From Fantasy to Structure: Dada and Neo-Classicism

Abstract

Works like Walrond’s Tropic Death, McKay’s Banjo, and Schuyler’s Black No More have a boisterous negativity which makes them not altogether remote from that pre-War moment of New York Dada and the forms of irony and black humour which Picabia and Duchamp had introduced into the American cultural scene. The invention of Dada proper, however, along with the discovery of its talismanic name, took place elsewhere, in Zurich. Switzerland’s neutrality made it a natural haven for artists and intellectuals seeking refuge from war-torn Europe; Zurich especially became ‘an island, isolated in the middle of a war’,1 an oasis of bourgeois normality from which to launch a critique of the reigning political madness. Here German intellectuals previously affiliated to Expressionism — Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Richard Huelsenbeck, Hans Arp — were joined by Romanians Marcel Janco and Tristan Tzara.