The Dada Artists: Recommended Reading & Exhibition Catalogs

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  Hatje Cantz Kurt Schwitters: A Journey Through Art The influence of Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) permeates the art, literature and music of the past century as profoundly as any of his contemporaries. Hero of Dada, Constructivist virtuoso, patron saint of collage, sound poetry and installation art, Schwitters made his greatest impact in the postwar era--while he himself was living in relative seclusion in the north of England--influencing American Pop art (especially Robert Rauschenberg's Combines), Fluxus and assemblage art throughout Europe and America; artists as different as Damien Hirst and Ed Ruscha cite him as an influence. This volume is the first serious broad survey of Schwitters' work in 25 years, and attests to his omnipresent influence today. It draws on recent research into the Merzbau interiors, and gathers all aspects of his output, from collage to typography and architecture, into one glorious testimonial to Schwitters' libidinously prolific oeuvre. With texts by British art historian Roger Cardinal and Schwitters scholar Gwendolen . . . . [see book details]

  Text by Roger Cardinal. Gwendolen Webster. Hbk, 8.75 x 11.25 in. / 160 pgs / 85 color / 40 b&w. Publication Date: 5/31/2011 List Price: US $60.00

  The Green Box Hannah Höch: Picture Book A central figure in the Berlin Dada circle, friend to Kurt Schwitters and Piet Mondrian and lover of Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch (1889-1972) is probably the most important female artist from the German modernist period. She is best known for her pioneering works of photomontage, which briskly juxtapose mechanical and organic forms, ancient and contemporary bodies, symbols and text drawn from brands and headlines, also edging feminism, commodity critique and other political concerns into the mix. "It is striking how contemporary to us much of Höch's work feels," Luc Sante wrote recently, "in its sexual politics, its humor, its gleeful appropriation of anything and everything at hand." In 1945, Höch made this fantastical full-color children's book, which chronicles the adventures of the four mythical creatures Runfast, Dumblet, Snifty and Meyer in an enchanted garden, combining photomontage with the hallucinatory plant imagery she had come to favor. It is published here for . . . . [see book details]

  Afterword by Gunda Luyken. Translated by Brian Currid. Hbk, 10.75 x 8.75 in. / 44 pgs / 19 color. Publication Date: 10/31/2010 List Price: US $49.95

  Walther König, Köln Angelika Hoerle: The Comet of Cologne Dada 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 Société 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. . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Michael Parke-Taylor. Text by Angie Littlefield, Dorothy Rowe, Sabine Kriebel. Pbk, 8 x 9.75 in. / 128 pgs / 154 color. Publication Date: 2/28/2010 List Price: US $39.00

  National Gallery of Art, Washington/D.A.P. Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris 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 . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Leah Dickerman. Essays by Brigid Doherty, Sabine T. Kriebel, Dorothea Dietrich, Michael R. Taylor, Janine Mileaf and Matthew S. Witkovsky. Foreword by Earl A. Powell III. Hardcover, 8 x 12 in. / 432 pgs / 400 color / 150 b&w. Publication Date: 11/15/2005 List Price: US $65.00

  MFA Publications Marcel Duchamp: The Bachelor Stripped Bare A Biography Marcel Duchamp: The Bachelor Stripped Bare is not the first full-length biography of Duchamp, but it is the first to present him in all his human contradictions and to take a refreshingly objective look at his real contribution to modern art. The well-known facts are explored here: Duchamp's myriad personal relations (with family, lovers, collectors and artists ranging from Man Ray, Picabia and Breton to the Stettheimer sisters and the Arensbergs); the creation of major works such as the "readymades" and the "Large Glass"; his passion for chess and supposed abandonment of art. But beyond this, author Alice Goldfarb Marquis looks past the diffident, humorous mask that Duchamp wore with acquaintance and intimate alike, to explore the passions and insecurities that motivated many of his artistic and personal evolutions. She separates the artist from the con artist, to determine just how profound an influence Duchamp has really been. Based on numerous . . . . [see book details]

  By Alice Goldfarb Marquis. Hardcover, 6 x 9 in. / 368 pgs / 24 color / 64 b&w. Publication Date: 9/2/2002 List Price: US $37.50

  Poligrafa Marcel Duchamp: Works, Writings, Interviews By his own testimony, Marcel Duchamp considered painting a "means of expression, not an end in itself. One means of expression among others, and not a complete end for life at all." His legendary "Large Glass," for example, can be seen as simply the culmination or sum of numerous experiments conducted over an eight-year period. For this reason, every aspect of his oeuvre--painting, installation, writing, interviews--is of potentially equivalent interest, and any Duchamp primer needs to present his more ephemeral contributions, in aphorisms, diagrams and conversation, alongside his visual experiments. Works, Writings, Interviews does this job splendidly, exploring the artist's many-faceted activities, analyzing his work as an entirety and gathering his key interviews and writings. . . . . [see book details]

  Text by Gloria Moure. Hbk, 8.75 x 11.25 in. / 160 pgs / 120 color. Publication Date: 10/31/2009 List Price: US $45.00

  La Fábrica Man Ray: Unconcerned But Not Indifferent Unconcerned But Not Indifferent is one of the most beautifully produced and revelatory monographs on Man Ray ever published. It draws exclusively on one of the largest Man Ray archives, that of the Man Ray Trust, which has remained largely unexcavated since it was brought to the U.S. in the late 1990s, and whose full scope has never before been published. The book is structured chronologically across the four phases of Man Ray's working life, in New York, Paris, Los Angeles and Paris again. Works reproduced here range from typographic studies done in 1908, through paintings, objects and sculptures to Man Ray's pioneering photography, from the "Rayographs" (abstract photographs produced from found objects) and "Solarizations" (a procedure of tonal reversion developed by Man Ray and Lee Miller), to his fantastic portraits of André Derain, Erik Satie, Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Hans Bellmer, Joyce Mansour and many others--plus many rare . . . . [see book details]

  Edited and text by Noriko Fuku, John P. Jacob. Clth, 9 x 11 in. / 392 pgs / 85 color / 249 b&w. Publication Date: 12/31/2009 List Price: US $65.00

  Sean Kelly Gallery, New York Marcel Duchamp/Man Ray: 50 Years Of Alchemy Drawn from several sources, this catalogue includes works by Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray that address the enduring friendship and shared interests of these two artists. The works included explore five decades of the shared milieus and aesthetics of these artist-peers, both of whom so significantly altered the making and understanding of art in the twentieth century. Loosely grouped around thematic concerns, it includes works that exemplify the artists' fascination with the game of chess, the study of optics, and the influence of such diverse sources as African sculpture, as well as the photographic recording of their mutual friends, including portraits of artists, poets and literary figures pivotal to the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Ingeniously designed, this small volume is both a documentary of the artists' friendship and a study of art in the early 1920s. . . . . [see book details]

  Essay by Chrissie Iles. Introduction by Sean Kelly. Hardcover, 6.25 x 8.25 in. / 128 pgs / 32 color. Publication Date: 2/15/2005 List Price: US $45.00

  Richter Verlag Hans Arp: Die Natur der Dinge German-French sculptor, painter and poet Jean Arp (1886-1966) is one of the most important pioneers of twentieth-century nonfigurative art. A founder of the Zurich and Cologne Dada movements, a key Surrealist and Constructivist and later a founder of the Paris Abstraction-Création movement, he was always at the forefront of his era's evolving avant-gardes. His work was by turns powerful, organic, anthropomorphic, biomorphic, geometric, coincidental and formal, evoking "the natural process of compression, hardening, of coagulation, of thickening, of growing together." In general, Arp preferred not to talk about his abstractions, citing the fact that sculptural forms in nature do not illustrate, but rather paraphrase and produce concrete forms themselves. He did not want to work according to nature, but like nature. This beautifully produced volume, which documents the complete range of Arp's artistic and poetic oeuvre, is published on the occasion of the opening of Germany's Arp Museum extension, designed by . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Klaus Gallwitz. Text by Astrid von Asten, Isabel Ewig, Walburga Krupp, Eric Robertson, Fritz Usinger. Hardback, 8.75 x 11 in. / 236 pgs / 103 color / 20 b&w. Publication Date: 2/1/2008 List Price: US $95.00

  Exact Change PPPPPP: Poems Performances Pieces Proses Plays Poetics Kurt Schwitters' stated goal was to "erase the boundaries between the arts." This collection, culled from the five-volume German edition of Schwitters' writings, introduces the total work of art that is Merz through Schwitters' words. Included is the complete text for the "Ursonate," Schwitters' legendary and lengthy epic of sound poetry, which, as poets, editors and translators Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris comment, "is to sound poetry what Joyce's Ulysses is to the twentieth-century novel." . . . . [see book details]

  By Kurt Schwitters. Edited and translated by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris. Pbk, 6 x 8 in. / 288 pgs. Publication Date: 9/30/2010 List Price: US $17.95

  Hatje Cantz Erwin Blumenfeld: Nothing but a Berliner Dada Montages 1916-1933 Erwin Blumenfeld (1897-1969) was born into a Jewish family in Berlin. In 1941, after being interned in a concentration camp, he left Europe for the United States, where he eventually became a citizen; during the 40s and 50s, he was to make his name here as one of the most sought-after fashion photographers in the world. But most people are unfamiliar with Blumenfeld's early work, the often bitingly satiric Dada photomontages and collages he produced between 1916 and 1933. This book, put together by Helen Adkins, renowned expert on the Berlin Dada movement, is the first to provide a study and a survey of these early works. Blumenfeld did not intend for these works to be shown publicly, as they were primarily personal gifts to his friends and acquaintance, or were enclosed in love letters to his fiancée. Nonetheless, they were conceived in the Dada spirit (Blumenfeld established the Dutch branch . . . . [see book details]

  Preface by Janos Frecot. Text by Helen Adkins. Hbk, 8.5 x 11.25 in. / 224 pgs / 97 color / 130 duotone. Publication Date: 3/1/2009 List Price: US $60.00

  Hatje Cantz Publishers Hannah Höch: Album As one of the protagonists of the Berlin Dada movement, Hannah Höch railed against tradition and conservatism in 1920s Germany. Höch and such cohorts as George Grosz and Raoul Hausmann raised anarchic revolution through cutting photomontage, nonsensical performance, and biting visual satire. A singular and important work in the artist's oeuvre is the so-called Sammelalbum,” which she produced and pasted together from found imagery for her own pleasure and use, circa 1933. In it, she arranged a choice selection of newspaper and magazine photographs cut from popular German magazines of the time, such as the Berliner Illustrirte and Der Dame. A diverse, allusive group of images they are, representing everything from her favorite film stars to oddly captured animals and toy dolls, nudes, landscapes, scenic travel vistas and synchronized dancers. By combining the collected pictures in continuous and sometimes contradictory sequences and double-page spreads, Höch created startling and often jarring photo . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Gunda Luyken. Hardcover, 9.5 x 13.25 in. / 132 pgs / 116 color. Publication Date: 4/2/2004 List Price: US $70.00

  The Museum of Modern Art, New York Dada in the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art This publication, the first devoted exclusively to The Museum of Modern Art's unrivaled Dada collection, features some seventy works-books, collages, drawings, films, paintings, photographs, photomontages, prints, readymades, and reliefs-in large reproductions accompanied by in-depth, object-focused essays by an interdepartmental group of the Museum's curators. Catalyzed by the major Dada exhibition that appeared in 2005 and 2006 in Paris and Washington, D.C. and at MoMA, the book benefits from new scholarship generated by the extraordinary opportunity the exhibition created for an international community of scholars to examine the Museum's objects beside those on loan from other institutions. The book's unique object-centered approach provides unparalleled access to the themes at the heart of this revolutionary movement. An illustrated essay by Anne Umland, Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum, traces MoMA's history of collecting, exhibiting, and publishing Dada work; it is complemented by a detailed chronology. Dada in the . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Anne Umland, Adrian Sudhalter. Clothbound, 8.75 x 11 in. / 352 pages / 192 color / 50 b&w. Publication Date: 5/1/2008 List Price: US $60.00

  D.A.P./The National Gallery of Art, Washington The Dada Seminars This volume of 12 essays fills a broad gap in Modernist art history. Taken together, these case studies on artists and concepts present Dada as a coherent movement with a set of operating principles. Among the tactics” elaborated are the hyperbolic mimicry of dominant social and linguistic conventions, the performance of gender and other aspects of identity, the usurpation of the modes of a new media culture and marketplace, and the recycling of history and memory as blasted in a world traumatized by war.The Dada Seminars developed out of a series of seminars held by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, in advance of 2005's major traveling exhibition on international Dada. Contributors include George Baker, T.J. Demos, Leah Dickerman, Uwe Fleckner, Hal Foster, Amelia Jones, David Joselit, Marcella Lista, Helen Molesworth, Arnauld Pierre, Jeffrey T. Schnapp and Matthew S. Witkovsky. . . . . [see book details]

  Introduction by Leah Dickerman. Essays by George Baker, Leah Dickerman, Uwe Fleckner, Hal Foster, T. J. Demos, Amelia Jones, David Joselit, Marcella Lista, Helen Molesworth, Arnauld Pierre, Jeffrey T. Schnapp and Matthew S. Witkovsky. Hardcover, 7 x 10 in. / 320 pgs / 127 b&w. Publication Date: 5/15/2005 List Price: US $45.00