-scenes account of the French avant-garde's riotous adolescence, with the timeline that begins with Tzara and Picabia stretching to include Breton, Philippe Soupault, Louis Aragon, and Paul Éluard. Sanouillet describes the pre-Dada Parisian milieu, the connection made with Zurich Dada, and Parisian Dada projects and their reception. Finally, by 1923, Dada-according-to-Tzara gave way to Dada-according-to-Breton--which a few months later, under tumultuous circumstances, took on the new name of Surrealism. The longer-lasting, more conservative Surrealism would overshadow Dada for decades to come.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 720 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; Revised edition (October 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262013037
• ISBN-13: 978-0262013031
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,187,434 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #39 in Books > Arts & Photography > Schools, Periods & Styles > Dadaism

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