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Indispensable for any library concerned with art, language, and theater in the early 20th century. -- Choice

"""Indispensable for any library concerned with art, language, and theater in the early 20th century.""--""Choice"

Huelsenbeck's chosen role for the literary-revolutionary Dada evenings at Cabaret Voltaire (see also Ball, above) was the reading of sound-poems with the inevitable refrain umba, umba and the beating of a drum (like Oskar from the Grass novel?). His absurdist collection of poetry Phantastische Gebete brought great distress to his mother, who no doubt could not understand what had come over her son the doctor. He liked to think of himself as the first existentialist and of Sartre, who has proclaimed Moi, je suis le nouveau dada, as an accredited follower. What distinguishes this moralist-cum-mischief-maker from the deeply philosophical Hugo Ball is the very evident pagan pleasure he takes in having annoyed the world, his enthusiasm for deeming and re-defining the spirit of Dada, and for promoting its values (epater le bourgeois) on both sides of the Atlantic. Huelsenbeck, who fled Germany after Hitler, obtained an American medical license thanks to the intervention of Albert Einstein and practiced psychoanalysis with Karen Horney. Many of the short essays here - including homage to Arp, Duchamp, Tinguely, Grosz and disrespect for co-founder Tzara - date from the '50's and '60's. Psychoanalytical Notes on Modern Art and Modern Art and Totalitarian Regimes are noteworthy pieces on the origins of aesthetic subjectivity and abstractionism. Insofar as it can be explained in the conventions of language ( You cannot and probably should not understand Dada. It will always remain a living part of the essentially inexplicable ), Huelsenbeck is the movement's foremost interpreter. (Kirkus Reviews)

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