Surrealism. Nathalia Brodskaya

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      The appearance of Tzara in the home of Francis Picabia in Paris coincided with the start of an event staged by the Parisian Dadaists. Tzara’s experience of work in the Cabaret Voltaire instilled new energy into the plans of Breton and Soupault’s set. The first evening took place on January 23, 1920, in the hall of the Palais des Fêtes at the Porte Saint-Martin. The show included a reading by Breton of poems about artists, and a display of paintings by Léger, Gris and de Chirico. When Picabia’s pictures were shown to the public, their obscene content provoked a storm of indignation. The audience left the hall, and the organisers felt that Dadaist art had brought them closer together. They were very young, they regarded the audience with contempt, and they were openly aiming to destroy the rules and norms that had been inherited from the past. They usually got together at the home of Picabia, where they discussed their plans.

      The second public event took place in the Grand Palais on February 5. Tzara published a provocative announcement in the newspapers that Charlie Chaplin was going to be present, and this brought in the crowds. The Dadaist manifestos also sounded provocative when they were read aloud. “The audience reacted with fury”, Ribemont-Dessaignes later recalled. “The organisers of the evening had achieved their main objective. It was essential to incite hostility, even at the risk of being taken for utter fools.”[32] Someone accused them of promoting German propaganda. All the same, the owner of the Club du Faubourg in the Paris suburb of Puteaux offered the Dadaists his hall for the next event, which took place two days later on February 7. A naughty speech by Aragon incited a squabble between the anarchists and the socialists, which was brought to an end by Breton’s reading of Tristan Tzara’s “Dada Manifesto 1918”. Afterwards a demonstration was held in the People’s University in the suburb of Saint-Antoine. The following evening, on March 27, there was a musical and theatrical event at the Théâtre de l’Œuvre. There, Breton read aloud Picabia’s “Cannibal Manifesto”, which was a parody of the kind of patriotic orations which were used to encourage audiences in the rear. Picabia once again offended bourgeois taste with his ensemble painting. A furry stuffed animal, an ape, was attached to the canvas, surrounded by Picabia’s: Portrait of Cezanne, Portrait of Rembrandt, Portrait of Renoir and Still Life.

      Salvador Dalí, The Old Age of William Tell, 1931.

      Oil on canvas, 98 × 140 cm.

      Private Collection.

      A Dada festival was held two months later, on May 26, 1920, in the spacious Salle Gaveau on the Rue La Boétie. It was their most sensational event in Paris. There were music and sketches, and plays by Breton and Soupault were staged. The unusual dynamism of Dada shows in 1920 attracted new and younger disciples to their ranks, among whom were the poets Robert Desnos and Benjamin Peret, and the artist Serge Charchoune. The last sensational performance of 1920 was held in December. Picabia once again organised a provocative exhibition, and Jean Cocteau led a jazz band in which random performers played on random instruments. Tzara read out his manifesto with the instructions on how to compose poems. In 1920, Marcel Duchamp, whose works were shown under the pseudonym of Rrose Sélavy (in French, sounds like “Eros, c’est la vie”, in English, “Eros is life”), exhibited his famous L. H. O.O.Q., one of his Ready-Mades – a reproduction of the Mona Lisa to which the artist had added a beard and a moustache in pencil. It contained all the Dadaist denial of the classics and all their contempt for art in general. However, the excessive strain, the incredible rhythm of the performances, and the clashes among the incompatible personalities called for a breathing-space in their activity.

      The year 1921 was marked by a new outburst of Dadaist activity. The year started with the implementation of the “visits” project, conceived by Breton – a Dadaist parody of the traditional code of polite society in past times. However, the act near the church of Saint-Julien-le-pauvre virtually came to nothing on account of rain. Nor did the trial of the writer Maurice Barres have the success they expected of it. A tribunal chaired by Breton found him guilty of the nationalism and extremism of the war years. The song sung by Tristan Tzara, “Dada Song”, livened up the event.

      The song of a Dadaist

      Who had Dada at heart

      Overtired his motor

      Which had Dada at heart

      The lift was carrying a king

      Heavy fragile enormous

      He cut off his big right arm

      And sent it to the Pope in Rome

      This is why

      The lift

      No longer had Dada at heart

      Eat chocolate

      Wash your brain

      Dada

      Dada

      Drink water.[33]

      Toyen (Marie Cermínová), The Sleeper, 1937.

      Private Collection.

      More interesting still, in the context of the gestation of Surrealism, was the exhibition of Max Ernst which opened on May 2. Until then, the main figure from the visual arts that had made an appearance under the aegis of Dada was Picabia. Around that time, he was distancing himself more and more from Breton and Aragon’s company. Ernst was invited, to a large extent, out of a desire to play a joke on Picabia. They rented the bookshop Sans Pareil on the Rue Kleber for the exhibition. The invitation – the so-called “Pink Prospectus” – was couched in a half-nonsensical, derisive tone: “Entry is free, hands in pockets. The exit is guarded, painting under the arm.”[34] Everybody who mattered attended the viewing. One of the Dadaists, who had hidden himself in a cupboard, shouted out absurd phrases from inside it, along with the names of famous people: “Attention. Here is Isadora Duncan”, “Louis Vauxcelle, André Gide, van Dongen.” As it happened, both Gide and van Dongen were among those who attended. The stage was in the basement, all the lights were turned out, and heart-rending cries could be heard coming from a trap-door. …Breton struck matches, Ribemont-Dessaignes repeatedly shouted out the phrase “It’s dripping onto the skull”, Aragon meowed, Soupault played hide-and-seek with Tzara, while Peret and Charchoune spent the whole time shaking hands. As always, poems were read.

      Even Parisians who had seen many sights were surprised by the exhibition itself. Ernst showed the most varied pieces: there were “mechano-plastic” works inspired by mechanical forms, objects, painted canvasses and drawings. Ernst’s collages were fundamentally different from the collages in which the Cubists had already given lessons – they had a poetic quality and provoked numerous associations. Ernst gave inexplicable titles to his works – for example, the Little Eskimo Venus, The Slightly Ill Horse, Dada Degas – СКАЧАТЬ