Jed Perl on the National Gallery of Art’s Dada show, from a subscription-only review in The New Republic:
Like so many atheists, the Dadaists were true believers of a sort. Late in life, when Arp was carving blocks of marble into classical forms that somehow still embodied a Dadaist’s doubts, he reminisced about the Dada years. “The important thing about Dada, it seems to me, is that the Dadaists despised what is commonly regarded as art, but put the whole universe on the lofty throne of art,” he wrote, “we declared that everything that comes into being or is made by man is art. Art can be evil, boring, wild, sweet, dangerous, euphonious, ugly, or a feast to the eyes. The whole earth is art. To draw well is art . . . . The nightingale is a great artist. Michelangelo’s Moses: Bravo! But at the sight of an inspired snow man, the Dadaist also cried bravo.” Put this way, the Dadaist creed is quite simply a celebration of the open-mindedness of the avant-garde, and most of the artists I know would agree with a good deal of what Arp has to say. Not the least of the strengths of Dickerman’s exhibition is that one may leave it believing that Arp, not Duchamp, is the essential Dadaist hero. Arp’s youthful Dadaist optimism puts Duchamp’s withering skepticism in its rightful place--not an entirely dishonorable place in twentieth-century art, but a very small place. Dada deserves better than Duchamp.
Via Brian Sholis.
You are making a mistake by so closely relating Marcel Duchamp to DADA, he worked with them put was never that much associated and definatly did not refer to himself as a dadaist. Marcel Duchamp thought up of many of his concepts single handedly and I place him in his own separate space in art history. The only reasons he is placed into dada is because it was the same exact time period and historians like to shove everything toghether, because he worked with some of the former dadaists or artists loosely tied to dada(i.e. Max ernst, Man RAY),because his work was shown in some of the dada magazines, and because his attitude resembled that of a dadaist. Marcel Duchamp was off doing his own thing, so if we are gunna argue about who holds the “DADA crown” or whatever, it doesnt make sense to throw Marcel Duchamp in there because he was an important artist of the time.
Comment by emil — 5/24/2007 @ 10:26 pm