Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hanover, Cologne, New York, Paris [Hardcover]

Leah Dickerman (Author), Dorothea Dietrich (Author), Brigid Doherty (Author), Sabine Kriebel (Author), Janine Mileaf (Author), Michael Taylor (Author), Matthew Witkovsky (Author), Earl Powell III (Author), Man Ray (Photographer), Hans Jean Arp (Author), Tristan Tzara (Author), Marcel Duchamp (Author), Kurt Schwitters (Author), Francis Picabia (Author), Max Ernst (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 2005

Along with Russian constructivism and surrealism, Dada stands as one of the three most significant movements of the historical avant-garde. Born in the heart of Europe in the midst of World War I, Dada displayed a raucous skepticism about accepted values. Its embrace of new materials, of collage and assemblage techniques, of the designation of manufactured objects as art objects as well as its interest in performance, sound poetry, and manifestos fundamentally shaped the terms of modern art practice and created an abiding legacy for postwar art. Yet, while the word Dada has common currency, few know much about Dada art itself. In contrast to other key avant-garde movements, there has never been a major American exhibition that explores Dada specifically in broad view. Dada--the catalogue to the exhibition on view in 2006 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and The Museum of Modern Art in New York presents the hybrid forms of Dada art through an examination of city centers where Dada emerged: Zurich, Berlin, Cologne, Hannover, New York, and Paris. Covered here are works by some 40 artists made in the period from circa 1916, when the Cabaret Voltaire was founded in Zurich, to 1926, by which time most of the Dada groups had dispersed or significantly transformed. The city sections bring together painting, sculpture, photography, collage, photomontage, prints and graphic work.

Relying on dynamic design and vivid documentary images, Dada takes us through these six cities via topical essays and extensive plate sections; an illustrated chronology of the movement; witty chronicles of events in each city center; a selected bibliography; and biographies of each artist--accompanied by Dada-era photographs.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kurt Schwitters was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1887. He studied at the Hanover School for Applied Arts and the Art Academy in Dresden. In 1911 he participated in his first exhibition. In 1919 the first pictures of his Merz were published, as was his poem An Anna Blume. Throughout the 20s, he devoted most of his energy to working on the Merzbau and Merz magazine, and also founded a successful advertising agency in 1924. Upon the Nazi defamation of his work in 1937, he emigrated to Norway, later continuing on to England, where he died in 1948. Five years earlier, an air raid over his home in Hanover had destroyed the original Merzbau.

Born in Philadelphia in 1890, Man Ray began his professional life as a painter before taking up photography in 1915. In Paris during the 1920s his career as a fashion photographer and portraitist took off, and it was there that he discovered the possibilities of cameraless photography. He continued to paint and take photographs both in the United States and Paris until his death in 1976. He has been the subject of major exhibitions at museums throughout the world, and is one of the best-known photographers of the twentieth century.

Leah Dickerman is Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Art.

Dorothea Dietrich is Chair of Academic Studies and Associate Professor of Art History at the Corcoran College of Art + Design, Washington.

Brigid Doherty is Associate Professor of German and Art and Archaeology at Princeton University.

Sabine T. Kriebel is a Lecturer of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University College, Cork, Ireland.

Janine Mileaf is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA.

Michael R. Taylor is the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Matthew S. Witkovsky is Assistant Curator of Photographs, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: D.A.P./The National Gallery of Art, Washington; 1ST edition (November 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933045205
• ISBN-13: 978-1933045207
• Product Dimensions: 12.2 x 8.9 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #618,352 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #21 in Books > Arts & Photography > Schools, Periods & Styles > Dadaism

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars the world turned upside down..., March 1, 2006

By 

A. McDonald (New York) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hanover, Cologne, New York, Paris (Hardcover)

This catalogue illustrates and compliments the DaDa show in Paris, Washington DC, and New York. DaDa was a hugely influential avant-gardist art movement at the end of the 1910's and the beginning of the 1920's, reacting amongst other things to the shocking experience of WWI and the evident failure of conventional institutions. It's typically said that this movement was "anti-art" -- but this is not wholly the case. It is better described as a strategy, encompassing a messy fountain of creativity, some of it quite artful.

This work brings together a whole cast of characters and diverse approaches to what DaDa means or might have meant, and the show barely holds it together. This curatorial approach might actually be best for a movement as elusive and unconventional as DaDa, where tightly focused and carefully defined parameters for an "art movement" might be out of place. So the fact that the show's a bit of a mess is actually good news.

The book explores DaDa thematically city by city - a more reasonable grouping than artist by artist or chronological approaches. DaDa was an urban phenomena, a cacophony of performance that needed the bustle of city life to sustain it.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Abundant DADA, March 21, 2006

By 

Robert H. Warner - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hanover, Cologne, New York, Paris (Hardcover)

A remarkable and concise history of the art movement DADA. Beautifully illustrated and designed...easy to manuveur between the cities where DADA was happening after the first world war. I would heartily suggest the purchase of this wonderous publication.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dada: The Movement of Absurdity and its Profound Effect on Art, April 12, 2006

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hanover, Cologne, New York, Paris (Hardcover)

With the world wholly at war in WW I everything sane seemed challenged - to a few artists. These important minds gathered into a movement that at the time seem absurd - straying away from the expected paintings and drawings and sculpture that had become the norm for the definition of Art: names such as Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, Sophie Taeuber, Hans Richter, Hannah H?ch, Raoul Hausmann, George Grosz, John Heartfield, Kurt Schwitters, Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, Man Ray, and Marcel Duchamp challenged every aspect of the establishment and raucously boasted works consisting of photographs, collage, commonplace items such as the infamous urinal, performance, and poetry. The ultimate result of this at first dismissed movement (a movement which lasted only ten short years form 1916 to 1926) is now patently obvious in the manner in which art has been transformed in the post-Dada world.

This very fine catalogue for the both the National Gallery of Art in Washington and The Museum of Modern Art in New York wisely elects to divide the movement not into art forms but rather into the specific sites where history was changed. The divisions are by city: Z?rich, Berlin, Cologne, Hannover, New York, and Paris. Lavishly illustrated with the works of the forty artists included in the exhibition, the book is graced by superb writing with essays by Brigid Doherty, Sabine T. Kriebel, Dorothea Dietrich, Michael R. Taylor, Janine Mileaf and Matthew S. Witkovsky and one of the most sound introductions by Rusty Powell. The exhibition and catalogue are the results of curator and editor Leah Dickerman who deserves recognition for the finest book on the Dada movement in print! Highly recommended. Grady Harp, April 06