Translations from other language sources are mine unless otherwise credited in the bibliographic citations. Full bibliographic details are given only with the first citation. A “Bibliographic Resources” following this list summarizes useful resources.
INTRODUCTION
x Of making many books: Ecclesiastes 12:12, King James Version.
x Dada is daring per se: Richard Huelsenbeck, ed., Dada Almanac (London: Atlas, 1993), 44.
x Self-kleptomania is the normal: Robert Motherwell, ed., Dada Painters and Poets, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 92.
x Dada is the essence of our time: Hubert F. van den Berg, The Import of Nothing: How Dada Came, Saw, and Vanished in the Low Countries (1915–1929) (New Haven, CT: G. K. Hall, 2002), 158.
x Dada reduces everything: Motherwell, Dada Painters and Poets, 248.
x The true dadas are against DADA: Ibid., 92.
xi To be against this manifesto: Ibid., 246.
xi In principle I am against manifestos: Ibid., 76.
xi creative indifference: Ibid., 43.
xi elasticity itself: Huelsenbeck, Dada Almanac, 11.
xi Dada, a scarecrow: Motherwell, Dada Painters and Poets, 167.
xi virgin microbe: Ibid., 95.
xi We were a very naughty group: Lucy Lippard, ed., Dadas on Art (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971), 70.
xiii dancing epidemic . . . parts of the world: Dawn Ades, ed., The Dada Reader (London: Tate, 2006), 102.
xiii Dada came over the Dadaists: Motherwell, Dada Painters and Poets, 32.
xiii One has to be enough of a Dadaist: Huelsenbeck, Dada Almanac, 21
xv I don’t keep the butt: Francis Picabia, 391 17 (June 1924), unpaginated [4].
xv Everyone has become mediumistic: Hugo Ball, Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary, ed. John Elderfield, tr. Ann Raimes (New York: Viking, 1974), 108.
CHAPTER ONE: CABARET VOLTAIRE
1 I have difficulty in feigning . . . a creature of air: Hugo Ball, Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary, ed. John Elderfield, tr. Ann Raimes (New York: Viking, 1974), 27.
2 We’ve got contortionists: Hugo Ball, Briefe 1904–1927, vol. 1, eds. Gerhard Schaub and Ernst Teubner (Göttingen, Germany: Wallstein, 2003), 92.
3 Young artists of Zurich: Ball, Flight Out of Time 50.
4 the world’s only hygiene: Umbro Apollonio, ed., Futurist Manifestos (New York: Viking, 1973), 22.
4 nothing but violence: Ibid., 23.
5 poems you can roll up: Ball, Flight Out of Time 25.
5 The demonic no longer: Ibid., 12.
5 I think in opposites: Ibid., 21.
5 I never bring all my forces: Ibid., 23.
5 The stamp of the times: Ibid., 26.
5 I tend to compare: Ibid., 30.
6 it is we, the poets and thinkers: Ibid., 29.
6 self-help: Ibid., 45.
6 Make your own existence: Ibid.
7 Her voice hops across: Annabelle Melzer, Dada and Surrealist Performance (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 28.
7 I never felt at ease: Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art, tr. David Britt (New York: Abrams, 1965), 26.
7 I was ashamed: Hans Richter, Encounters from Dada till Today, tr. Christopher Middleton (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2013), 53.
7 She looked at me somewhat suspiciously: Friedrich Glauser, “Dada-Errinerungen,” Als Dada Begann, ed. Peter Schifferli (Zurich: Sanssouci, 1957), 26.
7 Emmy, you’re tipsy: Ibid., 27.
8 Ball was such a rare person: Ibid., 28.
8 the opposite of a happy man: Bernhard Echte, ed., Emmy Ball Hennings 1885–1948: “ich bin so vielfach . . . ”: Texte, Bilder, Dokumente (Frankfurt am Main: Stroemfeld, 1999), 122.
8 He pleads for stronger rhythm: Ball, Flight Out of Time, 51.
9 The Gorgon’s head: Ibid., 56.
9 pig’s bladder kettle drum: Blago Bung Blago Bung Bosso Fataka! First Texts of German Dada by Ball, Huelsenbeck, Walter Serner, tr. Malcolm Green (London: Atlas, 1995), 55.
9 Things have really gone too far: Ibid., 82.
10 They were weapons . . . My first canvas of exorcism: Jack Flam and Miriam Deutch, eds., Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art: A Documentary History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 33.
10 fixed ecstasy: Carl Einstein, “Negro Sculpture,” tr. Charles Haxthausen and Sebastian Zeidler, October 107 (Winter 2004), 137.
10 tragic-absurd dance . . . the horror of our time: Ball, Flight Out of Time, 64–65.
11 great matadors: Hans Arp, On My Way: Poetry and Essays 1912–1947 (New York: Wittenborn, 1948), 45.
12 The Cabaret Voltaire was a six-piece band . . . with all his soul: Richter, Dada, 27.
12 the safety-valve was off: Ibid., 57.
14 Straight lines and honest colors: Arp, On My Way, 50.
14 a picture or a sculpture without any object: Ibid.
14 the ineffable tenderness: Echte, Emmy Ball Hennings, 135.
14 wish to lead a simple life: Ades, The Dada Reader, 33.
14 in which all difficulties . . . spirituality has returned to us: Ibid., 43.
15 Pull down thy vanity!: Ezra Pound, “Canto LXXXI,” The Cantos (New York: New Directions, 1995), 541.
15 Arp speaks out against: Ball, Flight Out of Time, 53.
15 recommends plane geometry: Ibid.
15 concerned not so much with richness: Ibid.
16 The star of the cabaret: Ibid., 63.
16 even the commonplace: Ball, Flight Out of Time 53
17 What more is possible?: William Butler Yeats, The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats (New York: Macmillan, 1953), 210
17 Everyone has been seized: Ball, Flight Out of Time, 51–52.
17 Our attempt to entertain: Ibid., 54.
17 As long as the whole city: Ibid., 57.
17 The cabaret needs a rest: Ibid.
18 worked out as a problem . . . living human beings: Ibid., 54.
18 The image of the human . . . for similar reasons: Ibid., 55.
18 Adopt symmetries: Ibid., 56.
18 The distancing device: Ibid.
18 What we are celebrating: Ibid.
20 What can a beautiful, harmonious poem: Ibid., 58–59.
20 My equanimity when first subjected . . . in fact, by comparison: Wyndham Lewis, Blasting and Bombardiering: An Autobiography (1914–1926), (London: Calder, 1982), 33.
20 You will be astonished to find: Ibid., 4.
21 Where the honny suckle wine . . . oh yes yes yes: “L’amiral cherche une maison à louer,” Cabaret Voltaire (1916), 6–7.
21 he could feel my breasts: James Joyce, Ulysses (New York: Vintage, 1990), 783.
22 the value of the voice . . . the mechanistic process: Ball, Flight Out of Time, 59.
22 Our cabaret is a gesture . . . winning our respect: Ibid., 61.
22 they cannot persuade us: Ibid., 67.
22 The remarkable thing . . . Tzara against Arp, etc.: Ibid., 63–64.
22 They are men possessed: Richter, Dada, 20.
23 Tzara keeps on worrying: Ball, Flight Out of Time, 63.
23 My proposal to call it ‘Dada’: Ibid.
23 a sign of foolish naïveté: Ibid., 63.
23 virgin microbe: Robert Motherwell, ed., Dada Painters and Poets, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 95.
24 The Dadaist loves the extraordinary: Ball, Flight Out of Time 65.
24 no longer believes . . . the point of self-disintegration: Ibid.
24 There is a gnostic sect . . . babes-in-arms of a new age: Ibid., 66.
25 gentle simplicity surprised the audience . . . we welcomed the child: Ibid., 65.
25 We are Rimbaudists: Ibid., 68.
25 long, gigantic, and rational: Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works, Selected Letters, tr. Wallace Fowlie (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 307.
26 seek out the absolute: Ball, Flight Out of Time, 86.
26 What we call dada is a farce . . . the bloody pose: Ibid., 65–66.
26 We have now driven the plasticity . . . magical complex image: Ibid., 67.
26 magic bishop: Ibid., 71.
26 witch doctor’s hat: Ibid., 70.
27 gadji beri bimba: Ibid.
CHAPTER TWO: MAGIC BISHOP AND MR. ASPIRIN
29 new tendency in art: Hugo Ball, Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary, ed. John Elderfield, tr. Ann Raimes (New York: Viking, 1974), 220.
29 Dada Tzara, dada Huelsenbeck: Ibid.
30 How does one achieve . . . saying dada: Ibid.
30 I let the vowels fool around: Ibid., 221.
30 Dada is the heart of words . . . the first importance: Ibid.
30 a thinly disguised break . . . they felt so too: Ibid., 73.
30 Has the first manifesto: Ibid.
30 It is with language that purification: Ibid., 76.
30 Becoming a human being is an art: Ibid., 81.
31 Dada is our intensity . . . in consequential bayonets: Robert Motherwell, ed., Dada Painters and Poets, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 75.
31 Dada remains within: Ibid.
31 in principle I am against manifestos . . . against principles: Ibid., 76.
32 couldn’t do anything . . . one scream: Giorgio J. Wolfensberger, ed., Suzanne Perrottet, Ein Bewegtes Leben (Bern: Benteli, n.d.), 135.
33 the extraordinary quality: Walter Sorell, ed., The Mary Wigman Book (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1975), 35,
33 A person’s proper aim . . . festive being: Martin Green, Mountain of Truth: The Counterculture Begins, Ascona 1900–1920 (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1986), 97
33 There was always Laban . . . the grinning faun!: Sorell, Mary Wigman Book, 33.
33 Into this rich field . . . went together: Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art, tr. David Britt (New York: Abrams, 1965), 70.
33 It was very stormy . . . married life: Cleve Gray, ed., Hans Richter by Hans Richter (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 43.
34 all the cafés with delusions: Evelyn Doerr, Rudolf Laban: The Dancer of the Crystal (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008), 66.
34 A gong beat is enough: Ball, Flight Out of Time, 102.
34 a poetic sequence . . . penetrating intensity: Ibid.
34 tressli bessli . . . zack hitti zopp: Karl Riha and Waltraud Wende-Hohenberger, eds., Dada Zürich: Texte, Manifeste, Dokumente (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1992), 67.
36 I’m a bit distant: Hugo Ball, Briefe 1904–1927, vol. 1, eds. Gerhard Schaub and Ernst Teubner (Göttingen, Germany: Wallstein, 2003), 118.
36 No more anti-bourgeois . . . likewise difficult: Ibid., 129.
36 I have a burning desire: Ibid., 130.
36 Are you trying to seduce: Ibid.
37 I won’t be involved . . . That’s my goal: Ibid., 152.
37 I ran across Tzara: Ibid., 139.
37 Tzara has become . . . not a Dadaist, not ‘weary’: Ibid., 146.
37 reacquaint myself with Dada: Ibid., 134.
38 Everything had become very distinguished: Debbie Lewer, “From the Cabaret Voltaire to the Kaufleutansaal: ‘Mapping’ Zurich Dada,” Dada Zurich: A Clown’s Game from Nothing, eds. Brigitte Pichon and Karl Riha (New York: G. K. Hall, 1996), 53.
38 We have surmounted: Ball, Flight Out of Time, 101.
39 We stand before the new pictures: Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, eds., The Blaue Reiter Almanac (New York: Viking, 1974), 252.
39 sound effects . . . hair-raising cacophonies: Fred Wasserman, “Schoenberg & Kandinsky in Concert,” Schoenberg, Kandinsky, and the Blue Rider, eds. Esther da Costa Meyer and Fred Wasserman (New York: Jewish Museum, 2003), 20.
39 In daily life we would rarely: Kandinsky and Marc, Blaue Reiter Almanac, 153.
40 The artists of these times . . . struggle against madness: Ball, Flight Out of Time, 225.
40 the strongest affinity: Ibid.
40 One should go . . . Kandinsky the monk: Ibid., 226.
40 daring purification of language: Ibid., 234.
40 They will scarcely be seen: Ibid., 103.
40 By day it is a kind of teaching body: Ibid., 112.
41 Negro music and dance: Richard Huelsenbeck, ed., Dada Almanac (London: Atlas, 1993), 24.
41 It must have looked strange: Ball, Flight Out of Time, 106.
42 if poets had to cut their poems: Ibid., 41.
42 nourished the emaciated . . . glow of a star: Ibid., 68.
42 Artistic creation is a process . . . effect is magic: Ibid., 104.
42 We are playing: Ibid., 109.
43 modern artists are gnostics: Ibid., 101.
43 there is today an aesthetic gnosis: Ibid., 114.
43 all contain a philosophy . . . its very own territory: Ibid., 98.
43 The painters and poets: Ibid.
43 The nervous systems: Ibid., 108.
43 Absolute dance, absolute poetry: Ibid.
44 It is perhaps not a question: Ibid., 115.
44 To understand cubism: Ibid., 93.
45 a great artist: Huelsenbeck, Dada Almanac, 110–111.
45 Discard the Ego . . . made of skins: Flight Out of Time, 29.
45 Hardly anyone has exceeded . . . rather, my laughter: Ibid., 191.
45 I realized that the whole world: Ibid.
CHAPTER THREE: FANTASTIC PRAYERS
48 bedding down on a volcano: Richard Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, ed. Hans J. Kleinschmidt, tr. Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Viking, 1974), 52.
49 None of us had much appreciation: Robert Motherwell, ed., Dada Painters and Poets, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 23.
49 If you had the money . . . sparrow stew: Anton Gill, A Dance Between Flames: Berlin Between the Wars (London: Murray, 1994), 6.
49 city of tightened stomachers: Motherwell, Dada Painters and Poets, 39.
49 I felt as though I had left: Ibid.
49 Germany always becomes the land: Ibid.
49 We consider everything Expressionism . . . a new skin color: Huelsenbeck letter.
50 I tried to invent new flowers: Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell, tr. Louise Varèse (New York: New Directions, 1961), 87.
50 We who are new: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, tr. Josefine Nauckhoff (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 246.
50 No one knew what exactly: Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities, tr. Sophie Wilkins (New York: Vintage, 1996), 53.
50 The new man transforms: Richard Huelsenbeck, “Der neue Mensch,” Neue Jugend 1 (May 1917), 3.
51 the new man, the pioneer: Alexandra Richie, Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998), 310.
52 We all hung like Absalom . . . world catastrophe: Ludwig Meidner, Extracts from “Aschaffenburg Journal,” Ludwig Meidner: An Expressionist Master (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of Art, 1978), 32.
53 July had beaten my brains . . . jigging in a row: Carol Eliel, The Apocalyptic Landscapes of Ludwig Meidner (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1989), 65.
53 His ash-blond hair: Wieland Herzfelde, “Ein Kaufmann aus Holland,” Pass Auf! Hier Kommt Grosz: Bilder, Rhythmen und Gesänge 1915–1918 (Leipzig: Reclam, 1981), 65.
53 Being German always means: George Grosz, Briefe 1913–1959, ed. Herbert Knust (Reinbek, Germany: Rowohlt, 1979), 44.
53 Every Shot Hit the Spot: Andrés Mario Zervigón, John Heartfield and the Agitated Image: Photography, Persuasion, and the Rise of Avant-Garde Photomontage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 78.
53 Hatred is holy: Grosz, Briefe, 45.
53 Grosz was a genius of hatred: Hans Richter, Encounters from Dada till Today, tr. Christopher Middleton (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2013), 68.
54 permanently unfit: Ralph Jentsch, George Grosz: Berlin–New York (New York: Skira, 2008), 66.
54 I am up to my neck: Uwe Schneede, George Grosz: His Life and Work, tr. Susanne Flatauer (London: Fraser, 1979), 48.
55 unworthy of wearing: Lucy Lippard, ed., Dadas on Art (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971), 90.
55 We have created a movement . . . quick action: Hanne Bergius, Dada Triumphs!: Dada Berlin 1917–1923; Artistry of Polarities; Montages, Metamechanics, Manifestations, tr. Brigitte Pichon (New Haven, CT: G. K. Hall, 2003), 44.
55 a new international . . . Cubist dances: Richard Huelsenbeck, ed., Dada Almanac (London: Atlas, 1993), 111.
55 We were pro-war: Ibid., 112.
56 every hour snatch the tatters: Ibid., 45.
56 The word Dada . . . to be a Dadaist!: Ibid., 46.
57 People accumulated like high waves: Veronika Fuechtner, Berlin Psychoanalytic: Psychoanalysis and Culture in Weimar Republic Germany and Beyond (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 154.
58 My abdication: Anton Gill, A Dance Between Flames: Berlin Between the Wars (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1994), 14.
58 naturally treated me . . . a secret code: Bergius, Dada Triumphs, 37.
58 Each page must explode: Huelsenbeck, Dada Almanac, 126.
59 Dada-medical faculties . . . intend to become such: Bergius, Dada Triumphs!, 41.
59 What is Dada? . . . a fire extinguisher?: Der Dada 2 (December 1919), unpaginated [5].
59 Advertise with Dada!: Ibid., [7].
60 Gautama thought he was: “Legen Sie Ihr Geld in dada an!” Der Dada 1 (June 1919), unpaginated.
60 Communist, Poet, and Pirate: Bergius, Dada Triumphs!, 69.
61 Superdada, President of the Earth: Johannes Baader, Oberdada: Schriften, Manifeste, Flugblätter, Billets, Werke und Taten, eds. Hanne Bergius, Norbert Miller, and Karl Riha (Lahn-Gießen, Germany: Anabas, 1977), 104.
61 Baader was just the man: Raoul Hausmann, Am Anfang war Dada, eds. Karl Riha and Günter Kämpf (Lahn-Gießen, Germany: Anabas, 1972), 55.
61 Watch out for Baader: Bergius, Dada Triumphs!, 54.
61 Berlin Has New Art . . . art of government: Chicago Daily News (May 9, 1919).
62 Stands on His Head . . . attended our evening: Chicago Daily News (May 27, 1919).
62 Hindendorf, Ludenburg: Johannes Baader, “Reklame für mich,” Der Dada 2 (December 1919), unpaginated [6].
62 The new era commences: Der Dada 1 (June 1919), unpaginated [1].
62 obligation of all clergy . . . sexual center: Karl Riha, ed., “Was ist der Dadaismus und was will er in Deutschland?,” Dada Berlin: Texte, Manifeste, Aktionen (Stuttgart, Germany: Reclam, 1977), 61–62.
63 its author is the Supreme: Richard Sheppard, ed., New Studies in Dada: Essays and Documents (Driffield, UK: Hutton Press, 1981), 150–151.
63 Each evening these idle hordes . . . for hours on end: Alfred Döblin, A People Betrayed, tr. John E. Woods (New York: Fromm, 1983), 6.
64 His descriptions of them: Harry Kessler, In the Twenties: The Diaries of Harry Kessler, tr. Charles Kessler (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 90.
64 indefinite, general swooning: Dawn Ades, ed., The Dada Reader (London: Tate, 2006), 89.
64 The shooting goes on: Lippard, Dadas on Art, 81.
CHAPTER FOUR: DADA HURTS
65 The masses couldn’t care less: Dawn Ades, ed., The Dada Reader (London: Tate, 2006), 84.
65 the professional arrogance: Rose-Carol Washton Long, ed., German Expressionism: Documents from the End of the Wilhelmine Empire to the Rise of National Socialism (New York: G. K. Hall, 1993), 274.
65 a large-scale swindle . . . moral safety valve: Robert Motherwell, ed., Dada Painters and Poets, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 43.
65 Dada is forever the enemy: Ibid., 281.
66 fangs of the bloodsuckers . . . oppose culture and art!: Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg, eds., The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 485, 486.
66 There is no longer room . . . Der blutige Ernst: Uwe Schneede, George Grosz: His Life and Work, tr. Susanne Flatauer (London: Fraser, 1979), 64.
66 an aesthetic harmonization: Ades, The Dada Reader, 88.
66 Who is the German . . . our own enemies: Ibid.
67 The child’s discarded doll: Raoul Hausmann, Bilanz der Feierlichkeit: Texte bis 1933, vol. 1, ed. Michael Erlhoff (Munich: Text + Kritik, 1982), 14.
67 the simultaneous perception: Hanne Bergius, Dada Triumphs!: Dada Berlin 1917–1923, Artistry of Polarities: Montages, Metamechanics, Manifestations, tr. Brigitte Pichon (New Haven, CT: G. K. Hall, 2003), 14.
67 cartoons seemed to us: Frank Whitford, ed., The Berlin of George Grosz: Drawings, Watercolors and Prints 1912–1930 (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1997), 13.
68 The devotion of his art: Harry Kessler, In the Twenties: The Diaries of Harry Kessler, tr. Charles Kessler (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 187–188.
69 an explosion of viewpoints: Lucy Lippard, ed., Dadas on Art (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971), 65.
69 Great quality guaranteed: Bergius, Dada Triumphs!, 19.
69 The beauty of our daily life . . . in workshops: Raoul Hausmann, “PRÉsentismus,” De Stijl 4: 9 (September 1921), 139.
69 expressionistic brightly colored . . . clarity of engineering drawing: Schneede, George Grosz, 66.
70 One cannot understand Dada: Richard Huelsenbeck, ed., Dada Almanac (London: Atlas, 1993), 9–10.
70 One has to be enough of a Dadaist: Ibid., 9.
70 Dada is the scream of brakes: Ibid., 44.
71 the international expression: Ibid., 47.
71 Something like a public lavatory: Schneede, George Grosz, 58.
71 you’re not going to hand out: George Grosz, A Little Yes and a Big No (New York: Dial Press, 1946), 183.
72 Beethoven, Bach Are Dead: Ben Hecht, Letters from Bohemia (Garden City: Doubleday, 1964), 136.
72 melted into the spring night: Ibid., 137.
72 no applause: Ibid., 136.
72 what compelling examples: Ben Hecht, Chicago Daily News (May 27, 1919).
72 The ‘artists’ appear: Bergius, Dada Triumphs!, 62.
73 There’s no cooperative planning: Richard Sheppard, ed., New Studies in Dada: Essays and Documents (Driffield, UK: Hutton Press, 1981), 115.
73 Since we usually did a bit of drinking . . . that was all: Grosz, A Little Yes and a Big No, 83.
73 respectable folks . . . spirit of constant profit: Raoul Hausmann, Sieg Triumph Tabak mit Bohnen: Texte bis 1933, vol. 2, ed. Michael Erlhoff (Munich: Text + Kritik, 1982), 17.
73 libretto machines: Bergius, Dada Triumphs!, 209.
73 chaotic oral cavity: Ibid., 104.
74 the art of hairdressers: Hausmann, Sieg Triumph Tabak mit Bohnen, 49.
74 We must realize that our customary way: Hausmann, Bilanz der Feierlichkeit, 181.
74 trains, airplanes, photography: Ibid., 182.
74 husband and wife: Karoline Hille, Hannah Höch und Raoul Hausmann: Eine Berliner Dada-Geschichte (Berlin: Rowohlt, 2000), 75.
75 Right from the beginning: Ibid., 76.
75 Which of my friends: Cornelia Thater-Schulz, ed., Hannah Höch, Eine Lebenscollage, vol. 1, part I (Berlin: Argon, 1989), 124.
75 5 stories, 3 parks, 1 tunnel: Michael White, “Johannes Baader’s Plasto-Dio-Dada-Drama: The Mysticism of the Mass Media,” Modernism/Modernity 8: 4 (2001), 584–585.
75 architecture of the imponderable: Bergius, Dada Triumphs!, 262.
77 woods and fields and mountains: Johannes Baader, Oberdada: Schriften, Manifeste, Flugblätter, Billets, Werke und Taten, eds. Hanne Bergius, Norbert Miller, and Karl Riha (Lahn-Gießen, Germany: Anabas, 1977), 11.
79 an anatomical museum: Harriet Watts, ed., Dada and the Press (New Haven, CT: G. K. Hall, 2004), 89.
79 Painted Sabotage: Entartete Kunst exhibition catalogue (Munich, 1937), 15.
79 To perfectly grasp this artwork: Dada-Messe: Katalog (Berlin: Burchard, 1920), unpaginated.
80 Dadaists on Trial as Army Defamers: Watts, Dada and the Press, 412.
80 All Dadaists in the world . . . perversion, and anaesthetics: Ibid., 88–89.
80 What you see in this exhibition: Dada-Messe: Katalog, unpaginated.
84 to indicate that human consciousness: Raoul Hausmann, Am Anfang war Dada, eds. Karl Riha and Günter Kämpf (Lahn-Gießen, Germany: Anabas, 1972), 20.
84 because, obviously, the spirit: Timothy O. Benson, Raoul Hausmann and Berlin Dada, 161.
84 Man is no longer shown . . . the collective community: Whitford, The Berlin of George Grosz, 36.
85 free to adopt any mask: Huelsenbeck, Dada Almanac, 14.
85 8,590 articles on dada: Ibid., 34.
86 you discover that it is possible: Ibid., 50.
86 Dadaism is thus not an art movement: Ibid.
86 In the fine art of advertising: Ibid., 52.
86 A Kurt Schwitters dressed up: Ibid., 42.
86 Jews out, stomachs in: Ibid., 54.
86 Expressionism . . . land of dumplings: Ibid., 152.
86 the world is only a branch: Ibid., 86.
86 Whatever dada is: Baader, Oberdada, 75.
CHAPTER FIVE: MERZ
88 home cooking: Richard Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, ed. Hans J. Kleinschmidt, tr. Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Viking, 1974), 64.
88 to be against this manifesto: Robert Motherwell, ed., Dada Painters and Poets, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 246.
89 I am a painter: John Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1985), 35.
89 I have never spent a penny: Ibid., 146.
90 a cold-blooded, deliberate rape: Gwendolen Webster, Kurt Merz Schwitters: A Biographical Study (Cardiff, UK: University of Wales Press, 1997), 37.
92 Essentially, the word Merz: Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, 50.
92 everything is rubbish: David Bowie, Fresh Air, NPR radio (2002).
92 it is unimportant whether or not: Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, 50.
92 aims at direct expression: Ibid., 51.
92 a prayer about the victorious end: Werner Schmalenbach, Kurt Schwitters (New York: Abrams, 1967), 96.
93 “Kuh Witter”: Kurt Schwitters, Wir spielen, bis uns der Tod abholt: Briefe aus fünf Jahrzehnten, ed. Ernst Nündel (Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein, 1974), 75.
94 a herring skeleton: Joan Ockman, “Reinventing Jefim Golyscheff: Lives of a Minor Modernist,” Assemblage 11 (1990), 94.
94 trash-romantic . . . expressionist genre-art: Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, 53.
94 O thou, beloved: Kurt Schwitters, “Anna Blossom Has Wheels,” from Poems, Performance Pieces, Proses, Plays, Poetics, ed. and tr. Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris, 16. Copyright © Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993; Cambridge, MA: Exact Change, 2002).
95 phonetic orgasms: Walter Mehring, The Lost Library: The Autobiography of a Culture, tr. Richard and Clara Winston (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1951), 135.
95 the humdrum is confronted . . . important personages: Carola Giedion-Welcker, “Schwitters: or the Allusions of the Imagination,” Magazine of Art 41: 6 (October 1948), 219.
96 I am moved by your sympathy . . . health resort: Webster, Kurt Merz Schwitters, 65.
96 the most revolting piece of writing: Ibid., 66.
97 All my parts were back together . . . almost done: Kurt Schwitters, Das literarische Werk: Prosa 1918–1930, ed. Friedhelm Lach (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2005), 25–26.
97 I was dying to know: Schwitters, Poems, Performance Pieces, Proses, Plays, Poetics, 126.
98 Schwitters is the Dadaistic genius: Webster, Kurt Merz Schwitters, 63.
99 It uses as given parts: Schwitters, Poems, Performance Pieces, Proses, Plays, Poetics, 213.
99 the first to publish: Ibid., 214.
99 I’m not Grosz. . . . not Schwitters either: Webster, Kurt Merz Schwitters, 80.
99 Dada fundamentally and emphatically: Richard Huelsenbeck, ed., Dada Almanac (London: Atlas, 1993), 14.
100 Today the striving for expression: Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, 26.
100 Merz stands for freedom: Motherwell, Dada Painters and Poets, 59.
100 a windmill, a head: Ibid., 60.
100 aims only at art: Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, 26.
100 I play off sense against nonsense: Ibid., 45.
101 For example, you marry: Motherwell, Dada Painters and Poets, 63.
101 the just plain baby smell: Kate Steinitz, Kurt Schwitters: A Portrait from Life, tr. Robert B. Haas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 9.
101 That’s what becomes of the great: Steinitz, Kurt Schwitters, 27.
101 The interior does not give the impression: Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, 144.
102 My ultimate aspiration: Ibid., 31.
102 The imitative picture . . . could be: Ibid., 137.
102 astral imbecility: Raoul Hausmann, Bilanz der Feierlichkeit: Texte bis 1933, vol. 1, ed. Michael Erlhoff (Munich: Text + Kritik, 1982), 16.
102 you will recognize . . . bulging fragility: Timothy O. Benson, Raoul Hausmann and Berlin Dada, 80.
103 the poem makes itself: Raoul Hausmann, Am Anfang war Dada, eds. Karl Riha and Günter Kämpf (Lahn-Gießen, Germany: Anabas, 1972), 13.
104 Hausmann always gave . . . repressed impulses: Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art, tr. David Britt (New York: Abrams, 1965), 139.
104 A play with serious problems: Kurt Schwitters letter, August 8, 1946, Getty Research Center, Los Angeles.
104 You are a type: Raoul Hausmann letter, September 30, 1946, Getty Research Center, Los Angeles.
104 There was a woman: Hausmann, Am Anfang war Dada, 68.
104 I hope he will be undadaistic . . . don’t blame me: Webster, Kurt Merz Schwitters, 138.
105 I’m good company . . . sleep on the floor: Ibid., 100.
105 We’ve got fifteen minutes: Ibid., 185.
105 a Song of Songs: Schmalenbach, Kurt Schwitters, 112.
106 The poet is not a writer . . . poetry is the art: Ibid., 252, note 4.
106 Abstract poetry evaluates: Ibid., 193.
107 a difficult, roughened: Victor Shklovsky, Art as Technique: Russian Formalist Criticism, tr. Lee Lemon and Marion Reis (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), 22.
107 he did not stop all day . . . a bit much: Hausmann, Am Anfang war Dada, 67.
107 I heard Schwitters . . . twelve-tone system: Schmalenbach, Kurt Schwitters, 216.
108 Schwitters stood on . . . the same generals: Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art, 142–143.
108 I find I incorporate: Walt Whitman, Poetry and Prose, ed. Justin Kaplan (New York: Library of America, 1982), 246.
109 Unscrew the locks: Ibid., 210.
109 They don’t realize: Russell Jacoby, “When Freud Came to America,” Chronicle of Higher Education (September 21, 2009), accessed online.
CHAPTER SIX: SPARK PLUGS
112 Food Descending a Staircase: Marilyn Kushner and Kimberly Orcutt, eds., The Armory Show at 100: Modernism and Revolution (New York: New York Historical Society, 2013), 350.
112 I always keep my word: L. Frank Baum, The Patchwork Girl of Oz (Chicago: Reilly and Britton, 1913), 106.
113 nuttists, dope-ists: Frederick Opper, “The ‘New Art’ Fest,” New York American (February 27, 1913), 20.
114 for the elimination of thought: The Bookman, vol. 35 (March 1, 1912), 15.
114 diabob . . . these diabobs, perhaps: Gelett Burgess, Burgess Unabridged: A New Dictionary of Words You Have Always Needed (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1914), 14.
114 a lifetime given to the study: Kenyon Cox, “The New Art,” Documents of the 1913 Armory Show: The Electrifying Moment of Modern Art’s American Debut (Tucson, AZ: Hol Art Books 2009), 22.
114 the deification of Whim: Ibid., 21.
114 victims of auto-suggestion: Ibid., 20.
114 no longer a matter of sincere fanaticism: Ibid., 21.
115 irresponsible nightmares: Frank Jewett Mather Jr., “Old and New Art,” Documents of the 1913 Armory Show, 47.
115 essentially epileptic: Ibid., 43.
115 one’s feeling . . . more exciting than a lady: Ibid., 42.
115 a clever hoax: Ibid., 45.
115 Everyman Jack of them: Chicago Evening Post, “The Great Confusion,” Documents of the 1913 Armory Show, 28.
115 We are in an anaemic condition: Steven Watson, Strange Bedfellows: The First American Avant-Garde (New York: Abbeville Press, 1991), 177.
115 It makes us live: Ibid., 172.
115 When one leaves this exhibition: Ibid., 175.
116 Picabia, Art Rebel: Maria Lluïsa Borràs, Picabia (New York: Rizzoli, 1985), 107.
116 It is in America that I believe . . . an open mind: William Camfield, Francis Picabia: His Art, Life, and Times (Princeton University Press, 1979), 43.
116 the most national things: Watson, Strange Bedfellows, 307.
117 qualitative conception: Camfield, Francis Picabia, 50.
118 musical emotion: Ibid., 25.
118 emulating the musicians: Ibid., 45.
118 I paint only the conception: Judith Zilczer, “Music for the Eyes,” Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900 (London: Thames and Hudson, 2005), 38.
118 I am still groping: Simon Shaw-Miller, Visible Deeds of Music: Art and Music from Wagner to Cage (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 124.
118 pure visual music: Arthur Jerome Eddy, Cubists and Post-Impressionism, rev. ed. (Chicago: McClurg, 1919), 117.
118 This new expression . . . comparing it to music: Camfield, Francis Picabia, 50.
118 a song of colors . . . motifs of symphonic music: Borràs, Picabia, 106.
118 I improvise my painting: Ibid., 111.
118 just as music is only a matter: Ibid., 109.
118 It was Bill Nye: Ibid.
118 memories of America: Camfield, Francis Picabia, 60.
119 remarkably large . . . fluent English and German: Borràs, Picabia 108.
119 for us what the alphabet is: Ibid., 110.
119 Did I paint the Flatiron: Ibid., 107.
119 the mental fact or emotive fact: Ibid.
119 Creating a painting without a model: Ibid., 110.
119 You New Yorkers can readily understand: Ibid.
119 Do you think he shows . . . globs of color: Camfield, Francis Picabia, 49.
119 were about the cleanest: Ibid., 56.
120 Marcel Duchamp has arrived: “Marcel Duchamp Visits New York,” Vanity Fair 5: 1 (September 1915), 57.
120 I tried to make a painting . . . call it a portrait: “Francis Picabia and His Puzzling Art,” Vanity Fair 5: 3 (November 1915), 42.
120 Almost immediately upon coming: Camfield, Francis Picabia, 77.
121 Yes, but . . . No, because: Michel Sanouillet and Elmer Peterson, eds., Salt Seller: The Writings of Marcel Duchamp (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 167.
121 A dangerous and enticing: Francis Picabia, I Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose and Provocation, tr. Marc Lowenthal (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 48.
121 Apollinaire often took part: Robert Motherwell, ed., Dada Painters and Poets, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 257.
121 Duchamp later called Picabia: Watson, Strange Bedfellows, 48.
121 mania for change . . . what Picabia did all his life: Pierre Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, tr. Ron Padgett (New York: Viking Press, 1971), 37.
122 It was a real turning point . . . groups after that: Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp: A Biography (New York: Holt, 1996), 83.
122 Everyone for himself: Ibid., 85.
122 even now I find it really astonishing: Ibid., 111–112.
122 We immediately fell for each other: Source untraced, but widely cited on the Internet.
122 Eroticism was a theme: Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, 88.
124 Having been lucky: Ibid., 15.
124 enormously lazy: Ibid., 72.
124 society painter: Tomkins, Duchamp, 142.
124 missionary of insolence: Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, 49.
125 I’m making it a ‘readymade’ . . . nothing to do with it: Ibid., 157.
125 like sparrows: Wallace Stevens, Letters of Wallace Stevens, ed. Holly Stevens (New York: Knopf, 1966), 185.
125 Do you?: William Carlos Williams, The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams (New York: New Directions, 1967), 137.
127 to a point where it demands: Ezra Pound, “Paris Letter,” The Dial 74: 3 (March 1923), 275.
127 There was no such thing: Arturo Schwarz, Man Ray: The Rigor of Imagination (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977), 51–52.
128 Dada cannot live in New York: Irene Gammel, Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada, and Everyday Modernity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 290.
128 in America everything is DADA: Richard Huelsenbeck, ed., Dada Almanac (London: Atlas, 1993), 106.
128 young Americans . . . Dadaists look timid: Edmund Wilson, “The Aesthetic Upheaval in France,” Vanity Fair (February 1922), 49, 100.
128 search for fresh booty . . . being Americanized: Matthew Josephson, “After and Beyond Dada,” Broom 2 (1922), 347.
129 Pig Cupid: Mina Loy, The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems, ed. Roger L. Conover (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996), 53.
130 Whether Mr. Mutt: “The Richard Mutt Case,” The Blind Man 2 (May 1917), unpaginated.
131 all the ideas expressed . . . milk in the mouth: Jean-Jacques Lecercle, The Violence of Language (London: Routledge, 1990), 61.
131 sexual force alone: Michel Pierssens, The Power of Babel: A Study of Logophilia, tr. Carl Lovitt (London: Routledge, 1980), 94.
131 all words were suckled: Pierssens, Power of Babel, 97.
131 The pronoun I: Ibid., 94.
131 forget with my hand: Tomkins, Duchamp, 127.
131 Thought is made in the mouth: Motherwell, Dada Painters and Poets, 87.
131 For some there is no stopping: Charles Demuth, “For Richard Mutt,” The Blind Man 2 (May 1917), 6.
132 Thus each bit of work: Alfred Stieglitz, letter to the editor, The Blind Man 2 (May 1917), 15.
132 If you can help to stimulate: Frank Crowninshield, “From a Friend,” The Blind Man 2 (May 1917), 10.
132 terrorized by the power of plumbing: Jane Heap, “Independents, Etc.,” The Little Review 9: 2 (Winter 1922), 22.
132 Marcel, Marcel, I love you: Gammel, Baroness Elsa, 173.
133 thou becamest like glass . . . in a mirror!: Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, “Love–Chemical Relationship,” The Little Review 5: 2 (June 1918), 58.
133 proud engineer . . . it is why I eat!: Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, “The Modest Woman,” The Little Review 7: 2 (July 1920), 38.
133 my ecstasies in toilet: Ibid., 37.
133 an ancient human notebook . . . effect of feathers: Djuna Barnes, “How the Villagers Amuse Themselves,” New York Morning Telegraph Sunday Magazine (November 26, 1916), Section Two.
134 royal gesture . . . dyed vermilion: Gammel, Baroness Elsa, 201–202.
134 courageous to an insane degree: Ibid., 273.
134 the first American Dada . . . contribution to nonsense: Jane Heap, “Dada—,” The Little Review 8: 2 (Spring 1922), 46.
134 dada cannot live in New York: Gammel, Baroness Elsa, 290.
135 Dada belongs to everybody . . . of free facets: Tristan Tzara, “Eye-Cover, Art-Cover, Corset-Cover, Authorization,” New York Dada (1921), unpaginated [3].
137 pioneer of nonsense: Winthrop Sargeant, “Dada’s Daddy,” Life (April 28, 1952), 100.
CHAPTER SEVEN: LAST LOOSENING
140 Picabia could not live . . . ‘Come down’: William Camfield, Francis Picabia: His Art, Life, and Times (Princeton University Press, 1979), 101–102.
140 the woodwinds of the Jazz-Bands: Juliette Roche, Demi-Cercle (Paris: La Cible, 1920), unpaginated.
140 At best her life . . . human denominator: Agnes Ernst Meyer, “Mental Reactions,” 291 2 (April 1915), unpaginated [3].
141 Of all those who have come . . . obtained results: Marius de Zayas, untitled, 291 5–6 (July–August 1915), unpaginated [6].
141 the most truthful: Francis Picabia, untitled, 291 12 (February 1916), unpaginated [3].
142 391 is not as well done . . . nothing, nothing, nothing: Camfield, Francis Picabia, 93.
142 only use symbols drawn: Dawn Ades, ed., The Dada Reader (London: Tate, 2006), 110.
142 Picasso repents . . . modern forms: “Odeurs de Partout,” 391 1 (January 25, 1917), unpaginated [4].
143 freeloading angel: Francis Picabia, I Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose and Provocation, tr. Marc Lowenthal (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 42.
143 my indecent gibberish: Ibid.
143 I have but one tongue: Ibid., 40.
143 I want my life for myself: Ibid., 47.
143 one must be many things: Ibid., 49.
143 I demand the ravishing: Ibid., 45.
143 Won’t I go: Ibid., 38.
143 Near the table: Ibid., 41.
144 animal squeal: Ibid., 44.
144 Artists of speech: Ibid., 26.
144 Picabia’s poetry: Marcel Douxami, “Dear Sir,” Rongwrong (May 1919), unpaginated.
144 Dada Putting the Jazz: Harriet Watts, ed., Dada and the Press (New Haven, CT: G. K. Hall, 2004), 395.
144 Art must not scorn: Hugo Ball, Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary, ed. John Elderfield, tr. Ann Raimes (New York: Viking, 1974), 53.
145 I pointed out . . . the fox trot: T. S. Eliot, The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898–1922, ed. Valerie Eliot (London: Faber, 1988), 70.
145 it is a jazz-banjorine: Ibid., 357.
145 Vorticist dances . . . the wide room: William Wees, Vorticism and the English Avant-Garde (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), 49.
145 Cubo-futurist?: Alan Young, Dada and After: Extremist Modernism and English Literature (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1981), 49.
145 jazz-dancing elephants: Denise Taylor, “La Musique pour tout le monde: Jean Wiéner and the Dawn of French Jazz,” PhD thesis, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1998), 24.
145 They enjoy themselves: Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg, eds., The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 560.
145 a six-piece band: Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art, tr. David Britt (New York: Abrams, 1965), 27.
146 Like a Cubist painting . . . its discord: F. W. Koebner, Jazz und Shimmy: Brevier der neuesten Tänze (Berlin: Eysler, 1921), 17.
146 places of perpetual improvisation . . . aesthetic skepticism: Timothy O. Benson and Éva Forgács, eds., Between Worlds: A Sourcebook of Central European Avant-Gardes 1910–1930 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 581.
146 vast snobbery . . . serious, ‘greater art’: Gilbert Seldes, The 7 Lively Arts (New York: Harper, 1924), 311.
146 our independence, our carelessness: Ibid., 95.
146 became part of a motley . . . jazz and alcohol: Robert Motherwell, ed., Dada Painters and Poets, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 258.
147 Isadora hid me here: Maria Lluïsa Borràs, Picabia (New York: Rizzoli, 1985), 177.
147 I feel nothing but disgust: Motherwell, Dada Painters and Poets, 7.
147 Metzinger, a failure: Ibid., 9.
147 A bit of good advice: Ibid., 7.
147 Genius is nothing but: Ibid.
147 Arthur Cravan is another: “Odeurs de Partout,” 391 1 (January 25, 1917), unpaginated [4].
148 What a wonderful lecture: Motherwell, Dada Painters and Poets, 16.
149 Picabia, with or without: Borràs, Picabia, 197.
149 propaganda for us: Richter, Dada, 48.
150 on modern art . . . shall remain secret: Michel Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, rev. ed. by Anne Sanouillet, tr. Sharmila Ganguly (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), 389.
150 I live quite isolated: Ibid., 386.
150 May I call you my friend?: Ibid., 389.
150 Dear sir and friend: Ibid., 390.
150 different, cosmic blood . . . chaos and asceticism: Ibid., 389.
150 expresses every philosophy: Ibid., 391.
150 individual principle . . . in strong individuals: Ibid.
151 I’ve never passed up . . . to assassinate beauty: Ibid., 392.
151 just flew by: Ibid., 394.
151 Picabia’s first appearance . . . a global war!: Richter, Dada, 71.
151 a radical belief: Ibid., 72.
152 I met Picabia only a few times: Ibid., 74.
152 the anti-painter: Motherwell, Dada Painters and Poets, 239.
152 Let us destroy let us be good: Richard Huelsenbeck, ed., Dada Almanac (London: Atlas, 1993), 28.
152 Dada means nothing: Motherwell, Dada Painters and Poets, 239.
152 We found him busy . . . gratuitous machines: Jean Arp, Arp on Arp: Poems, Essays, Memories, tr. Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Viking, 1972), 260–261.
154 a certain Mr. Benjamin: Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 396.
154 His eyes are staring: Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt, tr. Harry Zohn (New York: Shocken, 1969), 257–258.
154 There is no document: Ibid., 256.
155 The work of art of the Dadaists: Ibid., 238.
155 the ‘state of emergency’: Ibid., 257.
155 an alarm clock: Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, tr. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 205.
155 profane illumination: Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927–1934, eds. Michael Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 209.
155 exchange, to a man: Benjamin, Selected Writings, 218.
155 This is the first time . . . bore me before long: Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 401.
156 elegant and malicious: Motherwell, Dada Painters and Poets, 240.
157 really clever lad: Walter Serner, “Letzte Lockerung Manifest,” Dada 4/5, German edition (May 1919), unpaginated.
157 What Napoleon had to do: Richter, Dada, 78.
157 This is our curse: Mary Ann Caws, ed., Manifesto: A Century of Isms (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 321.
157 Dada has succeeded: Huelsenbeck, Dada Almanac, 33.
157 a psychosis that explains wars: Dada 4/5, German edition (May 1919), unpaginated.
157 Sensational Duel . . . on his left thigh: Karl Riha and Waltraud Wende-Hohenberger, eds., Dada Zürich: Texte, Manifeste, Dokumente (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1992), 122.
158 To be dangerous: Ades, The Dada Reader, 55.
158 The ultimate disappointment?: Ibid., 58.
158 one becomes malicious: Ibid., 60.
159 in the destructive element: Joseph Conrad, chapter 20 in Lord Jim (1900).
159 destruction was my Beatrice . . . only by elimination: Stéphane Mallarmé, Selected Letters, ed. and tr. Rosemary Lloyd (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 77.
159 destroying the usual effect: Motherwell, Dada Painters and Poets, 105.
CHAPTER EIGHT: A NEED FOR COMPLICATIONS
162 At the station: Michel Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, rev. ed. by Anne Sanouillet, tr. Sharmila Ganguly (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), 336.
162 Of living poets . . . Are we friends?: Ibid., 337.
162 projected onto Tzara . . . never have disappointed: André Breton, The Lost Steps, tr. Mark Polizzotti (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 81.
162 I like your attitude . . . bourgeois species: Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 344–345.
162 It is only natural . . . need for complications: Ibid., 349.
162 I have too little energy: Ibid., 347.
162 I proposed the word . . . the ‘Dada movement’: Ibid., 350.
163 He is the most hateful . . . nothing but you: Ibid., 357.
164 You are one of the three: Ibid., 423.
164 you are truly the man: Ibid., 425.
164 Leave us alone: Germaine Everling, L’Anneau de Saturne (Paris: Fayard, 1970), 96.
165 Back to Zurich!: Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 105.
165 Vivent les concubines: Dada 6, Bulletin Dada (February 1920) unpaginated [1].
166 Anti-dadaism is a disease: Ibid., [2].
166 Self-kleptomania: Ibid.
166 Workplace injuries: Ibid.
166 The International Dada Company: Der Dada 3 (April 1920), unpaginated.
166 avant-garde, free, public: Marius Hentea, The Real Life and Celestial Adventures of Tristan Tzara (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014), 138.
166 No more painters . . . nothing, nothing, nothing: Louis Aragon, “Manifeste du mouvement Dada,” Littérature 13 (May 1920), 1.
167 I’ve long admired your talent: Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 70.
167 work of destruction: Robert Motherwell, ed., Dada Painters and Poets, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 81.
168 I can’t go on, I’ll go on: Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (New York: Grove Press, 1958), 179.
168 A man comes back to life: Littérature 10 (December 1919), 11.
168 a kind of surrealism: Guillaume Apollinaire, Apollinaire on Art: Essays and Reviews 1902–1918, ed. LeRoy C. Breunig, tr. Susan Suleunan (New York: Viking, 1972), 452.
168 Carry on, the wheel turns: Dawn Ades, ed., The Dada Reader (London: Tate, 2006), 193.
169 heavy and excessively fleshy: Richard McDougall, tr., The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier (New York: Scribner’s, 1976), 89.
169 You all stand accused . . . you’re all chumps: DADAphone 7 (March 1920), unpaginated [3].
169 Listen to them . . . Dada lives!: William Camfield, Francis Picabia: His Art, Life, and Times (Princeton University Press, 1979), 143.
169 Chimney Sperm . . . while vomiting: 391 12 (March 1920), unpaginated.
170 the order was drawn: Littérature 13 (May 1920), 1.
170 I am writing a manifesto . . . stupid as me: Philippe Soupault, “Littérature et le reste,” Littérature 13 (May 1920), 8, 7.
170 it’s possible that I’m dreaming . . . slogan in peacetime: André Breton, “Patinage Dada,” Littérature 13 (May 1920), 9–10.
170 god-swatter: Ades, The Dada Reader, 189.
170 If you exterminate: Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, “Les plaisirs de Dada,” Littérature 13 (May 1920), 11.
170 Before I come down . . . we’re warning you: Ades, The Dada Reader, 192–193.
171 the global representative . . . for six hours: Walter Conrad Arensberg, “Dada est américaine,” Littérature 13 (May 1920), 15.
171 My friends are the ones: Louis Aragon, “Révélations sensationnelles,” Littérature 13 (May 1920), 21.
171 Dada will survive: Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 144.
172 The day the word Dada . . . as a group: Ibid., 143.
172 Dada, all that is shapeless: Ibid., 145.
172 Tzara Thoustra: Maria Lluïsa Borràs, Picabia (New York: Rizzoli, 1985), 181.
172 Tzar Tristan: Hans Arp, “aus dem ‘cacadou supérieur,’” Die Schammade (April 1920), unpaginated.
172 sensitive and aggressive: Hans Richter, Encounters from Dada till Today, tr. Christopher Middleton (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2013), 6.
172 Dada has been a purely personal: Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 277.
172 merchants of dementia: Mason Klein, Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention (New York: Jewish Museum, 2009), 183.
173 Dada Ltd . . . exploitation of vocabulary: Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 159.
173 Subscribe to DADA: Ibid., 160.
173 An unprecedented act: Ibid., 125–126.
173 Picabia has a pair: Borràs, Picabia, 205.
173 You look at life: Francis Picabia, I Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose and Provocation, tr. Marc Lowenthal (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 250.
173 Dear artists, fuck off: Ibid., 240, translation modified.
174 a lack of courage: Motherwell, Dada Painters and Poets, 113.
174 Dadaists Disappoint: Hentea, Real Life and Celestial Adventures of Tristan Tzara, 148.
174 They were serious: Jindřich Toman, “Now You See It, Now You Don’t: Dada in Czechoslovakia,” The Eastern Dada Orbit: Russia, Georgia, The Ukraine, Central Europe, and Japan, eds. Gerald Janecek and Toshiharu Omuka (New York: G. K. Hall, 1998), 18.
174 some scatological crudities: J.-N. Faure-Biguet, “Dada, ou le Triomphe du Rien,” L’Echo de Paris (May 27, 1920), 2.
175 Tzara installed himself: Hentea, Real Life and Celestial Adventures of Tristan Tzara, 159, footnote 27.
175 I consider myself very likeable: Tristan Tzara, Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries, tr. Barbara Wright (London: Calder, 1977), 32.
176 I prefer the poet: Ibid., 33.
176 We have always made mistakes: Ibid., 34.
176 Thought is made in the mouth: Ibid., 35.
176 Anti-dadaism is a disease: Ibid., 38.
176 working with all its might: Ibid., 42.
176 Take a newspaper: Ibid., 39.
177 with ceremonious gestures: Stephen Walsh, Stravinsky, A Creative Spring: Russia and France 1882–1934 (New York: Knopf, 1999), 309.
CHAPTER NINE: NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING
179 The transient Dadaists: Lucy Lippard, ed., Dadas on Art (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971), 164.
180 a scissors-painter: Jane Heap, “Comments,” The Little Review 9: 4 (Autumn/ Winter 1923–1924), 40.
180 to transform into a drama: Lippard, Dadas on Art, 64,
181 It’s raining on a skull: Michel Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, rev. ed. by Anne Sanouillet, tr. Sharmila Ganguly (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), 182.
181 the swindling mysticism . . . present sustains Dada: Werner Spies, ed., Max Ernst, Life and Work: An Autobiographical Collage (Cologne: Dumont, 2005), 76–78.
182 Man Ray is the subtle chemist . . . that it exists: Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, “Dada Painting or the Oil-Eye,” The Little Review 9: 4 (Autumn/Winter 1923–1924), 11.
182 the matter-of-fact realist . . . its poetical backside: Hans Richter, Encounters from Dada till Today, tr. Christopher Middleton (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2013), 56.
183 Monsieur Ray was born: Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 218.
185 My interest is in demonstrating: Ibid., 153.
185 rather recall the catalogues: Motherwell, Dada Painters and Poets, 301.
186 Love, sensitivity, death . . . Which is to say, everything: Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 193.
186 My words are not mine . . . commodities of conversation: Hentea, Real Life and Celestial Adventures of Tristan Tzara, 166, footnote 63.
186 I don’t trust justice . . . a bunch of bastards: Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 191.
187 adopted a bourgeois point of view: Robert Motherwell, ed., Dada Painters and Poets, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 119.
187 Modernism is of no interest . . . but a protest: Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 236.
187 At this time the undersigned: Ibid., 240.
187 part of a more general movement: André Breton, The Lost Steps, tr. Mark Polizzotti (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 113.
187 Yes, Tzara did walk . . . veritable coup d’état: Ibid., 123.
187 delivered us from the concept: Ibid., 88.
187 It would not be a bad idea: Ibid., 122.
187 omnipotence and tyranny: Ibid., 75.
187 Never let it be said: Ibid., 82.
188 that disquiet whose only flaw: Ibid., 104.
188 the man who provides: Ibid., 97.
188 This Congress of Paris: Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 239.
188 to teach people how to mass-produce: Ibid., 239.
188 ministry of the mind: Ibid., 238.
188 encyclopedic liberty . . . secret of civilization: Guillaume Apollinaire, Selected Writings, tr. Roger Shattuck (New York: New Directions, 1971), 229, 235.
189 Dada—it has become Parisian: Dawn Ades, ed., The Dada Reader (London: Tate, 2006), 134.
189 I was getting terribly bored: Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 195.
189 I had the impression: Ibid.
189 I separated from Dada: Francis Picabia, I Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose and Provocation, tr. Marc Lowenthal (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 265.
189 The painter makes a choice: Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 214.
190 One thing opposes . . . find the explanation: Picabia, I Am a Beautiful Monster, 207.
191 Children are closer to: Ibid., 208.
191 DADA wants nothing: Ibid., 200.
191 Life has only one form: Ibid., 213.
191 I am for incineration: Ibid., 276.
191 I approve of all ideas: Ibid., 262.
191 You have to be a nomad: Ibid., 263.
192 My feet have started to think: Jean Crotti, “Sous-Entendu,” Le Pilhaou-Thibaou 391: 15 (July 1921), 3.
192 To those talking . . . since all of you know: Picabia, I Am a Beautiful Monster, 271.
192 Can’t you sense: Ibid., 273.
192 After a long convalescence: Jean Cocteau, “La Guérison de Picabia,” Le Pilhaou-Thibaou [391 15] (July 1921), 11.
194 they move without losing sight: Breton, Lost Steps, 114.
194 hyper-Socratic destructivity: Ezra Pound, “Paris Letter,” The Dial 71: 4 (October 1921), 457.
194 very clear exteriorization . . . moves stark naked: Richard Sieburth, “Dada Pound,” South Atlantic Quarterly 83: 1 (winter 1984), 50.
194 a Sunday about 1921: Ezra Pound, Guide to Kulchur (London: Faber, 1938), 84.
194 intellectually dangerous . . . cage full of leopards: Ezra Pound, Jefferson and/or Mussolini (London: Nott, 1935), 92.
194 There was never a rubber button: Ezra Pound, Selected Prose 1909–1965, ed. William Cookson (London: Faber, 1973), 429.
194 an animal with claws: Marianne Moore, The Poems of Marianne Moore, ed. Grace Schulman (New York: Penguin, 2003), 178.
195 Your modesty is so great: Picabia, I Am a Beautiful Monster, 283.
195 quite simply Dada disguised: Ades, The Dada Reader, 143.
195 Our head is round: Picabia, I Am a Beautiful Monster, 283.
196 a thick-set bully: Jane Heap, “Comments,” The Little Review 9: 3 (Spring 1923), 28.
196 Leave everything: Breton, Lost Steps, 78–79.
CHAPTER TEN: A DOSTOYEVSKY DRAMA
198 with the sweetness: William Camfield, Max Ernst: Dada and the Dawn of Surrealism (Munich: Prestel, 1993), 40.
198 What I first noticed . . . a superior irony: Louise Straus-Ernst, The First Wife’s Tale: A Memoir by Louise Straus-Ernst, tr. Marilyn Richter and Marietta Schmitz-Esser (New York: Midmarch Arts, 2004), 38.
199 we were the leaders: Camfield, Max Ernst, 48.
199 I had the impression: Ibid., 57.
199 As a Dadaist he was: Hans Richter, Encounters from Dada till Today, tr. Christopher Middleton (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2013), 48.
200 Dada has nothing in common: Camfield, Max Ernst, 58.
200 methodical madness: Ibid., 63.
201 counterfeits of Dada . . . piss without ideologies: John Russell, Max Ernst: Life and Work (New York: Abrams, 1967), 62.
201 One day as Baader: Vera Broido-Cohn, The Twenties in Berlin (London: Annely Juda Fine Art, 1978), 4.
201 We have turned away . . . amuse the middle class: Camfield, Max Ernst, 77.
201 A mad gruesome war . . . make people howl: Angelika Littlefield, The Dada Period in Cologne (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1988), 22.
202 You go through a door . . . are ‘natural originals’: Camfield, Max Ernst, 71.
202 We said quite plainly: Ibid.
202 I curse you: Ibid., 74.
203 important conference: Ibid., 101.
203 Please decide and telegraph me: Ibid.
204 Max Ernst is giving each Dada: Ibid., 102.
204 almost magical presence . . . frank, uninhibited authority: Camfield, Max Ernst, 104.
204 I declare that Tristan Tzara found: Dada Intirol au Grand Air der Sängerkrieg (September 1921), unpaginated [4].
205 A friend from New York: Ibid., [1].
205 naturally has a much insaner effect: Camfield, Max Ernst, 105.
207 This slippery, scintillating creature: Ibid., 109.
207 Eluard liked group sex . . . watched or joined in: Tim McGirk, Wicked Lady: Salvador Dalí’s Muse (London: Hutchinson, 1989), 32.
207 While there were certain inconveniences: Matthew Josephson, Life Among the Surrealists (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962), 119.
208 You’ve got no idea what it’s like: Robert McNab, Ghost Ships: A Surrealist Love Triangle (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 44.
208 carried himself with much aplomb: Josephson, Life Among the Surrealists, 179.
208 Of course we don’t give a damn: Ibid.
208 one of the most lovable: Ibid., 180.
208 I could never make love to a woman: Ibid., 181.
208 I never loved you as passionately: Straus-Ernst, First Wife’s Tale, 45.
209 the drunkenness of Éluard . . . those of marble statues: Camfield, Max Ernst, 51.
209 The exterior of the house: McGirk, Wicked Lady, 35.
210 surpasses in horror: McNab, Ghost Ships, 52.
210 André’s so sad: Ibid., 108.
210 gloomiest concerns . . . make sense of anything: Ibid., 109.
210 To simplify everything: Ibid.
210 You left without saying goodbye: Ibid., 106.
210 in reality each of the characters: Philippe Soupault, “Épitaphes,” Littérature 14 (June 1920), 8.
210 24 March 1924. Dear Father: McNab, Ghost Ships, 53.
211 It’s him, no doubt . . . holiday, that’s all: Ibid., 117.
211 disappearing act . . . Oceania by steamer: Ibid.
212 Gala, my little Gala: Ibid., 227.
212 He dared what no one . . . not see Max again. EVER: Éluard, Letters to Gala, 4–5.
212 None of this is possible: Ibid., 201.
212 burning cigarette eyes: McNab, Ghost Ships, 105.
213 The impression of a predatory . . . respond to the invitation: Jimmy Ernst, A Not-So-Still Life (New York: St. Martin’s, 1984), 152, 153.
213 It is the marvelous faculty: Russell, Max Ernst, 77.
213 The image is a pure creation: Pierre Reverdy, “L’Image,” Nord-Sud 13 (March 1918), unpaginated [1].
214 who had just died: André Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, tr. Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969), 24.
214 Never let it be said: Breton, Lost Steps, 82.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: NEW LIFE
216 hospitals of anemic sounds: Umbro Apollonio, ed., Futurist Manifestos (New York: Viking, 1973), 75.
216 our hearing has already been educated: Ibid.
216 We enjoy creating mental orchestrations: Ibid., 85.
217 the formlessness and anarchy . . . vagueness of expression: Victor Margolin, The Struggle for Utopia: Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy 1917–1946 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 76.
217 there is great destructive: Richard Huelsenbeck, ed., Dada Almanac (London: Atlas, 1993), 131.
217 Dadaism was no ideological movement: Dawn Ades, ed., The Dada Reader (London: Tate, 2006), 310.
217 In principle no difference: Huelsenbeck, Dada Almanac, 95.
219 It’s somehow strange . . . iron, glass and revolution: V. Shklovsky, “The Monument to the Third International,” Tatlin, ed. Larissa Zhadova (New York: Rizzoli, 1988), 170.
219 new forms of life, already born: Stephen Bann, ed., The Tradition of Constructivism (New York: Viking Press, 1974), 9.
220 Space and time . . . the present day: Ibid., 11.
221 Constructivist life: Selim Khan-Magomedov, Rodchenko, The Complete Work, ed. Vieri Quillici (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 291.
221 a new material organism: Christina Kiaer, Imagine No Possessions: The Socialist Objects of Russian Constructivism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 13.
221 It is time that art entered . . . squalid life of the rich: Khan-Magomedov, Rodchenko, 291.
223 missed out on a strong dose: Timothy O. Benson and Éva Forgács, eds., Between Worlds: A Sourcebook of Central European Avant-Gardes, 1910–1930 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 369.
223 the tragic scream: Lee Congdon, Exile and Social Thought: Hungarian Intellectuals in Germany and Austria 1919–1933 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 161.
223 a man named Kurt Schwitters: Oliver A. I. Botar, Technical Detours: The Early Moholy-Nagy Reconsidered (New York: Art Gallery of The Graduate Center, City University of New York, 2006), 93.
224 never wanted to be left out . . . race for ‘originality’: Ibid., 142–143.
224 Modern man . . . his inherited fetters: Krisztina Passuth, Moholy-Nagy (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1985), 287.
225 new kinetic realities: László Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1947), 160.
225 We are faced today: Ibid., 13.
225 man, hitherto merely receptive: Passuth, Moholy-Nagy, 290.
225 incessantly initiatory . . . of Cubism and Dadaism: Ibid., 416.
226 Just as a Dadaist journal: Ibid., 388.
226 jellyfish-like German: El Lissitzky, El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts, ed. Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers, tr. Helen Aldwinkle (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1968), 345.
226 It takes discipline: Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Moholy-Nagy: Experiment in Totality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969), 32.
226 It is my gift to project . . . life as a painter: Ibid., 12.
227 Here are the most energetic: Congdon, Exile and Social Thought, 161.
227 Demolish so that you can build: Ibid., 145.
227 This tragic woman: Éva Forgács, “Constructive Faith in Deconstruction: Dada in Hungarian Art,” The Eastern Dada Orbit: Russia, Georgia, The Ukraine, Central Europe, and Japan, eds. Gerald Janecek and Toshiharu Omuka (New York: G. K. Hall, 1998), 72.
227 destruction as a mode of analysis: Benson and Forgács, Between Worlds, 455.
227 free from the zigzag: Congdon, Exile and Social Thought, 185.
227 but the hysterical outbursts . . . pictures shrieked: Ilya Ehrenburg, Memoirs: 1921–1941, tr. Tatania Shebunina (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1966), 11, 12.
228 nothing of building: Congdon, Exile and Social Thought, 153.
228 We were brought up: Lissitzky, El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts. 330.
228 we need the machine . . . free from romanticism: Passuth, Moholy-Nagy, 287.
228 The collectivity of a picture . . . gramophone record: Ibid., 418.
229 barnlike studio . . . weak table wine: Matthew Josephson, “After and Beyond Dada,” Broom 2 (1922), 211.
229 In ordinary life: Ehrenburg, Memoirs, 23.
231 to an airman’s sensation . . . figments of the imagination: Lissitzky, El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts, 380–381.
231 The surface of the Proun: Ibid., 347.
231 rising on the ground: Ibid.
231 When I made my Proun: Ibid., 348.
231 We no longer want: Ibid., 365.
231 we are destroying: Ibid.
232 The great international: Ibid., 366.
232 Our painting will be applied: Ehrenburg, Memoirs, 34–35.
232 No one should imagine: Bann, The Tradition of Constructivism, 56.
232 We are unable to imagine . . . cannot be dispensed with: Ibid.
233 negative tactics . . . lie behind us: Ibid., 55.
233 I could never understand: Louis Lozowick, Survivor from a Dead Age: The Memoirs of Louis Lozowick, ed. Virginia Marquardt (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute, 1997), 214.
233 ready to explain his theories . . . than a rebel: Ibid., 190–191.
234 has been inspired . . . becomes one with it: Hans Janssen and Michael White, The Story of De Stijl: Mondrian to Van Doesburg (New York: Abrams, 2011), 130.
234 thought concentrator: Ibid.
234 Everything on the boulevard . . . is the boulevard: Piet Mondrian, The New Art—The New Life: The Collected Writings of Piet Mondrian, ed. and tr. Harry Holtzman and Martin S. James (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986), 126, 128.
235 Your friend, Piet-Dada: Janssen and White, Story of De Stijl, 132.
235 it was nice to show enthusiasm: Hubert F. van den Berg, The Import of Nothing: How Dada Came, Saw, and Vanished in the Low Countries (1915–1929) (New Haven, CT: G. K. Hall, 2002), 120.
235 In maximum movement: Janssen and White, Story of De Stijl, 50.
236 destruction and reconstruction: Ibid.
236 Only those who perpetually destroy: Ibid., 124.
236 The Dadaist spirit . . . that are different: Marc Dachy, “Life is an extraordinary invention: Doesburg the Dadaist,” Van Doesburg & the International Avant-Garde, eds. Gladys Fabre and Doris Wintgens Hötte (London: Tate, 2009), 28.
237 sick with the pépie: Theo van Doesburg, What is Dada??? And Other Dada Writings, tr. Michael White (London: Atlas, 2006), 51.
237 The criminals in Russia: Lissitzky, El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts, 35.
237 the poison of the New Spirit: Doris Hötte, “Van Doesburg Tackles the Continent: Passion, Drive and Calculation,” Van Doesburg & the International Avant-Garde, eds. Gladys Fabre and Doris Hötte (London: Tate, 2009), 10.
239 definiteness instead of indefiniteness: Joost Baljeu, Theo van Doesburg (New York: Macmillan, 1974), 123.
239 will towards a new style: Ibid.
239 International of the Mind . . . to give. Gratuitously: Baljeu, Theo van Doesburg 114.
239 petty trading . . . rubber stamp membership: Rose-Carol Washton Long, ed., German Expressionism: Documents from the End of the Wilhelmine Empire to the Rise of National Socialism (New York: G. K. Hall, 1993), 220–221.
240 Everything trembles . . . Great Spiritual has begun: Wassily Kandinksy, Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art (New York: Da Capo, 1994), 479.
241 In the end . . . organization held its own: Maria Müller, “Der Kongress der ‘Union Internationaler Forschrittlicher Künstler’ Düsseldorf,” Konstruktivistische Internationale Schöpferische Arbeitsgemeinschaft 1922–1927: Utopien für eine Europäische Kultur (Düsseldorf: Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, 1992), 21.
241 the tyranny of the subjective . . . does not yet exist: Bann, The Tradition of Constructivism, 68–69.
242 subjective arbitrariness: Ibid., 64.
242 only by a society that renounces: Ibid., 67.
242 those who minister . . . call themselves progressive artists: Ibid., 63.
243 splintering . . . against everything and everyone: Michael White, “Theo van Doesburg: A Counter-life,” Van Doesburg & the International Avant-Garde, 71.
243 I’m pretty sure he’ll accept . . . ever more followers: Dachy, “Life is an extraordinary invention,” 31.
243 The World is a little Sperm Machine: van Doesburg, What is Dada???, 47.
243 Dada is the cork . . . Dada’s walking-stick: Ibid., 45.
244 Art is a urinal: Ibid., 39.
244 we neovitalist Dadaists: Ibid., 35.
244 sentimental deformations: Ibid., 56.
244 The abnormal is the prerequisite: Ibid., 55.
244 The principle of life . . . there is annihilation: Ibid., 58.
244 No is the strongest: Ibid., 61.
CHAPTER TWELVE: YES NO
245 First to tender his resignation: Robert Motherwell, ed., Dada Painters and Poets, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 246.
246 You explain to me: Ibid., 247.
246 What we want now: Ibid., 248.
246 Dada reduces everything: Ibid.
246 Dada is not at all modern: Ibid., 247.
246 Dada is a state of mind: Ibid., 251.
246 un microbe vierge: Tristan Tzara, Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 1 (Paris: Flammarion, 1975), 385.
247 After the carnage: Richard Huelsenbeck, ed., Dada Almanac (London: Atlas, 1993), 123.
247 Doesburg, a powerful personality: Lucy Lippard, ed., Dadas on Art (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971), 111.
247 Modern clothing . . . electric atmosphere: Hans Janssen and Michael White, The Story of De Stijl: Mondrian to Van Doesburg (New York: Abrams, 2011), 148.
249 I have never seen: Gwendolen Webster, Kurt Merz Schwitters: A Biographical Study (Cardiff, UK: University of Wales Press, 1997), 123.
249 He started to recite . . . ‘babbling-brook’ poetry: Harriet Janis and Rudi Blesh, Collage: Personalities, Concepts, Techniques (Philadelphia: Chilton, 1967), 66.
250 You must prepare the Dadaists: Theo van Doesburg, What is Dada??? And Other Dada Writings, tr. Michael White (London: Atlas, 2006), 14.
250 compatible with that which: Hubert F. van den Berg, The Import of Nothing: How Dada Came, Saw, and Vanished in the Low Countries (1915–1929) (New Haven, CT: G. K. Hall, 2002), 30.
250 I became a Dadaist . . . destruction through construction: Ibid., 30–31.
251 the supreme pinnacle: Ibid., 48.
252 ultra-stylistic-dadaist-cubist poetry: Ibid., 66.
252 interpret this as Dadaist . . . find a label: Ibid., 97, translation modified.
252 ‘physioplastic’ typography: Ibid., 96.
252 Dada-jazz revolution: Ibid., 88.
252 Cabaret Dada . . . exploitation of Dadaism is founded: Paul van Ostaijen, Patriotism, Inc.: And Other Tales, tr. E. M. Beekman (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1971), 147.
253 European exertion to become Negroes: Ibid., 151.
253 Dada Saves Europe: Ibid., 159.
253 young dandy . . . cry out in admiration: Erwin Blumenfeld, Eye to I: The Autobiography of a Photographer, tr. Mike Mitchell and Brian Murdoch (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999), 127.
254 frantic applause: John Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1985), 105.
254 Imagine a poem: Harriet Watts, ed., Dada and the Press (New Haven, CT: G. K. Hall, 2004), 477.
254 the unmitigated cynicism: Ibid., 458.
255 the anational expression: van Doesburg, What is Dada???, 30–31.
255 for every ‘yes’: Ibid., 34.
255 In Utrecht they came: Schwitters letter, November 14, 1946, Getty Research Center, Los Angeles.
256 May I introduce us? . . . Dadaism in the audience: Kurt Schwitters, “Dadaismus in Holland,” Merz 1 (January 1921), 5.
257 because Dadaism . . . their own stupidity: Andrzej Turowski, “Dada Contexts in Poland,” Eastern Dada Orbit, eds. Gerald Janecek and Toshiharu Omuka (New York: G. K. Hall, 1998), 118.
257 will always reappear: Ibid., 119.
257 proof that further colonizing: Ibid., 120.
257 chronic diarrhea: Ibid., 119.
257 Dada is the essence: van den Berg, The Import of Nothing, 158.
257 Dada is the moral solemnity: Ibid.
258 One cannot set up a new building: Ibid., 160.
258 It’s an obbligato!: Webster, Kurt Merz Schwitters, 196.
258 Experiments are being conducted: Ades, The Dada Reader, 296.
259 respectable and less respectable: Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, 66.
259 I am building a composition: Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, 156.
259 started by tying strings: Ibid., 148.
261 solemnly displayed: Steinitz, Kurt Schwitters, 90.
261 a kind of fecal smearing: Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, 162.
261 like some jungle vegetation: Ibid., 191.
261 This is an age of abbreviations: Schmalenbach, Kurt Schwitters, 130.
261 His real aspiration: Ibid., 139.
261 Without parallel: Ibid., 132.
262 smash the frames . . . for technical difficulties: Ulrich Conrads and Hans Sperlich, Fantastic Architecture, tr. Christiane and George Collins (London: Architectural Press, 1963), 137, 138.
263 a strange, enrapturing feeling: Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, 154.
263 an advertisement is only: Schmalenbach, Kurt Schwitters, 56.
264 the new book demands: Lissitzky, El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts, 359.
264 In the battle for Truth and Beauty: van den Berg, The Import of Nothing, 118.
264 Every form is frozen: Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, 137.
265 a downright good, kind fellow: Lissitzky, El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts, 38.
265 unauthorized self-propaganda: Margolin, Struggle for Utopia, 76, footnote 101.
265 How is Kurtschen?: Lissitzky, El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts, 53.
266 going marvelously now . . . because of Arp: Ibid., 55.
266 I’m getting worried: Ibid., 57.
266 I have transformed: Kasimir Malevich, “From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism,” Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism 1903–1934, ed. and tr. John Bowlt (New York: Viking, 1976), 118.
267 At the Bauhaus: Selim Chan-Magomedow, Von der Malerei zum Design: Russische konstruktivistische Kunst der Zwanziger Jahre (Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska, 1981), 39.
267 The dadaïsm has assailed: El Lissitzky and Hans Arp, Die Kunstismen: 1914–1924 (Zurich: Eugen Rentsch, 1925), x.
268 All that artist spits is art: Ibid., xi.
268 old rubbish from attics: Schmalenbach, Kurt Schwitters, 96.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: TRUTH OR MYTH?
270 Dada’s destructive work: Timothy O. Benson and Éva Forgács, eds., Between Worlds: A Sourcebook of Central European Avant-Gardes 1910–1930 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 369.
270 A young lady: Dragan Kujundžić and Jasna Jovanov, “Yougo-Dada,” The Eastern Dada Orbit: Russia, Georgia, The Ukraine, Central Europe, and Japan, eds. Gerald Janecek and Toshiharu Omuka (New York: G. K. Hall, 1998), 44.
271 a dough pliable enough: Ibid., 43.
271 The Naked Man: Dubravka Djurić and Miško Šuvaković, eds., Impossible Histories: Historical Avant-gardes, Neo-avant-gardes, and Post-avant-gardes in Yugoslavia 1918–1991 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 525.
271 We need modern . . . always INTERNATIONAL: Benson and Forgács, Between Worlds, 290.
271 One needs to be a barbarian: Ibid., 291.
271 already a fashion . . . and a new art: “Dada—Dadaizam,” Zenit 2 (March 1921), 17.
271 SUICIDE: Louis Aragon, “Suicide,” Cannibale (April 1920), 4.
272 Art is what the nerves express . . . seconds, not years: Benson and Forgács, Between Worlds, 348.
272 DADA is a term for getting happy . . . (why work?): Ibid., 350.
272 isn’t merely a quiver: Ibid., 354.
272 panfuturist system: Myroslava Mudrak, The New Generation and Artistic Modernism in the Ukraine (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1986), 212.
272 tAbA: Dragan Aleksić, “Taba Ciklon II,” Ma VIII: 8 (August 1922), 13.
273 The great master: Dada-Jok (May 1922), unpaginated.
274 modern and eccentric dancing: Kujundžić and Jovanov, “Yougo-Dada,” 51.
274 Dadas are furniture movers . . . a new order: Jindřich Toman, “Now You See It, Now You Don’t: Dada in Czechoslovakia,” The Eastern Dada Orbit: Russia, Georgia, The Ukraine, Central Europe, and Japan, eds. Gerald Janecek and Toshiharu Omuka (New York: G. K. Hall, 1998), 28.
274 The modern spirit . . . folly to every wisdom: Ibid., 22.
274 Dada is only the foam: Ibid., 29.
275 Poetism in the praxis: Ibid., 30.
275 Aesthetics, formerly the Science: Ibid., 26.
275 Through Dadaism . . . drunken hottentot: Ibid., 27.
275 Cubism, expressionism . . . is onanism: Andrzej Turowski, “Dada Contexts in Poland,” Eastern Dada Orbit, eds. Gerald Janecek and Toshiharu Omuka (New York: G. K. Hall, 1998), 110.
276 We are breaking off: Ibid., 113.
276 word-plasticity: Ibid., 110.
276 this throng of raging bacchantes: Anatol Stern, Europa (London: Gaberbocchus, 1962), unpaginated.
276 How can one outstrip: Turowski, “Dada Contexts in Poland,” 340.
276 We have joined art to life . . . of the invasion: John Bowlt, ed., Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism 1903–1934 (New York: Viking, 1976), 81.
278 Activist Manifesto for Young People: Stephen Bann, ed., The Tradition of Constructivism (New York: Viking Press, 1974), 20.
279 Already in 1914: Michael Impey, “Before and After Tzara: Romanian Contributions to Dada,” Eastern Dada Orbit, eds. Gerald Janecek and Toshiharu Omuka (New York: G. K. Hall, 1998), 129.
279 Indifference is the sole legal: Tristan Tzara, Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 5 (Paris: Flammarion, 1982), 249.
279 not a person . . . gaining power thereby: Der Sturm 144/145 (January 1913), 1.
281 When I’ve finished a cigarette: Francis Picabia, 391 17 (June 1924), unpaginated [4].
282 Death is the one credible condition: Hugo Ball, Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary, ed. John Elderfield, tr. Ann Raimes (New York: Viking, 1974), 198.
282 One must be astonished: Ibid., 196.
282 magic treasure . . . real collectivity: Lucy Lippard, ed., Dadas on Art (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971), 34.
282 The stars write: Jean Arp, Arp on Arp: Poems, Essays, Memories, tr. Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Viking, 1972), 287.
283 Arp left our group: Aline Vidal, “Arp and the Abstraction-Création Group: An Interview with Jean Hélion,” Arp 1886–1966 (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1987), 173.
283 Sometimes we learn: Arp, Arp on Arp, 293.
283 surely those who had the good fortune: Carola Giedion-Welcker, Jean Arp (New York: Abrams, 1957), xxx.
283 the lamp with which Aladdin: Carolyn Lanchner, Sophie Taeuber-Arp (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1981), 13.
284 I think I have spoken . . . solution to them: Ibid., 18.
284 toadstool trees: Hans Janssen and Michael White, The Story of De Stijl: Mondrian to Van Doesburg (New York: Abrams, 2011), 214.
284 The public is not ready: Ibid., 216.
285 Standing on the stage: Marc Dachy, “Life is an extraordinary invention: Doesburg the Dadaist,” Van Doesburg & the International Avant-Garde, eds. Gladys Fabre and Doris Wintgens Hötte (London: Tate, 2009), 34.
285 to those painters of squares . . . or human form: Alfred H. Barr Jr., Cubism and Abstract Art (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1936), 18.
285 infantile disorder: Ibid., 16.
285 a dangerous game: Fernand Léger, Functions of Painting, tr. Alexandra Anderson (New York: Viking, 1973), 83.
286 You painted the clarity: Jean Arp, “Tu étais claire et calme,” from Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essais, souvenirs 1920–1966, 141, 185. Copyright © Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1966.
286 You departed clear and calm: Arp, Jours effeuillés, 188.
287 a little bit of Merz: Gwendolen Webster, Kurt Merz Schwitters: A Biographical Study (Cardiff, UK: University of Wales Press, 1997), 70.
287 Put up the price: Ibid., 107.
287 In the meantime he had become: Kurt Schwitters, Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales, tr. Jack Zipes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 85.
287 guilty because he had refused: Ibid., 99.
287 He’s a little too tall: Ibid., 96.
287 There’s art, and also nations . . . for war: Kurt Schwitters, Manifeste und kritische Prosa, ed. Friedhelm Lach (Munich: Deutscher Tachenbuch Verlag, 2005), 199.
288 I’m Aryan—the great Aryan: Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Moholy-Nagy: Experiment in Totality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969), 101.
289 That was my best friend: Schwitters letter, June 18, 1946, Getty Research Center, Los Angeles.
289 In spite of these setbacks: John Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1985), 64.
289 Love, MERZ: Schwitters letter, June 18, 1946, Getty Research Center, Los Angeles.
289 I think that you are like me: Schwitters letter, July 24, 1946, Getty Research Center, Los Angeles.
289 I am absolutely conform with you: Hausmann letter, September 2, 1946, Getty Research Center, Los Angeles.
289 A play with serious problems: Schwitters letter, August 8, 1946, Getty Research Center, Los Angeles.
290 an important member: Schwitters letter, December 19, 1946, Getty Research Center, Los Angeles.
290 I had no farthing . . . nailed in bed: Hausmann letter, September 30, 1946 Getty Research Center, Los Angeles.
290 I am 59. But I cannot run: Schwitters letter, June 27, 1946, Getty Research Center, Los Angeles.
290 I had to lie: Schwitters letter, October 3, 1946, Getty Research Center, Los Angeles.
290 I would like to see once USA: Schwitters letter, Getty Research Center, Los Angeles.
290 He needed constant encouragement: Lucy Lippard, ed., Dadas on Art (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971), 75.
290 I see in him . . . greatest tenderness: Hans Richter, Encounters from Dada till Today, tr. Christopher Middleton (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2013), 16.
291 set up house with two women: Ibid.
291 disciplined: Dawn Ades and Daniel F. Herman, eds., Hannah Höch (Munich: Prestel, 2014), 171.
292 afflicted with sculpture-fever . . . our own mystery?: Carola Giedion-Welcker, Contemporary Sculpture: An Evolution in Volume and Space, rev. ed. (New York: Wittenborn, 1960), 300.
293 No one better than Max: Russell, Max Ernst, 119.
293 In May 1940 Max Ernst: Ibid., 127.
294 Some old friends . . . scrubbed, hygienic numeral: Robert Motherwell, ed., Dada Painters and Poets, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), xl.
295 He is among those: Tristan Tzara, “Kurt Schwitters,” 2, Getty Research Center, Los Angeles.
297 Dada was born . . . ill-gotten gains: Motherwell, Dada Painters and Poets, 402–403.
297 The misunderstanding from which: Ibid., 398.
297 had himself enthroned: Ibid., 35.
297 a brief explosion: Ibid., 406.
297 Previous Dada manifestoes . . . Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich: Ibid., 401.
298 only imbeciles: Dawn Ades, ed., The Dada Reader (London: Tate, 2006), 68.
299 It is pointless to employ: Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art, tr. David Britt (New York: Abrams, 1965), 209.
299 From the beginning . . . become a myth: Ibid., 10.
AFTERWORD: THE AFTERLIFE OF DADA
301 They have satirized the holy church: Ezra Pound, “The Island of Paris: A Letter,” The Dial 69: 4 (October 1920), 407–408.
302 jesters in the tragedy of Europe’s destruction: Harriet Watts, ed., Dada and the Press (New Haven, CT: G. K. Hall, 2004), 461.
302 Joyce had taken some half million assorted words: “Shantih, Shantih, Shantih: Has the Reader Any Rights Before the Bar of Literature?” Time (March 3, 1923), 12.
302 so much waste paper: Charles Powell, untitled, Manchester Guardian (October 31, 1923), 7.
302 by virtue of its incoherence: Conrad Aiken, “An Anatomy of Melancholy,” The New Republic (February 7, 1932), in T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism, ed. Michael North (New York: Norton, 2001), 152.
303 a language which existed: John Ashbery, Reported Sightings: Art Chronicles, 1957–1987 (New York: Knopf, 1989), 82.
304 there is only adventure by the individual: Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, eds., Art in Theory 1900–2000 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 630.
306 I felt like he made it all just for me: Mary Lynn Kotz, Rauschenberg, Art and Life, rev. ed. (New York: Abrams, 2004), 91.
306 the most primitive relation: Richard Huelsenbeck, ed., Dada Almanac (London: Atlas, 1993), 46.
307 a valuable instrument of mass psychotherapy: Dario Gamboni, “Sixty Years of Ambivalence,” Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950 (Munich: Prestel, 2013), 178.
307 The only kind of intentional destruction: “Yoko Ono Talk,” Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950 (Munich: Prestel, 2013), 81.
309 Let us be thoroughly new: Hugo Ball, Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary, ed. John Elderfield, tr. Ann Raimes (New York: Viking, 1974), 56.