This volume contains Tristan Tzara's famous manifestos, which first appeared between 1916 and 1921 and became essential texts of the modern movement and models for Breton's Surrealist manifestos. Art for Tzara was both deadly serious and a game, and the playfulness of his character is apparent not only in his polemic, which often uses dadaist typography, but in the delightful drawings contributed by Francis Picabia.In addition, this volume also contains Tzara's Lampisteries - articles that throw light on various art forms contemporary with his own work, at a time when art, weary of the old certainties, turned into subjective and often abstract forms, favouring the reality of the mind over that of the senses.

The Dada movement, revered as perhaps the purest form of cultural subversion and provocation in 20th-century Europe, has been a victim of the readiness with which cultural historians have swallowed its own propaganda. Based on extensive close analysis of French-language Dada work in its original form, and offering English translations throughout, this major reappraisal looks at a broad range of media and topics - including poetry, film, philosophy, and quantum physics - in order to get beyond Dada's typecasting as avant-garde anti-hero. Work by women writers and other marginalized figures combines with that of canonical Dadaists to present Dada in a radically new set of guises: poetic and textually subtle; intellectually and philosophically meaningful; peaceable and quasi-Buddhist; and, perhaps most uncomfortably of all, conformist and reactionary.

Anarchism and the Advent of Paris Dada sheds new light on Paris Dada's role in developing the anarchist and individualist philosophies that helped shape the cultural dialogue in France following the First World War. Drawing on such surviving documentation as correspondence, criticism, periodicals, pamphlets, and manifestoes, this book argues that, contrary to received wisdom, Dada was driven by a vision of social change through radical cultural upheaval. The first book-length study to interrogate the Paris Dadaists' complex and often contested position in the postwar groundswell of anarcho-individualism, Anarchism and the Advent of Paris Dada offers an unprecedented analysis of Paris Dada literature and art in relation to anarchism, and also revives a variety of little known anarcho-individualist texts and periodicals. In doing so, it reveals the general ideological diversity of the postwar French avant-garde and identifies its anarchist concerns; in addition, it challenges the accepted paradigm that postwar cultural politics were monolithically nationalist. By positioning Paris Dada in its anarchist context, this volume addresses a long-ignored lacuna in Dada scholarship and, more broadly, takes its place alongside the numerous studies that over the past two decades have problematized the politics of modern art, literature, and culture.

"Contains all of the poems of ... Tristan Tzara translated by ... Lee Harwood"--[page 4] of cover.

Chanson Dada contains all the poems of legendary Dada Poet Tristan Tzara (1896-1963) translated by English poet Lee Harwood. Begun in 1963 with Tzara's enthusiastic approval, the translations are selected from the full range of Tzara's published works, from those informed with the rebellious impulse towards absolute artistic freedom and the 'destruction' of formal language, to those concerned with the human act of struggle, and with political and moral affirmation. Also included is an introduction by Lee Harwood, a bibliography of Tzara's work, and Harwood's illuminating essay, dada/My Heart Belongs to Dada. Lee Harwood was born in 1939. He has spent most of the past 35 years living in Brighton, England. Over 20 volumes of his poetry and prose have been published to date, including his recent Collected Poems. His work is included in many anthologies and he is widely regarded as one of the finest poets working in England today. His translations of Tristan Tzara's poems, begun in the early 1960's, became a ten-year labor of love, the results of which have been bringing Tzara's poetry to life for English-language readers for over twenty years. Book jacket.

Written in 1920 or 1921 first performed on June 10, 1921, next and most famously performed July 6, 1923. Modus ponens: If the purpose of Dada in general and The Gas Heart in particular was to piss people off, then both, especially the latter, succeeded marvelously. The purpose of Dada in general and The Gas Heart in particular was to piss people off. Therefore, ...

Dada magazines made Dada what it was: diverse, non-hierarchical, transnational, and defiant of the most fundamental artistic conventions. This first volume entirely devoted to Dada periodicals retells the story of Dada by demonstrating the centrality of these graphically inventive, provocative periodicals: Dada, New York Dada, Dada Jok, and dozens more that began crossing enemy lines during World War I. The book includes magazines from well-known Dada cities like New York and Paris as well as Zagreb and Bucharest, and reveals that Dada continued to inspire art journals into the 1920s. Anchored in close material analysis within a historical and theoretical framework, Dada Magazines models a novel, multifaceted methodology for assessing many kinds of periodicals. The book traces how the Dadaists-Marcel Duchamp, Tristan Tzara, Dragan Aleksic, Hannah Höch, and many others-compiled, printed, distributed, and exchanged these publications. At the same time, it recognizes the journals as active agents that engendered the Dada network, and its thematic, chronological structure captures the constant exchanges that took place in this network. With in-depth scrutiny of these magazines-and 1970s “Dadazines” inspired by them-Dada Magazines is a vital source in the histories of art and design, periodical studies, and modernist studies.