Customer Reviews (5)

Excelent quality and information
Ths Mattew Gale book is full of information specially aimed for the beguiner.
Ilustrations are high quality and are 100% related to the text
The cross refference between text and images is adecuate and easy to follow.
The final presentation of the volume is excelent

Long live dada, you tiny sandwich elf.
this am a beautiful book, one of the best book of Dada and Surrealism, it. very well writen and it many pictures ^.^ must for any it fan.

Most Of What's Required
Gale provides the better part of what is required to get a sense of the Dada movement. Other books on the subject provide a more concise and readable narrative of the subject, but Gale's book is full of illustrations that offer a good feel for the works created in the various Dada cities and periods. Not definitive, but close enough.

Gale's History of Dada and Surrealism
While its 6" by 9" format necessarily limits the sizes of the illustrations, Gale's choices of which illustrations to include are excellent, ranging from the requisite Picabias, Ernsts, and Dalis to works by lesser-known (and sometimes non-European) artists like Remedios Varo. The author has thoroughly researched his subject, and the text is bothauthoritative and insightful.

Delicious
This book is incredible in its design and content. Th quality of the images and text is superb. It also bridges the history between Dada and surrealism presenting works of art in vivid color along the way. It servesas a resource of the two movements backgrounds and history as well aspleasing the eye with its many examples. ... Read more

Book Description
The avant-garde movements of Dada and Surrealism continue to have a huge influence on cultural practice, especially in contemporary art, with its obsession with sexuality, fetishism, and shock tactics. In this new treatment of the subject, Hopkins focuses on the many debates surrounding these movements: the Marquis de Sade's Surrealist deification, issues of quality (How good is Dali?), the idea of the 'readymade', attitudes towards the city, the impact of Freud, attitudes to women, fetishism, and primitivism. The international nature of these movements is examined, covering the cities of Zurich, New York, Berlin, Cologne, Barcelona, Paris, London, and recenlty discovered examples in Eastern Europe. Hopkins explores the huge range of media employed by both Dada and Surrealism (collage, painting, found objects, performance art, photography, film) , whilst at the same time establishing the aesthetic differences between the movements. He also examines the Dadaist obsession with the body-as-mechanism in relation to the Surrealists' return to the fetishized/eroticized body. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Very Good, Well Balanced Overview
As a person with an enduring fascination and respect for the early Dadaists I found this introduction offered a very good and (despite the title) in-depth coverage of most aspects of Dada and Surrealism.

The theme is comparison and contrast and also the development of thematic elements in both currents: how they rose to, or challenged each other and society. The basic differences in Dada as Anti-Art and Surrealism as Art-for-arts sake is well considered. The latter bourgoeise taste was very much derided by the original Dadas. The political development of both groups is also analysed, their stances on feminism, colonialism and mass movements.

The one thing that I found not covered in this book -- and is also not covered in most books on this subject is, how two movements with such anti-establishment themes fared in the sometimes authoritarian societies that spawned them... how for example were the German Dadaist allowed to escape the Freikorps and later the Nazis? What did Franco think of Dali and Picasso? Some French Dada/Surrealists such as Andre Breton were able to escape from Vichy France to America, but what about the others...?

In short, although both streams rebelled against the main thoughts that dominated society -- they were almost all consumate individualists -- how were they able to do so? Since most Dadaists survived WWII I must surmise that either Hitler left them alone, or they lowered their profile to such a degree that they become insignificant. But again, since they were at the forefront of criticising the automaton man that society produced in WWI, the question remains, how did they manage to avoid getting it in the neck when the rest of the world was racing headlong into the twin dispairs of Fascism and Communism? ... Read more

Book Description
What kind of artists put a moustache on the Mona Lisa? Enter a urinal in an art competition? Declare their own independent republic? Hijack a ship?Dadas!
And what happens to such a movement? With Dada, many of the artists declared their own "Pope" and continued their journey (with no destination) into Surrealism, creating burning giraffes, "amoebic" dogs, and lobster telephones–some of the most imaginative and intense works of art of the 20th century.In Dada and Surrealism For Beginners, you'll get a colorful overview of these two movements, and develop a sense of the turbulent, wild, and unapologetically mad mood and tone of the Dada and Surrealist movements.Whether you're an artist, would-be artist, or someone seeking the marvelous, you'll find the courage and originality of the movements inspiring, and you'll gain an understanding of their long-term (and current) influences on contemporary art and culture – everything from performance art to pop art to the abandoned train ticket you find in the street. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Those Marvelous Dadas
Combining manifestos, art criticism, and history into a comic book is no easy task, but I think the authors have succeeded in creating an intriguing overview of a unique artistic movement. Although it is an overview, it doesn't seem oversimplified. I knew very little about Dada and Surrealism before reading this book, and I now feel that I understand some of the basic ideas behind this type of art. This book piqued my interest in learning more about the artists it presents in spite of the fact that I purchased it and read it mainly as a gesture of support to my friends who wrote it.

Even though the authors are friends of mine, I have to admit that my favorite parts of the book are the illustrations by Joseph Lee. He captures the irreverence of this artistic movement well. My biggest disappointment is the reproductions of the actual paintings. The scans seem very dark and grainy.

I have not read any other books in the For Beginners series, so I don't know how this one compares. I imagine this book would appeal to intellectual teens or adults who lack the time and/or attention span to wade through a comprehensive tome on the subject. ... Read more

Book Description
Examines the developments that paved the way for the Surrealist movement in literature and art. ... Read more

Book Description
Dada -- perhaps the most famous and outrageous of modernism's artistic movements -- is said to have begun at the Cabaret Voltaire, a literary evening staged at the restaurant Meierei in Zurich on February 5, 1916. The evening featured stamping, roaring, banging on the lids of pots and pans, and the recitation of incomprehensible "poemes simultanes" Thus a global revolution in art and culture was born in a Swiss restaurant. Or was it?

In Dada East, Tom Sandqvist shows that Dada did not spring full-grown from a Zurich literary salon but grew out of an already vibrant artistic tradition in Eastern Europe -- particularly Romania -- that was transposed to Switzerland when a group of Romanian modernists settled in Zurich. Bucharest and other cities in Romania had been the scene of Dada-like poetry, prose, and spectacle in the years before World War I. One of the leading lights was Tristan Tzara, who began his career in avant-garde literature at fifteen when he cofounded the magazine Simbolul. Tzara -- who himself coined the term "Dada," inspired by an obscure connection of his birthday to an Orthodox saint -- was at the Cabaret Voltaire that night, along with fellow Romanians Marcel, Jules, and Georges Janco and Arthur Segal. It's not a coincidence, Sandqvist argues, that so many of the first dadaist group were Romanians. Sandqvist traces the artistic and personal transformations that took place in the "little Paris of the Balkans" before they took center stage elsewhere, finding sources as varied as symbolism, futurism, and folklore. He points to a connection between Romanian modernists and the Eastern European Yiddish tradition; Tzara, the Janco brothers, and Segal all grew up within Jewish culture and traditions.

For years, the communist authorities in Romania disowned and disavowed Romania's avant-garde movements. Now, as archives and libraries are opening to Western scholars, Tom Sandqvist tells the secret history of Dada's Romanian roots. ... Read more

Book Description
Now back in stock: A collection of fabulous photographs by theforemost Surrealist artists.

Much has been written about Surrealist painting and sculpture, but most of theerotic, disorienting, and exquisite Surrealist photographs of Man Ray, MarcelDuchamp, Max Ernst, Andre Breton, Brassai, Salvador Dali, Andre Kertesz, andHans Bellmer have remained all but unknown--until now. Traditional criticism hasviewed Surrealist photography as a pale imitation of authentic Surrealist work.The assumption has been that photography, a "realistic" medium, is fundamentallyincompatible with a cause devoted to the wildly subjective, the world of dreams,and the unconscious. As a consequence, Surrealist photography, a major body oftwentieth-century art, has remained largely unexplored.

L' Amour fou is the first book to study the crucial role photography did in factplay in the Surrealist movement. It shows how photographers enlisted into theservice of "subjective" Surrealism their medium's very claim to "objective"reality. Of greatest interest, of course, is the book's abundant reproductionsof the fantastic and distorted photographic creations that must be acknowledgedas an important part of the Surrealist oeuvre.

Other Details: 200 duotones, 24 full-color illustrations. 9 x 12" trim size. Corcoran Galleryof Art, Washington, D.C./Abbeville Press, New York, co-publishers. Firstpublished 1985. ... Read more

Book Description

The Dada Painters and Poets offers the authentic answer to the question "What is Dada?" This incomparable collection of essays, manifestos, and illustrations was prepared by Robert Motherwell with the collaboration of some of the major Dada figures: Marcel Duchamp, Jean Arp, and Max Ernst among others. Here in their own words and art, the principals of the movement create a composite picture of Dada--its convictions, antics, and spirit.

First published in 1951, this treasure trove remains, as Jack Flam states in his foreword to the second edition, "the most comprehensive and important anthology of Dada writings in any language, and a fascinating and very readable book." It contains every major text on the Dada movement, including retrospective studies, personal memoirs, and prime examples. The illustrations range from photos of participants, in characteristic Dadaist attitudes, to facsimiles of their productions.

Customer Reviews (3)

A classic, and a great intro.
This is Motherwell's classic book on Dada. It was the only comprehensive look at Dada for along time. Good for an intro as well as a comprehensive coverage of the original Dada's and their works.

Excellent resource for Dada history
Motherwell has compiled an impressive look into the world and lives of the dada artists. Exceptional!

Anti Unincorporated
Dada not only wrote and painted, it talked, drank, agitated, danced, babbled, burbled, shocked, indulged in self-loathing, took notes, held exhibits, dressed up, hooted, wrote scathing criticisms of itself, whistled, made noises with its skin, fell in love with itself, mailed letters, and then committed suicide.Huelsenbeck, Tzara, Breton, Ball, Duchamp et al. enacted Dada selves out of hatred for war, but their hatred and iconoclasm continued when they discovered that the monster that lives off of war didn't die on Armistice Day (the one in 1918).They became anti-everything that was Modern, Reasonable, Commonsensical, Appropriate, in other words, everything that would help humans hide from (while justifying) their own self-destructiveness.They tried to open up the unconscious and display it for Europe and America.This book charts that process better than most.The best of the essays about Dada is "The Dada Spirit in Painting" by Georges Hugnet, but the best pieces here are by those who, in writing and painting, were being Dada:Eluard's and Huelsenback's poems, Ball's "Dada Fragments," Tzara's "Seven Dada Manifestoes," Ribemont-Dessaignes' "History of Dada," and Breton on Duchamp. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Art And Revolution
This book is about the intersection betweenart and revolutionary politics.In the 1930s the leading figures of the surrealist movement and a few other artists and writers tried to cut out some political space for artists who supported a revolutionaryoverturn of the system that birthed fascism and world war - capitalism .The same "globalized" capitalism that exists today, and which is marching toward fascism and world war all over again. In the 1930s, there was another challenge for would-be revolutionaryartists : the obstacleof the mass
"Communist" parties which betrayedthem and workers and farmers around the world in the interests of the "Soviet" bureaucrats headed by Stalin, which same bureaucracy stifled and suffocated all art and creativityinside the USSR.The struggle of those artists, led by Andre Breton and Diego Rivera, and their direct collaboration with the Russian revolutionary leader in exile Leon Trotsky, has rich lessons for those artists of all kinds who are already beginning to reject and revolt against the "globalized" capitalism of today. As well as those who will do so tommorow.

A revolution in art and art in revolution
This book will give you a good understanding of the surrealist movement. You will read the artists' writings not only on this subject, but also their views on the important political questions of the day which they understood were tied to cultural questions. A photo display in the book gives you a sampling of surrealist works. There is also an excellent glossary of names that reveals the evolution of the surrealists in later years. You gain an appreciation for the international breadth of the movement. 'What is Surrealism?' is not just for art history students. Anyone wishing to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between art and politics will be fascinated by collection of articles in this book.

Can't say enough how interesting, easy-to-read this is
Well, what a shock. A totally human, big, fat tome on an art form that I've never enjoyed. Makes understandable and useful for one's own life the surrealists' aim of dissolving the alienating barriers between thought and action, dream and consciousness, art and life. Their appreciation of Freud; their collaboration with communists, with Leon Trotsky; their rejection of fatherland, religion, family - all flowing from their determination to be part of the birth of a new world in which there would be no poets because all would make poetry. Fascinating section of documents including a brief homage to Hopi art, denunciation of Salvador Dali for being pro-fascist, support to the Algerian independence fight. Still don't enjoy the surrealists' work. But do enjoy them now.

When some artists werent on the short leash they are on now
Today most artists seem to be on a short leash. I have friends who paint and sculpt and they don't even think about the fact that their art rarely reaches even middle class people let alone the working and farming majority. When something stirs them and they want to take action, they get afraid about their grants, their patrons, that artist in resident spot at a university, or that artist on a cruise, or on a rich person's art club trip to France or Egypt. They get scared to make a phone call or even write a letter because art in the US in particular is on strings to the rich.......................................................

Once it was different.Read this. I don't say follow surrealism, because it was just one school, born of another time, trying to surmount problems that only a socialist revolution and retransformation of society can solve.As a revolutionist as well as an artist--I have a MFA in Creative Writing and write fictional and poetry--what is remarkable about Breton is not his narrow precepts or methods, but about the militancy to which he tried to find truth and resonance and joy without surrendering to acceptance of bourgeois society..................................
The remarkable writings of Andre Breton, as gifted as a writer, as he was a painter, and more gifted as a thinker than he was either.After World War II US imperialism went to work to try to stifle the courage and outrageousness of people like Breton to channel art into the lack of statement of abstract expressionism.Surrealism is no more revolutionary than any other form of art.The most famous surrealist to most people today is Dali, who didn't mind Franco at all and tried to turn himself into an NY advertizing money maker.What is important about Breton, besides what he says about surrealism and art--and on those things I am no big judge--he was trying to find a way to fight for a free, fighting, critical, irreverant art, faced with the nauseating conservatism of formalism and the smothering idiocy of socialist realism?What was important about Breton is that in these writings and in the manifestos here signed by non surrealists like Leon Trotsky and Diego Rivera, Breton was fighting for more than his art?The quest to upturn (boulverser is better but not English) speak out of turn, penetrate, and speak openly that he developed in his art, in the 1930s and 1940s when most of this work was done, was connected with the struggle of artists to link up with the revolutionary struggle against imperialism, and at the same time, with the fight within the workers movement to free it self of the syphilis of Stalinism.
Buy this book.Read this book.Use this book to try to say what life really is. ... Read more

Book Description
This groundbreaking collection of thirteen original essays analyzes connections between film and two highly influential twentieth-century movements. The essays, which comment on specific films and deal with theoretical and topical questions, are framed by a documentary section that includes a photographic reproduction of the manuscript scenario for Robert Desnos's and Man Ray's L'Etoile de mer, and an introduction by the editor that provides a cogent working model for the difference between Dada and Surrealist perspectives. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Max Ernst Pioneer of Surrealism
For all those who want to learn about the position of Max Ernst within Surrealism this is an essential book. Scholarly essays by Werner Spies (arguably the foremost authority on Max Ernst) and William Camfield, who writes in fascinating detail about the transition period when the artist moved from Dada into Surrealism. The period comes alive with rare photographs and anecdotes about the struggles of Max Ernst to survive in Germany after the first world war and his efforts to reach Paris, the promised land. Max Ernst, a true pioneer of many of the art techniques taught nowadays in artschools, such as frottage and collage, is celebrated in this book with not only almost 200 colour plates of many of his masterpieces, but also many lesser known works which show how he constructed his collages. Added to this are inumerable black and white illustrations of the sources for many of his most famous paintings. As Max Ernst never wrote an autobiography,a book such as this is a must for all those who desire to know something more about the artist who is quoted on page 28 as saying "A painter is lost when he finds himself." An artist difficult to know, but this book goes a long way in bridging that gap. ... Read more

Book Description
The anarchic Dada movement is the subject of continuing interest among literary and cultural studies scholars as well as among theater professionals. In Dada and Surrealist Performance Annabelle Melzer describes the founding of the movement among the Zurich performance collective known as the Cabaret Voltaire -- including Tristan Tzara, Andre Breton, Louis Aragon, Francois Picabia, and Wassily Kandinksy -- and traces its scandalous history through the rift in the 1920s that separated Dada, with its dedication to political provocation, from the more contemplative Surrealism. ... Read more

Book Description
The character of Surrealism had been crystallizing over the previous five years when, in 1924, Andre Breton's Manifeste du Surralisme defined the word. As conceived in those early days it was not so much a formal movement as a spiritual orientation, embracing ethics and politics as well as the arts. Recourse to dreams, to the unconscious, to chance factors, to automatism dictated the Surrealist mode. Patrick Waldberg prefaces this collection of key documents with an overview of Surrealism from its beginnings to the present time. ... Read more

Book Description
"Dada Means Nothing!" So proclaimed Tristan Tzara, the movement's tireless publicist. Yet this did not prevent the most fanatical and talented artists ans writers across Europe from rushing to join its ranks. Anti-war, anti-art, anti-dada, from its beginnings in Zurich during the first World War the dadas swept aside the cultural, philosophical and political norms of their time. Utter disgust with a society that had created the war (and then expected to survive the peace) spurred them to ever greater demonstrations of revulsion and derision. Yet it was not all nihilism: many factions worked within the Dada Movement and it was Huelsenbeck's intention to embody most of them in the Dada Almanac. The largest collection of Dadaist texts ever assembled by the movement, it was originally published in 1920 in a mixture of French and German.

The Dada Almanac was truly international in scope, with substantial sections from the Swiss and French sections of the movement, it embodies Dada's failings as well as its sucesses, its excesses, its seriousness, its idiocy, but above all the anarchic vitality which made it such a vital precondition for so much that followed in the fields of art, literature and general cultural terrorism.

The editors of this first English translation have added dozens of other relevent texts, documents, portraits etc, as well as explaining contemporary references and events and providing biographies of the numerous personalities involved. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

This kind of nothing keeps us alive and full of truth
This collection is an absolute essential for all of humanity, but especially those as obsessed as I am with art, writing, passion, politics, love, hate, rage, calm, and the resulting dynamic ... Dadaism is truly truly truly a timeless movement that could never happen again and that is sad, but at least we have this almanac. This book is superb, truly. It isfundamental to the study of Dadaism, as essential as Breton's Manifestos of Surrealism is to surrealism. Buy this book, read it, allow yourself to literally fall into it, and you will indeed not be able to help the coming obsession with these colorful Dadaists!

The Dada Almanac
I am Enrolled in a class entitled "Film and Revolution."Thefirst movement we are learning about is Dada.This book gives a goodunderstanding of Dada.It also gives examples of Dada art, or anit-art asit it called.This is definitely a must for people wanting to learn ofDada. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A seminal and core contribution
'Dada' is an art movement of the 20th Century which challenged authority, hierarchy, and political control - making it a subversive force within the established art communities in Western Europe and America. In disturbing societal norms with respect to art and cultural production, it was the forerunner and midwife to such movements as punk rock and pop art, questioning all previous assumptions about originality, art, and the role of the artist. Dada maintained that everyone should be an artist and that almost anything could be classified as art. The result was an influence on the dominant culture with respect to radical groups, social movements, and artistic expression down to the present day. "DADA" by Rudolf Kuenzli provides an descriptive analysis within an historical context, examining Dada's impact and resonance in the art and culture of this opening decade of the 21st Century from the avant-garde work of such Dada luminaries as Hugo Ball, Marcel Duchamp, many Ray, Francis Picabia, Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Hoch, Kurt Schwitter, Max Ernst, Lajos Kassak, and many others. Enhanced with the inclusion of Artists' Biographies, Authors' Biographies, a bibliography and an index, "DADA" is a seminal and core contribution to professional, academic, and community library Art History reference collections and supplemental reading lists. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (1)

discovery
i recently purchased this book. its a great exploration of dada publications some in their first english translations. its amazing to me how these were really the way that artists could communicate and disseminate their ideas. some of the poems are really awesome. a great exploration of what dada was, found through their own work and writings. the communication between groups and artists in different cities that is explored is quite cool too. ... Read more