Anthony Scott

Dada, Robert Hill and RoseLee Goldberg

     Author RoseLee Goldburg correlates a complex evolution of the performing arts in chapter three which highlights a focus on the term Dada. Like a cross bred grape vine producing a hybrid intertwined in a complex visual, much like the painting by Marcel Janco on page 59. This image Cabaret Voltaire (p. 50) was displayed at the peak of its short lived days of “only five months” (p. 63). One of the two founders of “Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in 1916”, Hugo Ball, during its peak wrote that it was becoming “a playground for crazy emotions.” (p. 56). The club filled with a variety of exiles through diaspora due to the war, where writers, poets, painters and artist expressed rejection to the bourgeois, thus forming an anti-art and cultural protest. As a result, perhaps inspired by some from past Expressionist and Futurist, and thus forming a hybrid termed Dada. Ball for one, quotes that his “strongest impression” of theatre was Frank Wedekind. (p. 51) Wedekind (noted by Goldburg on page 58 as “the German Expressionist”) was known for his “provocative performances” (p. 50), yet “Wedekind viewed with extreme disfavour any attempts to align his works with Expressionism”, as he claimed he used these “techniques” prior to its new popularity (p. 52). In addition, after “Ball and Huelsenbeck had coined…” “…Dada,” which “Ball said” “it is a sign for foolish naivete”, he gives favor for his later writings of “words-in-freedom” (p. 62) to Futurist Marinetti. During Ball’s tour with “the Flamingo” in Switzerland, he corresponded with “Marinetti, the leader of Futurist.”
(p. 55)

     This (cross-bred) combination of cultures, styles and expressions, branched off (the grape vine) which one may perhaps view as (hybrid) in some cases, with different approaches and agendas, internationally, and simultaneously in some cases. “Grosz and Heartfield” became “increasingly political”, Tzara, perhaps radically, continued his pursuit in his version of anthology, and Huelsenbeck left his involvement, perhaps beating his drum on the way, became a “psycho-analyst” (p. 63) which to me is not as crazy as the “anti-painter” Francis Picabia with “his drunken state”, a challenge to fight “Jack Johnson”, and “raving obscenities” in New York as his form of protest.
(p. 73)

     As I see it, the Cabaret Voltaire is perhaps the main stem of the (grape vine) in Goldburg’s chapter three as to the form of Dada, with newly formed hybrid branches and past events as a focus, I am intrigued with the 1919 “first live photomontage” produced by Erwin Piscator (p. 70). Only three years later, “August 1922” (p. 181) as written by author Robert Hill, Marcus Gravey’s photo on “Seventh avenue in Harlem” appeared. (p. 182) Gravey’s photo was not pulled off a complex collage, or cropped from Janco’s Cabaret Voltaire painting, yet an intertwined complexity was what Gravey’s photo, along with others, eventually represented as a whole. A population of “African Americans”, “foreign-born blacks from Cuba,” “Virgin Islands”, “Portuguese Atlantic islands”, “Cape Verde”, “Azores”, and a majority from “West Indians” to which lived in Harlem. (p. 195) In addition, unified internationally with other countries such as Jamaica and Ethiopia. As a whole, the visual effect may be a complex Dada form of representation, but let’s not take our focus off the ship in the “Black Atlantic”, for its cargo is cultural traditions and performance.