For all of its iconoclasm, the Dada spirit was not without repression, and the Dada movement was not without misogynist tendencies. Indeed, the word Dada evokes the idea of the male--both as father and as domineering authority. Thus female colleagues were to be seen not heard, nurturers not usurpers, pleasant not disruptive.This book is the first to make the case that women's changing role in European and American society was critical to Dada. Debates about birth control and suffrage, a declining male population and expanding female workforce, the emergence of the New Woman, and Freudianism were among the forces that contributed to the Dadaist enterprise.Among the female dadaists discussed are the German émigré Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven; Berlin dadaist Hannah Höch; French dadaists Juliette Roche and Suzanne Duchamp; Zurich dadaists Sophie Taeuber and Emmy Hennings; expatriate poet and artist Mina Loy; the "Queen of Greenwich Village," Clara Tice; Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, the lesbian couple who ran The Little Review; and Beatrice Wood, who died in 1998 at the age of 105. The book also addresses issues of colonialist racism, cross-dressing and dandyism, and the gendering of the machine. The bibliography was compiled by the International Dada Archive (Timothy Shipe and Rudolf E. Kuenzli).Contributors : Eleanor S. Apter, Barbara J. Bloemink, Willard Bohn, Carolyn Burke, William A. Camfield, Whitney Chadwick, Dorothea Dietrich, Susan Fillin-Yeh, Paul B. Franklin, Renée Riese Hubert, Marisa Januzzi, Amelia Jones, Marie T. Keller, Rudolf E. Kuenzli, Maud Lavin, Margaret A. Morgan, Dickran Tashjian, Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Barbara Zabel.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Given its heyday between the years 1916 and 1924, it is no surprise misogyny prevailed in the Dada movement. Thus, the editors surmise the need and rationale for this new study of Dada's lesser-known female participants. Among the numerous key figures discussed are Hannah H?ch, Juliette Roche, Suzanne Duchamp, Sophie Taeuber, Emmy Hennings, Mina Loy, Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Clara Tice, Florine Stettheimer, Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, and Beatrice Wood. Topics include the young American girl, the gendered machine, the dandy, cross-dressing, homosexuality, and primitivism. The 19 feminist essays collected here vary in degree of clarity and successful argument, but all are stimulating. Recommended for collections in gender studies and modernism.AMary Hamel-Schwulst, Towson Univ., MD
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"But what Women in Dada raises time and time again is the issue of art and gender -- really, art and sex here. No matter how freely these women cast their bodies about and shunned conventional marriage, most of them were standard heterosexual... Self-objectification and active agency are hard to juggle. For many women of the period, including those connected to the Dada movement, sexual freedom was a goal to be pursued at almost any cost -- and the cost, in terms of personal agency and achievement, was high. Women in Dada performs an important function not merely in reviving lost reputations, but in raising issues that are as hot -- if not new -- today as they were in the Dada epoch." -- Linda Nochlin, Bookforum, Summer 1999
"But what Women in Dada raises time and time again is the issue of art and gender -- really, art and sex here. No matter how freely these women cast their bodies about and shunned conventional marriage, most of them were standard heterosexual... Self-objectification and active agency are hard to juggle. For many women of the period, including those connected to the Dada movement, sexual freedom was a goal to be pursued at almost any cost -- and the cost, in terms of personal agency and achievement, was high. Women in Dada performs an important function not merely in reviving lost reputations, but in raising issues that are as hot -- if not new -- today as they were in the Dada epoch." -- Linda Nochlin, Bookforum, Summer 1999
"With nineteen essays and an informative bibliography prepared by Timothy Shipe and Rudolf E. Kuenzli of the International Dada Archive, Women in Dada brings the reader 686 pages closer to an informed, empathetic view of women's contributions to Dada." -- NY Arts, May 1999
"But what Women in Dada raises time and time again is the issue of art and gender -- really, art and sex here. No matter how freely these women cast their bodies about and shunned conventional marriage, most of them were standard heterosexual... Self-objectification and active agency are hard to juggle. For many women of the period, including those connected to the Dada movement, sexual freedom was a goal to be pursued at almost any cost -- and the cost, in terms of personal agency and achievement, was high. Women in Dada performs an important function not merely in reviving lost reputations, but in raising issues that are as hot -- if not new -- today as they were in the Dada epoch." -- Linda Nochlin, Bookforum, Summer 1999
"With nineteen essays and an informative bibliography prepared by Timothy Shipe and Rudolf E. Kuenzli of the International Dada Archive, Women in Dada brings the reader 686 pages closer to an informed, empathetic view of women's contributions to Dada." -- NY Arts, May 1999
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting collection of essays,
By
This review is from: Women in Dada: Essays on Sex, Gender, and Identity (Hardcover)
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.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Making dada out of almost nada...,
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This review is from: Women in Dada: Essays on Sex, Gender, and Identity (Paperback)
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!
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