« Fait à la main » – les femmes dadaïstes et les arts appliqués

Cet article postule que la récupération et la subversion des arts domestiques et des arts appliqués, transférée programmatiquement au domaine artistique, est une stratégie formelle persistante et sexiste qui suit la même trajectoire que les principaux développements conceptuels et technologiques des arts d’avant-garde. En se concentrant sur deux femmes dadaïstes, Sophie Taeuber et Hannah Höch, il affirme que les références à l’artisanat comme la couture ne se contentent pas de constituer une partie importante de leur œuvre mais apportent aussi une importante contribution à l’entreprise Dada. Par la suite, cet article les situe dans une histoire de l’art féminin qui met en valeur et transgresse aussi bien les genres esthétiques que les frontières du genre.This article proposes that the reclamation and subversion of applied and domestic arts, programmatically transferred into the domain of art, is a persistent gender-based formal strategy that runs alongside prevailing conceptual and technological developments in the avant-garde arts. It takes as its focus two Dada women, Sophie Taeuber and Hannah Höch, and argues that references to handicrafts such as needlework not only constitute an important part of their œuvre, but also make an important contribution to the Dada enterprise. It subsequently locates them within of a history of women’s art that highlights and transgresses both aesthetic genres and gender boundaries

Sex and the Cabaret: Dada’s Dancers

The photograph of Hugo Ball, dressed in cardboard costume and conical hat, reciting the sound poem Karawane at a Cabaret Voltaire soirée, before being carried off stage in quasi-religious paroxysm, has achieved iconic status in the history of Dada. It is a-if not the-quintessential image of Zurich Dada. Ball's image, reproduced countless times, embodies and mythologizes the Dada cabaret and its innovation of sound poetry. It is scarcely surprising that the photograph is treasured, granting as it does a glimpse into Dada performances that have become infamous but remain irretrievable

On Wanting the Moon: Avant-Garde Women and Ambition

This essay forms part of the catalogue to the exhibition 'Avant-Garde Women 1920-1940', held at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, 14 February - 28 May 2012. It considers the place of ambition in the life and work of eight avant-garde women artists

Sex and the Cabaret: Dada’s Dancers

The photograph of Hugo Ball, dressed in cardboard costume and conical hat, reciting the sound poem Karawane at a Cabaret Voltaire soirée, before being carried off stage in quasi-religious paroxysm, has achieved iconic status in the history of Dada. It is a-if not the-quintessential image of Zurich Dada. Ball's image, reproduced countless times, embodies and mythologizes the Dada cabaret and its innovation of sound poetry. It is scarcely surprising that the photograph is treasured, granting as it does a glimpse into Dada performances that have become infamous but remain irretrievable

Eric Robertson, Arp. Painter, Poet, Sculptor 2006.

Gertrude Stein's 1909 extended textual portrait of Picasso at once tries to capture the artist anew, as he has never been rendered before, and resists closure and flatness of meaning. It is multi-faceted, cubist, repetitive but never static, trying to arrive at the essence of the artist, but acknowledging the slipperiness of its objective. In writing a portrait, biography or monograph, the author's challenge is to apprehend a subject and to distil the themes and techniques of his/her life and work, but without reducing that person to a one-dimensional outline. This is especially difficult when the figure is well-known, or at least when some aspect or aspects of that figure are well-known. It is a challenge that Eric Robertson not only faces, but relishes, in Arp: Painter, Poet, Sculptor (Yale University Press, 2006). When he writes that Arp, "seems to have fostered his multiple identity with a quite deliberate disregard for the biographer's task" (p. 3), it is in a spirit of admiration rather than complaint

« Fait à la main » – les femmes dadaïstes et les arts appliqués

This article proposes that the reclamation and subversion of applied and domestic arts, programmatically transferred into the domain of art, is a persistent gender-based formal strategy that runs alongside prevailing conceptual and technological developments in the avant-garde arts. It takes as its focus two Dada women, Sophie Taeuber and Hannah Höch, and argues that references to handicrafts such as needlework not only constitute an important part of their œuvre, but also make an important contribution to the Dada enterprise. It subsequently locates them within of a history of women’s art that highlights and transgresses both aesthetic genres and gender boundaries