DADA at MoMA |
||||
IntroductionDada sprang forth in Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, and Paris between 1916 and 1924. One of the most influential avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century, it was multifaceted and style-resistant, born in response to the disasters of World War I and an emerging modern media and machine culture. Dada artists led a creative revolution that boldly embraced and caustically criticized modernity itself. Pursuing innovative strategies of artmaking that included abstraction, chance procedures, collage, photomontage, readymades, performances, and media pranks, Dadaists created an abiding legacy for the century to come. Prior to the recent Dada exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 2006 (the first one in the institution’s history devoted exclusively to the movement), the Museum mounted several important exhibitions that investigated Dada among other subjects. The archival materials on display here elucidate the planning, organization, scholarship, installation, and reception of a few of these exhibitions. Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism (1936–37), Collage (1948), and Dada, Surrealism and Their Heritage (1968) were the most important manifestations of the Museum’s longstanding interest in Dada, although many other exhibitions examined the topic in some way. The varied positioning of Dada at the Museum over the years is revealed through significant acquisitions and installations as documented in unique archival material, including floor plans, installation photographs, checklists, and oral-history commentary. Coinciding with the launch of the Museum’s landmark publication Dada in the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art, this exhibition provides an overview of MoMA’s long and rich history of collecting, documenting, interpreting, and exhibiting Dada works. All items in this exhibition are in the Museum Archives, unless otherwise specified.
FANTASTIC ART, DADA, SURREALISMDecember 7, 1936–January 17, 1937Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, The Museum of Modern Art’s first exhibition to focus on Dada, was organized by founding director Alfred H. Barr, Jr., in 1936. It was the most comprehensive presentation of Dada works since the Dadaists’ own exhibitions. It was also the first to be organized by a nonparticipant and the first to present Dada as a historical movement. The exhibition was rife with controversy and provoked fierce reactions from battling factions among the Dadaists and the Surrealists. For example, Tristan Tzara, a leader of the Dada movement and one of the exhibition’s most important lenders, threatened to forbid Barr from exhibiting his loans when he learned that the exhibition’s title had been changed from The Fantastic in Art to include Surrealism and that the French Surrealist André Breton was to write the catalogue preface. For their part, Breton and French Surrealist poet Paul Éluard disapproved of the final format of the exhibition; they wanted it to be an official Surrealist “manifestation.” Critical response to the exhibition was mixed. In 1937, when the show circulated around the country, lender Katherine Dreier withdrew her artworks and feuded with Barr over his inclusion of works by children and “the insane,” and A. Conger Goodyear, President of the Museum’s board of trustees, requested that other items be removed. Travel notebook Summer 1936 [AHB, 9.E.2]Barr traveled in Europe with his wife, Margaret Scolari Barr, from May 18 to August 1, 1936, to secure works of art for the exhibition. This page includes notes on Barr’s visit to Jean Arp in Meudon, France. Letter Barr to George Grosz, May 11, 1936 [REG, Exh. #55] Letter Barr to Tzara, November 7, 1936 [REG, Exh. #55]
Letter Barr to Marcel Duchamp, February 1, 1937 [REG, Exh. #55] Letters Dreier to Barr, February 16 and 27, 1937 [REG, Exh. #55]  Newspaper clippings December 9 and 12, 1936 [ACG, v. 42]
“A Brief Guide to the Exhibition of Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism” [AHB, 10.A.71]
Itinerary [CE, II.1.59.1]
CollageSeptember 21–December 5, 1948The exhibition Collage, organized in 1948 by Margaret Miller, Research Associate in the Department of Painting and Sculpture, included an important representation of Dada works.
Checklist [WCS, II.3] Letter Miller to Katherine Dreier, October 3, 1947 [CUR, Exh. #385]
DADA, SURREALISM AND THEIR HERITAGEMarch 27–June 9, 1968The exhibition Dada, Surrealism and Their Heritage, organized by William S. Rubin, Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture, was the first comprehensive exhibition of these movements since Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, thirty years before. Notably, it explored not only Dada but also its impact on contemporary artmaking practice in the 1960s (the work of the “neo-Dadaists”).
Memo Alfred H. Barr, Jr., to Rubin, July 12, 1966 [AHB, 1.443] Press release May 31, 1968 [MoMA Library] Memo Rubin to René d’Harnoncourt, April 24, 1968, and sketches by d’Harnoncourt [CUR, Exh. #855]
News clipping “300 Hippies Protest at Opening of Modern Museum Dada Show,” New York Times, March 26, 1968 [CE, II.3.4.17] Memo Rubin to Bates Lowry, March 5, 1968 [WSR, box 6]
ACQUISITIONSThe Museum has made many important acquisitions of works from the Dada era, including the Paul Éluard Collection and the Dr. Camille D. Dausse Collection, both acquired in 1935. The Museum commissioned the Paris art dealer Jeanne Bucher to acquire the two collections of Dada and Surrealist materials for the Museum’s Library. Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., Chairman of the Museum’s Library Committee, provided the acquisition funds. The Katherine Dreier Bequest acquired in 1953 includes 102 works of art, of which over twenty are from the Dadaera. Marcel Duchamp, Dreier’s old friend and colleague, worked with Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Director of Museum Collections, to select which works came to the Museum. The Bulletin of The Museum of Modern Art May 1936, pages 4 and 5 Installation photograph [PA, IN538]
PERMANENT COLLECTION INSTALLATIONSIn 1964 the Museum reopened after a significant expansion, designed by architect and MoMA trustee Philip Johnson, and the new galleries allowed Alfred H. Barr, Jr., to undertake a permanent installation of work from the Museum’s collection for the first time. On the third floor, which held work from the later half of the collection installed roughly chronologically and according to style, he included sixteen works from the Dada period. The sequence of galleries began with two rooms titled Early Fantasts, the first of which contained works by Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Francis Picabia. After the second Early Fantasts gallery and a Surrealists gallery, visitors encountered a satellite space—half of which was identified as Dada—hung with works by Jean Arp, Duchamp, Max Ernst, George Grosz, and Kurt Schwitters.
Checklist [REG, Exh. #732] Information plan [MoMA Library]
Information plan [MoMA Library] Information plan [MoMA Library]
Excerpt from interview with Kirk Varnedoe December 13, 2001 [Oral History Project, Varnedoe, 2001]
Dada in the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art (2008), the ninth volume of the Museum’s series Studies in Modern Art, edited by Anne Umland, Curator, and Adrian Sudhalter, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture, with Scott Gerson, Assistant Paper Conservator, Department of Conservation. The volume includes a chronology by Michelle Elligott, Museum Archivist.
Acknowledgements
|
