Anthologie dada (Dada 4-5)

Artist Christian Schad (German, 1894-1982)

Artist Jean Arp (French, 1886-1966)

Publisher Mouvement Dada, Zurich, 1919

Author Tristan Tzara (French (born Romania), 1896-1963)

Date1919

Dimensionsbook: 12 3/8 x 8 1/4 in. (314 x 209mm)
page: 11 7/16 x 7 11/16 in. (290 x 195mm)

MediumOriginal collage: newspaper, silver paper?, incorporating woodcut (Arp Original print: woodcut (Schad) Reproductions: collotypes? of woodcuts and lithographs; photolithographs of paintings and drawings Text: letterpress Paper: cream wove paper

ClassificationBooks

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number

1979.106

Not on View

Label TextThe Anthologie Dada, as befits its international smattering of contributors, was published in both a French and a German edition (this displayed copy being from the French edition) with some variants in text, language or presentation. This issue is the most lavishly produced of the Dada periodical series, with five original woodcuts by Arp, two by Raoul Hausmann, one each by H. Richter and M. Janco, three woodcuts by Christian Schad, two lithographs by Viking Eggeling, and illustrations of work by Picabia, Klee and others. This issue also included texts by Louis Aragon, Arp (poems from DIE WOLKENPUMPE), Andre Breton, Jean Cocteau, Francis Picabia, Tristan Tzara, and others. This very rare and important Dada periodical appeared at the height of the Dada movement in Zurich, before Tzara and Picabia left for Paris. This issue exhibits all the typically Dada characteristics of type design: sizes, slanting print, collages. This is one of 38 special copies signed by Tristan Tzara, with a special binding decorated with a collage by Jean Arp. Francis Picabia, peripatetic artist and provocateur dubbed by Dada poet Tristan Tzara “the anti-painter,” made this drawing for Anthologie Dada, issue 4/5 of the Zurich review Dada. It is a sort of wiring diagram for a Dada alarm clock plotting the historical flow of modern art’s current from Ingres and Corot via Dada artists in Paris, New York, and Zurich to Picabia. Picabia’s dysfunctional machine is a sardonic attack on history and on any effort to impose a rational and hierarchical order on Dada’s participants, sympathizers, false friends, and progenitors.Exhibition HistoryToledo Museum of Art, Dada, Feb. 2-Apr. 2, 2001.

Toledo Museum of Art, Between the Wars, Sept. 5-Dec.31, 2008.

Toledo Museum of Art, Pop Prints from the TMA Collection, Jul. 7-Oct. 8, 2006.

Toledo Museum of Art, The Great War: Art on the Frontline, Jul. 25-Oct. 19, 2014.

Toledo Museum of Art, Werner Pfeiffer Selects, Feb. 13-May 10, 2015.