Dada: Art and anti-art

Written as it was by an early dadaist, this book is as much a historical record of the movement as it is a primary source. As an artist, and an actual participant in the movement, Richter understands dada from the inside-out; he "gets it" in a way that the art historian or art critic cannot. This book is a wonderful combination of autobiography, art theory, on-the-scene reportage, gossip column, and investigative reconstruction of the life and times of dada from someone who there--or near-there, or in contact with someone who was. Richter's account of dada has no doubt been a text that subsequent accounts have leaned on for facts. But Richter gives more than just the names, dates, and places--he conveys something of the spirit of dada, but does so with a certain critical detachment, the result of the passing of decades and his own orderly turn of mind. He writes, too, of Breton and the surrealists, who co-opted much of the best of what dada had been, while imposing upon it an unfortunate hierarchy of superstructure and orthodoxy of viewpoint. In this, as in all else, Richter does an admirable job of trying to maintain his objectivity, but he doesn't--nor should he have--completely suppressed his own judgments, including his rather scathing view of pop art and neo-dada, so-called. Generously illustrated (mostly in black-and-white), filled with lively anecdotes and vivid portrayals of memorable characters, such as Schwitters, this is quite simply a must-have book for those interested in dada. And the more interested you are in dada, the more you must have it. Both dada and this book.

This is one of the most important books of my life, and I know for a fact that I am far from alone in this. Richter taught me that it is not only possible to achieve something beautiful, but very easy; you simply have to actually want to. It is the first book I recommend, lend, or give to a friend; Bradley Chriss keeps extra copies on hand for those who need to read it; Warren Fry and David Beris Edwards have both been deeply inspired by it. What I was officially `taught' concerning Dada, and what I took for accurate for many years, was essentially that it was the cheeky use of the Readymade, and was basically synonymous with Marcel Duchamp. When I finally realised that there may have been something to it that I had missed, a particular image recurred to me, one that had been flipped past for not more than five seconds in a slideshow several years earlier, a man inside a large awkward cardboard costume, looking like a cross between the Tin Man, a stovepipe, and a lobster, with a very earnest, very direct, and at the same time very lost look on his face. It was most certainly not Marcel Duchamp. And I decided that there must be something else, and that I needed to track it down. Going to the bookstore, Chance--which that day vouchsafed to me its devious kind of (Anti-)trustworthiness--led me to Hans Richter. Richter was, in many ways, the most grounded of the core Dada group; among the least `absurd', the least polemic, and most importantly in his later role as scribe of the movement, the least histrionic and least given to post-mortem internecine strife. He was also, and perhaps for these very reasons, perhaps the nicest. The result is that Dada: Art and Anti-Art is not, like Ball's history, one of otherworldly mysticism; like Huelsenbeck's, one of political upheaval and ideological combat; like Tzara's version, one of impersonal destruction of all personal and social guarantors of subjective comfort; like Duchamp's, one of formal innovation or `artistic' concerns. Richter's history is the history of a group of friends, some of whom had never personally met, who galvanized that friendship into a force that profoundly transformed hundreds of lives, made all of those other histories thinkable and achievable, and in the process established the groundwork for a programme of joyous, deep-seated social revolt upon which we are still attempting build new ways of living; and, as Richter shows, they did this simply by actually caring. The most essential thing to be gleaned from Art and Anti-Art is not anything unique to Dada, it is the realisation that the Institution has somehow managed to dupe us all into thinking that we need it; Richter, in his generous, humble, unassuming way, taught me that a `movement' is not something that one assembles like an army of ready-made Heroes to launch on the grand battleground of Art History; it is the experience of a few dedicated friends who love nothing more than what they are doing, finding other dedicated friends

Takes a good look at the Dada artist's and their work. The author was involved in Dada and made many crucial Dada works. One of the most interesting aspects of this book is that it talks about the relationships between the people involved in Dada, but doesn't stray to far from what is important...the original works.

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In the interest of re-appropriating dada, read this book on the origins of the movement in Zurich at the Cabaret Voltaire. The Hanover period is less than compelling except for the brilliant Kurt Schwitters. His attempt to gatecrash the Club in Zurich led to marginal friendships with the progenitors - he was perceived as too bourgeois - and Schwitters went on to non-fame in exile in Britain, snubbed by the international art intelligentsia, which still denigrates his late work. Most interesting role? Hugo Ball, the impresario of the Cabaret Voltaire who championed the idea of the gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) then dropped out to live in the Ticino in Tolstoi-esque self-induced poverty. Greatest sub-narrative? The battle for the ownership of dada by the hangers-on.