ART-PRESENTATION: Dadaglobe Reconstructed

In Paris in late 1920, Tristan Tzara, poet and cofounder of Dada, drew up a proposal for “Dadaglobe”, an ambitious anthology that would document the movement’s diverse artistic and literary production. Dada had been launched 4 years earlier by in Zurich, as a critique of World War I, its militarism, nationalism, and authoritarianism and in defiance of traditional aesthetic values. With this volume (which he envisioned as being between 160 and 300 pages, in a edition of 10.000 copies, Tzara sought to capture what had become an international Avant-Garde, even as it was still unfolding.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: MoMA Archive

The exhibition “Dadaglobe Reconstructed” at MoMA in New York, reunites 100 works by 40 artists that were submitted to Tristan Tzara for his planned but unrealized 1921 anthology. Along with Francis Picabia, Tzara sent solicitation letters to 50 artists and writers in 10 countries, inviting them to contribute to “an important book”.  He requested 4 categories of works: photographic self-portraits, photographs of artworks, original drawings, and designs for book pages, along with prose, poetry, or other verbal inventions. While some artists submitted existing works, many created new ones for the volume, making “Dadaglobe” one of the period’s most generative catalysts for the production of new Dada works. Due to financial and interpersonal difficulties, Dadaglobe was never realized, and while many of the works submitted are well-known today, their origin in this project has long been forgotten. The exhibition is the result of 6 years of intensive archival research by Dada scholar Adrian Sudhalter that began with her examination of works in MoMA’s Collection, “Dadaglobe Reconstructed” resituates iconic works of Dada in the original circumstances of their making. Tzara retained most of the contributions to Dadaglobe during his lifetime, but following his death in 1963 they were dispersed in public and private collections worldwide. This exhibition reunites for the first time the photographs, drawings, photomontages, collages, and manuscripts that were sent to Tzara through the mail for reproduction on Dadaglobe’s pages, along with related archival material. The exhibition explores how artists recognized the potential of artwork in reproduction as a new artistic field, the cross-disciplinarity of their efforts, and their creation of works in dialogue with one another despite geopolitical boundaries, and demonstrates the resonance of those ideas today.

Info: Curators: Adrian Sudhalter and Samantha Friedman, The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, New York, Duration: 12/6-18/9/16, Days & Hours: Mon-Thu & Sat-Sun 10:30-17:30, Fri 10:30-20:00, www.moma.org