Word: dada
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There was a time, long past, when modern art was thought dangerous. Its subversive reputation rested on two movements, Dada and surrealism. From them, most subsequent avant-gardes have sprung. Cubist paintings by Georges Braque now look about as threatening as a pastoral scene by Nicolas Poussin. But most of the "radical" gestures in these dying years of the avant-garde have emerged from Dada or surrealist precedents. The swarm of prototypes is so thick that when a Los Angeles body artist, a few years ago, created an "event" by shooting a pistol at a jet aircraft passing over Venice...
...Dadaists and surrealists were the last of the real avantgarde, not because they were "great" artists but because they were the last men to believe that art and poetry could change the objective conditions of life. Dada promised, in the words of its mercurial chatterbox poet, Tristan Tzara, "to destroy the drawers of the brain, and those of social organization; to sow demoralization everywhere." A surrealist declaration, issued in Paris in 1925, announced: "Surrealism ... is a means of total liberation of the mind and of everything resembling it. We are determined to create a revolution...
...huge, rambling, scholarly show on view at London's Hayward Gallery until the end of March. Containing about 1,000 items -paintings, sculpture, prints and drawings, objects, polemics, documents-it was organized by a team headed by the distinguished English art critic David Sylvester, under the title "Dada and Surrealism Reviewed." It attempts to treat Dada and surrealism on their own terms (those of dandyism, revolt, love, dream and myth) rather than judge them by official "painterly" standards. As a result the show goes further into the labyrinth than any retrospective for years on writers like Andre Breton, Paul...
During his twelve years as dictator, Bokassa has established a reputation for megalomania and incompetence that rivals that of Uganda's Idi Amin Dada. Incensed at the rising theft rate in Bangui, Bokassa in 1972 joined his troops in the public beating of 45 thieves in the capital's central square. Three died, and the brutally wounded survivors were put on display for six hours in the broiling sun. A year earlier, to celebrate Mother's Day, Bokassa ordered that all mothers in prison be released-and that all those who had been accused of matricide...
...appreciation was once a gut course-a simple matter of getting to know the styles and spellings of old masters. Modernism changed all that. Surrealism, Dada, cubism and, later, abstract expressionism, Pop, Op, minimalism and Happenings were too complex for simple appreciation. Edward Lucie-Smith, an English critic, attempts to pave a smooth, orderly path through this jungle of schools, styles, waves and blips. In Art Now (Morrow; 504 pages; $29.95) he efficiently gets the reader from abstract expressionism to superrealism. Like a package-tour guide, he hits the peaks and some of the troughs. The visual impact...