The Artwork Caught by the Tail: Francis Picabia and Dada in Paris (October Books) 2010

490 Pages·1844·27.88 MB·Greek

by  George Baker

The Artwork Caught by the Tail
Francis Picabia and Dada in Paris
George Baker
An OCTOBER Book
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2007 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Baker, George (George Thomas), 1970-.
The artwork caught by the tail : Francis Picabia and Dada in Paris / George Baker,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-02618-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Dadaism—France—Paris. 2. Avant-garde (Aesthetics)—France—Paris—History—
20th century. 3. Picabia, Francis, 1879-1953. 1. Title.
NX456.5.D3B34 2007
709.04'062—dc22
2006036058
10 98765432 1
The Artwork Caught by the Tail
Thomas J. Bata Library
TRENT UNIVERSITY
PETERBOROUGH, ONTARIO
OCTOBER Books
George Baker, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh. Leah Dickerman, Hal Foster,
Denis Hollier, Rosalind Krauss, Annette Michelson, Mignon Nixon, Malcolm Turvey, editors
Broodthaers, edited by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh
A IDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism, edited by Douglas Crimp
Aberrations: An Essay on the Legend of Forms, byjurgis Baltrusaitis
Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille, by Denis Hollier
Painting as Model, by Yve-Alain Bois
The Destruction of Tilted Arc: Documents, edited by Clara Weyergraf-Serra and Martha Buskirk
The Woman in Question, edited by Parveen Adams and Elizabeth Cowie
Techniques oj the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, by Jonathan Crary
The Subjectivity Effect in Western Literary Tradition: Essays toward the Release of Shakespeare’s Will,
by Joel Fineman
Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture, by Slavoj Zizek
Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings ofNagisa Oshima, by Nagisa Oshima
The Optical Unconscious, by Rosalind E. Krauss
Gesture and Speech, by Andre Leroi-Gourhan
Compulsive Beauty, by Hal Foster
Continuous Project Altered Daily: The Writings of Robert Morris, by Robert Morris
Read My Desire: Lacan against the Historicists, byjoan Copjec
Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture, by Kristin Ross
Kant after Duchamp, by Thierry de Duve
The Duchamp Effect, edited by Martha Buskirk and Mignon Nixon
The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century, by Hal Foster
October: The Second Decade, 1986—1996, edited by Rosalind Krauss, Annette Michelson,
Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Hal Foster, Denis Hollier, and Silvia Kolbowski
Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp 1910-1941, by David Joselit
Caravaggio’s Secrets, by Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit
Scenes in a Library: Reading the Photograph in the Book, 1843—1875, by Carol Armstrong
Bachelors, by Rosalind Krauss
Neo-Avantgarde and Culture Industry: Essays on European and American Art from 1955 to 1975,
by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh
Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture, by Jonathan Crary
Leave Any Information at the Signal: Writings, Interviews, Bits, Pages, by Ed Ruscha
Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents, edited by Tom McDonough
Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-Avant-Garde, by Branden W. Joseph
Decoys and Disruptions: Selected Writings, 1975—2001, by Martha Rosier
Prosthetic Gods, by Hal Foster
Fantastic Reality: Louise Bourgeois and a Story of Modern Art, by Mignon Nixon
Women Artists at the Millennium, edited by Carol Armstrong and Catherine de Zegher
“The Beautiful Language of My Century”: Reinventing the Language of Contestation in Postwar
France, 1945-1968, by Tom McDonough
The Artwork Caught by the Tail: Francis Picabia and Dada in Paris, by George Baker

An eel, held by the tail, is not yet caught.
—Latin proverb
Contents
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: Universal Prostitution 1
1 Le saint des saints: Dada Drawing 31
2 The Artwork Caught by the Tail: Dada Painting 95
3 Keep Smiling: Dada Photography 159
4 Prolem sine matre creatam: Dada Abstraction 199
5 Intermission: Dada Cinema -89
Epilogue Long Live Daddy: A Dada Montage 339
Notes
455
Index
Acknowledgments
It has been ten years since I first began to research and write this book. This is a
long time. I sometimes find it hard to remember who I was when the writing be¬
gan, or, indeed, why it began at all. However, in recent years, I often considered
my work on this book entirely too hasty. I have fantasized that perhaps I should
hold on to the book for just a little longer, or that I might never publish it at all.
By this I meant not just to cover up its inevitable faults and weaknesses, but
somehow to ensure that the work it involved, and the love it encompassed, would
not end. The book had become a way of generating love, and also, debts beyond
measure. Publishing it at least represents an opportunity to acknowledge some of
these debts.
One origin of this book that 1 can remember lies with my dissertation. It
would have been inconceivable without the unique space provided by Colum¬
bia University in the 1990s for the study of modernism, modernity, and the
avant-garde. First and foremost, I thank my co-advisors at that time, Rosalind E.
Krauss and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh. The immense challenge of their work and
their intellectual generosity has been indispensable to my own formation as an
art historian, a critic, and a writer. Of course working with the two of them to¬
gether was a reasonably impossible task, given the chasm that separates their
views and approaches to the avant-garde. No situation could have been better for
a project, like this one, that deals with Dada.
My work on Dada, however, had its origins even earlier in a project under¬
taken while I was a Helena Rubinstein Fellow in the Independent Study Program
of the Whitney Museum of American Art. I am particularly grateful to both
Acknowledgments
Jonathan Crary and Hal Foster, with whom I worked while attending the ISP,
for the direction they provided at a crucial moment, and for the reconfigured vi¬
sions of art history they both advocated. Interactions with Ron Clark and Mary
Kelly were indispensable to the productivity of this moment for me.
But the origins of this project probably lie much further back in time. I
thus need to thank several mentors who pushed me at the earliest stages toward
my current work on the avant-garde and contemporary art. For the example of
her teaching and her manner of inhabiting the field, few art historians have been
more important to me than Linda Nochlin. Both Jonathan Weinberg and Maud
Lavin introduced me to the study of Dada—one wants to say initiated me into
it—and their example made working on modernism seem an important task in
the present. More recently, Kaja Silverman has become, first, the interlocutor
found in the darkness when one least expects it, and then, a close friend. Her les¬
sons and her laughter have transformed this book.
My work was made possible by a series of fellowships and grants. A bliss¬
ful period of research in France was facilitated by a Georges Lurcy Fellowship in
1997—1998; the initial writing was completed while I was the recipient of a
Chester Dale Fellowship from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts
in 1998-1999, and a Whiting Foundation Fellowship in 1999—2000. More re¬
cently, summer travel grants such as the Grant Family Foundation Research Fel¬
lowship and the Greenwood Fund from SUNY Purchase allowed for the
dissertation to be extended into a book, a process brought to completion by an¬
other blissful return to France in 2003-2004 as the recipient of a postdoctoral
fellowship from the Getty Research Institute.
In my editor at MIT Press, Roger Conover, this book has had on its side
one ot the great supporters today of the study of the avant-garde, and a connois¬
seur ol Dada. To Marc Lowenthal, Assistant Editor at the Press, I also owe thanks
for his regular prodding, and for sharing his intimate knowledge of Picabia’s
writings when this was needed most. The manuscript and my writing were much
improved by the labors of Judy Feldmann. It was a pleasure to work again with
Yasuyo Iguchi, to whom 1 am indebted tor the beautiful cover and book design.
XIV