Cannibalizing the Canon

Oliver Botar is a Professor of Art History and Associate Director of the School of Art at the University of Manitoba. His research focuses on early 20th-century Central European Modernism, particularly the work of Moholy-Nagy, with concentrations on art in alternative media, and “Biocentrism” and Modernism in early-to-mid 20th-century art. Irina Denischenko is an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University. Her research focuses on 20th-century literature and visual art--especially the avant-garde, on critical theory, as well as on women’s contributions to avant-garde and modernist aesthetics in Central and Eastern Europe. Gábor Dobó is a research fellow at the Kassák Museum in Budapest. He is the principal investigator of a project focusing on the artist couple Lajos Kassák and Jolán Simon. In 2022, he was a Fulbright visiting scholar at Columbia University. Merse Pál Szeredi is department head at the Kassák Museum. His research focuses on Hungarian avant-garde art and the history of Lajos Kassák’s magazine Ma in Vienna between 1920 and 1925, with special emphasis on its international networks.

List of Illustrations

Notes on Contributors



Introduction: “Dada Is more than Dada”

 Oliver A. I. Botar, Irina Denischenko, Gábor Dobó and Merse Pál Szeredi



Part 1:Topographies



1 An Exchange Point in a Network: Prague and Dada, 1918–1922

 Jindrich Toman

2 Becoming Avant-Garde: Romanian Appropriations of Dada Techniques through East-Central European Networking

 Emanuel Modoc

3 Polish Responses to Dadaism: The Voices on Dada, Contacts and Interpretations

 Przemyslaw Strozek

4 The Dada Entr’acte of Dragan Aleksic

 Jasna Jovanov

5 Hungarian Dada: the Missing Link

 András Kappanyos



Part 2: In/Exclusions



6 Céline Arnauld, the “Nomadic” Avant-Garde Writer: a Transnational Approach to Her Life and Work

 Iulia Dondorici

7 Two Mysterious “Mademoiselles”: Jeanne Rigaud and Maria Cantarelli
 A Multilingual Multi-Layered Dada Pun Unravelled?

 Hubert van den Berg

8 Dada as an Avant-Garde Movement and as Invective

 Károly Kókai

9 “Dada Is the Best Paying Concern of the Day”: Consumer Culture, Performativity, and the Avant-Garde in Romania

 Alexandra Chiriac



Part 3: Performativities



10 Marcel Breuer and Dada Performance: Remade Readymade Self and Furniture

 Edit Tóth

11 Míra Holzbachová: Embodying the Avant-Garde

 Meghan Forbes

12 To Write with Dots or Not to Write at All? Dada Ideas in Polish Interwar Literature

 Michalina Kmiecik

13 Green Donkey Theatre: a Case Study on Theatrical Innovations in the Name of Dadaism

 Sára Bagdi and Judit Galácz



Part 4: Trans(pos)itions



14 The Genesis of Dada: Futurist Influences in Germany, Romania and at the Cabaret Voltaire

 Günter Berghaus

15 Revolt and Authority: From Kassák to Erdély
 Dada in the Hungarian Avant-Garde and Neo-Avant-Garde

 Éva Forgács

16 Dadá, not Dáda: Moholy-Nagy in Berlin, 1920–1921

 Oliver A. I. Botar

17 Words, Sounds, Images, Theories: the Authors of the Magazine IS in the Context of Dadaism

 Imre József Balázs

18 Self-Positioning in the International Avant-Garde: Kassák’s Strategic Use of Dada and Constructivism in the Book of New Artists

 Krisztina Zsófia Csaba



Part 5: Hybridentities



19 Raoul Hausmann and the Welteislehre: Science and Identity

 Arndt Niebisch

20 Dada Lingua Franca: The Linguistic Fate of Tristan Tzara and Raoul Hausmann

 Alexandru Bar and Michael White

21 Crossovers and Transgressions: Dada as a Life Strategy in Emil Szittya’s Works

 Magdolna Gucsa

22 Android, Cyborg, Dandy and Woman

 Representations of the Body in the Decadent and Dada Imaginations: The Hungarian and International Contexts

 Györgyi Földes

23 The New Man, According to Sándor Bortnyik

 Merse Pál Szeredi



Index