Overview

This rich, in-depth exploration of Dada’s roots in East-Central Europe is a vital addition to existing research on Dada and the avant-garde. Through deeply researched case studies and employing novel theoretical approaches, the volume rewrites the history of Dada as a story of cultural and political hybridity, border-crossings, transitions, and transgressions, across political, class and gender lines. Dismantling prevailing notions of Dada as a “Western” movement, the contributors to this volume present East-Central Europe as the locus of Dada activity and techniques. The articles explore how artists from the region pre-figured Dada as well as actively “cannibalized”, that is, reabsorbed and further hybridized, a range of avant-garde techniques, thus challenging “Western” cultural hegemony.

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9789004526730

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Reviews

“Avant-Garde Critical Studies (AGCS) is not only since decades one of the leading academic platforms devoted to research in and reflection on the twentieth-century artistic avant-garde but also the oldest scholarly forum specifically devoted to artistic avant-gardism in the widest sense. […] The first eleven volumes [of AGCS] could for long only be found on bookshelves in libraries. These volumes have now been made available in digital form. They offer a monumental panorama of early avant-garde studies and may still serve today as major resource with fundamental contributions by eminent avant-garde scholars. […] The goal of the series, as set out in issue zero in 1987 by Fernand Drijkoningen, was – and still is today – to serve as a platform to transcend ‘traditional boundaries between disciplines and nationalities’ with ‘an “open” character’. In line with this ambition, the single volumes from the early years of the series all have a profound multifaceted character. Each volume combines essays on different artistic disciplines, be it literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, design, music, performance and film.” - Hubert van den Berg, Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic

Author Information

Oliver Botar is a Professor of Art History and Associate Director of the School of Art at the University of Manitoba. His research focuses on early 20th-century Central European Modernism, particularly the work of Moholy-Nagy, with concentrations on art in alternative media, and “Biocentrism” and Modernism in early-to-mid 20th-century art. Irina Denischenko is an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University. Her research focuses on 20th-century literature and visual art--especially the avant-garde, on critical theory, as well as on women’s contributions to avant-garde and modernist aesthetics in Central and Eastern Europe. Gábor Dobó is a research fellow at the Kassák Museum in Budapest. He is the principal investigator of a project focusing on the artist couple Lajos Kassák and Jolán Simon. In 2022, he was a Fulbright visiting scholar at Columbia University. Merse Pál Szeredi is department head at the Kassák Museum. His research focuses on Hungarian avant-garde art and the history of Lajos Kassák’s magazine Ma in Vienna between 1920 and 1925, with special emphasis on its international networks.

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