Dada at MoMA

Over at the Museum of Modern Art, a wonderful retrospective on Dada opens today. Out of the chaos of the first World War came a movement rich in artwork, an enormous hodgepodge of collage, photomontage, media pranks, readymades, performances, manifestos, typography, silly poems, and so much more. From Berlin to New York, Paris to Zürich and a handful of other cities, artists produced some of the 20th century's most fascinating work during the crazy years of the Weimar Republic.
I was thrilled to see some of my old favorites, starting with Hannah Höch's Cut with the Kitchen Knife ("Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser Dada durch die letzte weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands"), a stunning collage that synthesizes so many aspects of Dada, from orthography to political instability to use of found objects. The MoMA curators obviously strove to recreate the thrilling 1920 Dada convention in Berlin, wherein works in diverse media were hung in close proximity to each other, a nice photo of which can be seen here depicting Hannah Höch with Raoul Hausmann. Kurt Schwitters collages from his Merz movement are to be found, as well as pieces by Sophie Täuber, Francis Picabia and other lesser-known Dadaists.
Theo van Doesburg's "Kleine Dada Soirée" (photo reproduced above) gives a sense of the expressionist joy of typography, sense of sound of funny and phony words strung together, of verbal circumlocutions created for aspirational pleasure. One recalls the poetry for example from a Raoul Hausmann manifesto that has words such as "kilikilikoum" "correyiosou" and "IRRIDADOUMTH" that roll (dare I say) trippingly off the tongue.
And there are the haunting Otto Dix and George Grosz paintings, such as Grosz's "The Convict," one of his many brilliant compositions depicting war veterans as hideously creepy, twisted men with screwed-up features. Interspersed throughout the show are some great El Lissitzky, Jean Arp and Man Ray pieces, and obviously the show would not be complete without the requisite Marcel Duchamp readymade urinal.
The show arrived here from the Pompidou in Paris via the National Gallery of Art, and if you are unable to visit MoMA, some of the more curious multimedia pieces can be viewed online here.

Tags:   dada, el lissitzky, george grosz, hannah hoech, jean arp, kurt schwitters, man ray, marcel duchamp, moma, museum of modern art, national gallery, otto dix, pompidou, raoul hausmann

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Posted on 6/18/2006 ( Permanent Link )
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