Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In 1916, as World War I raged around them, a group of bohemians gathered at a small cabaret in Zurich, Switzerland. After decorating the walls with art by Picasso and other avant-garde artists, they embarked on a series of extravagant performances. Three readers simultaneously recited a poem in three languages a monocle-wearing teenager performed a spell from New Zealand another young man sneered at the audience, snapping a whip as he intoned his Fantastic Prayers." One of the artists called these sessions both buffoonery and a requiem mass." Soon they would have a more evocative name: Dada.In Destruction Was My Beatrice , modernist scholar Jed Rasula presents the first narrative history of Dada, showing how this little-understood artistic phenomenon laid the foundation for culture as we know it today. Although the venue where Dada was born closed after only four months and its acolytes scattered, the idea of Dada quickly spread to New York, where it influenced artists like Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray to Berlin, where it inspired painters George Grosz and Hannah Höch and to Paris, where it dethroned previous avant-garde movements like Fauvism and Cubism while inspiring early Surrealists like André Breton, Louis Aragon, and Paul Éluard. The long tail of Dadaism, Rasula shows, can be traced even further, to artists as diverse as William S. Burroughs, Robert Rauschenberg, Marshall McLuhan, the Beatles, Monty Python, David Byrne, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, all of whom,along with untold others,owe a debt to the bizarre wartime escapades of the Dada vanguard.A globe-spanning narrative that resurrects some of the 20th century's most influential artistic figures, Destruction Was My Beatrice describes how Dada burst upon the world in the midst of total war,and how the effects of this explosion are still reverberating today.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction (p. ix)
• 1 Cabaret Voltaire (p. 1)
• 2 Magic Bishop and Mr. Aspirin (p. 29)
• 3 Fantastic Prayers (p. 47)
• 4 Dada Hurts (p. 65)
• 5 Merz (p. 87)
• 6 Spark Plugs (p. 111)
• 7 Last Loosening (p. 139)
• 8 A Need for Complications (p. 161)
• 9 Nothing, Nothing, Nothing (p. 179)
• 10 A Dostoyevsky Drama (p. 197)
• 11 New Life (p. 215)
• 12 Yes No (p. 245)
• 13 Truth or Myth? (p. 269)
• Afterword: The Afterlife of Dada (p. 301)
• Acknowledgments (p. 311)
• Notes (p. 313)
• Bibliographic Resources (p. 349)
• Index (p. 351)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

As Europe entered World War I and began an era of change and transition, the art world followed with the emergence of the Dada movement. Academic (Helen S. Lanier Distinguished Professor of English, Univ. of Georgia) and poet (Tabula Rasula) Rasula follows the lives of the founders of Dada starting with their innovative performances at Zurich's Cabaret Voltaire in the 1910s. Although dense at times, the volume truly covers all aspects of Dada culture from its birth to its bitter end. We follow writer and "Dada Manifesto" author Hugo Ball; his wife, poet and performer Emmy -Jennings; performance artist and essayist Tristan Tzara; and German poet and drummer Richard Huelsenbeck; as well as many other prominent Dadaists. This comprehensive study covers everything from the irreverence of the art and performances to fights among key players. Dada was a global phenomenon that revolutionized art history and the emergence of early modern art. -VERDICT Readers interested in the history of modern art will enjoy this detailed look into the rise and fall of Dada.-Rebecca Kluberdanz, GB65 Lib., New York © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

The Dada movement began in Zurich in 1916 and essentially collapsed in Paris in 1923, but its lasting worldwide influence was profound. Rasula examines the events leading up to the initial 1916 collaborative performance at Cabaret Voltaire, the seven years in which Dada flourished, and the movement's persistent afterlife. The story of Dada is dizzying: it encompasses an enormous cast of characters, locales, and competing philosophies (and anti-philosophies). Rasula shows how the movement arose in the prewar atmosphere of Zurich when young artists including Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco, Hans Arp, and Richard Hulsenbeck attended the cabaret and found they shared an avant-garde spirit. Rasula's focus on Francis Picabia and Kurt Schwitters covers new ground in addition to illustrating how well-known artists such as Man Ray, Max Ernst, and Marcel Duchamp fit into the collective movement. The book is also a fascinating history of place, as it traces the spread of Dada from the cabarets of Switzerland to the cafes of Paris, art fairs of Berlin, and galleries of New York. Perhaps befitting the Dada style, Rasula's narrative jumps around a lot, and the shifts in time and story lines can be somewhat difficult to follow. This accessible yet rigorous and comprehensive study outlines the history of a movement whose irreverence and inventiveness still influence our world today. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

CHOICE Review

The Dada movement thrived on its ability to shock and to stand as a negation of accepted artistic norms. Born partly of the dejection spawned by WW I, it reached fruition in the 1920s with the work of such figures as Tristan Tzara, Hugo Ball, Georg Grosz, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and Francis Picabia. The art of improvisation, photomontage, collage, stage productions that insulted the audience, simultaneous poetry readings, assembly-line art, "ready-mades," Duchamp's signed urinal, and disdain for juries and dealers all contributed to its scandalous reputation. Rasula (English, Univ. of Georgia), a scholar of modernist literature, deftly advances a comprehensive picture of Dada's colorful personalities and their ambitious projects. While the chronicling of countless "provocations" and shenanigans can occasionally prove wearisome, and more could have been said about related movements like surrealism and constructivism (as well as Dada's pre-1914 antecedents), Rasula succeeds admirably in capturing that sense of creative "irreverence" that would resonate far into the 20th century with performers like The Beatles and urban graffiti "artists." Overall, a lively introduction to Dada that will appeal to a wide readership. Limited number of illustrations. Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels. --William S. Rodner, Tidewater Community College

Kirkus Book Review

Rasula (English/Univ. of Georgia; Modernism and Poetic Inspiration, 2009, etc.) follows an uprising of disaffected artists who burned through Europe during and after World War I, incinerating old ideas of art and literature and making way for new forms. Dada was born in 1916, when Hugo Ball, fleeing the war in Germany, opened Cabaret Voltaire, where he and a cadre of creative thinkers, performers, and artists staged avant-garde poetry read by three speakers simultaneously, dancers in primitive masks, nonsensical songs, and recitations in deconstructed language. The core group of performersBall, singer Emmy Hennings, Rumanian poet Tristan Tzara, German poet Richard Huelsenbeck, and French artist Hans Arpderided conventionality and complacency. They named this "anti-art" movement that wasn't a movement Dada. The word has many different meanings; the one that seemed to please them most was "the tail of a sacred cow for an African tribe." Attracting other artists along the way, Dada moved through Zurich, Berlin, Munich, and Paris, also touching down in New York City. Participants embraced the irrational, absurd, satirical, primitive, and provocative in performances, exhibits, and publications. Rasula gives a sense of the fluidity and magnitude of the art that passed through Dada's portalse.g., Marcel Duchamp's urinal, Fountain; Otto Dix's searing Forty-Five Percent Able-Bodied, which was later included in the 1937 Nazi "degenerate art" exhibition; Francis Picabia's "mechanomorphic" drawings and paintings, and Kurt Schwitters' collages from trash and found objects. This comprehensive study of artists, exhibits, writings, and events is a heady trip, but the cataloging fails to fully capture the audacity and energetic force of Dada. With its photomontages, aggressive graphics, performance art, and use of text and objects in art, Dada left a mark on surrealism, modern art, and pop culture. When factions tried to give Dada more structure, it began to fade. As Tzara said, "The true dadas are against DADA." A well-researched survey that shows the scope of Dada and its influence on the art world. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Jed Rasula is the Helen S. Lanier Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Georgia. The author of several scholarly works on literature and modernism, as well as two books of poetry, he lives in Athens, Georgia.