let's not and say we did...

[bridgit]

Poll question: let's not and say we did...

[swag]

1. I will see this exhibition, in DC, NY, or other (I'd prefer NGA in DC)

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060417&s=perl041706 (subscription required, unfortunately)

JED PERL ON ART

A Defense of Dada

Dadaism, the to-hell-with-art art movement that began in Zurich nearly a century ago, is the subject of a rivetingly lucid exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The show is nothing if not timely, for the visual arts are currently awash in Dadaist gestures and gambits of one variety or another. The contrast between Dadaism then and Dadaism now is going to unsettle a lot of assumptions about the nature of this movement that erupted in the midst of World War I, and about how the Dadaist gene pool--which contained nihilism and quietism, politicization and aestheticism, hyperpersonalization and depersonalization--has shaped the anything-goes sensibility of the present.

Marcel Duchamp, who is widely regarded as the coolest art dude of them all, shares billing in the National Gallery with artists of widely varying sensibilities. They range from George Grosz, whose acidic social satire has roots in the nineteenth century, to Hans Arp, whose wittily curving abstract forms are one of the twentieth century's sublimely clarifying visions. If the essential Dadaist impulse is a destabilizing one--a desire to unsettle conventions, artistic and otherwise--this exhibition forces us to consider how many forms destabilization can take, how many different meanings and implications it can have.

This exploration of Dada--which travels to the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the summer--takes a steady look at a group of artists who conceived of themselves as a moving target. Leah Dickerman, the curator at the National Gallery who orchestrated the immensely complex undertaking, has given the show a beautifully coherent structure. There are six sections that highlight activities in as many cities--Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris--and suggest a meandering but roughly chronological trajectory, running from events at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich during World War I to the movement's absorption or eclipse by Surrealism in the mid-1920s. This is, of course, a heterogeneous display. There are paintings, sculptures, collages, prints, drawings, photographs, found objects, and many of the wonderfully designed posters, broadsides, books, and magazines that have earned Dada its premier position in the development of a modern typographical style. There is also some attempt to recapture the sights and sounds of Dada theater and décor-- Sophie Taeuber's goofily geometricized marionettes for a 1918 production of an eighteenth-century play; and a partial reconstruction of the futuristically angled interior of Kurt Schwitters's ongoing environmental experiment, which he dubbed the Merzbau; and a smattering of audio effects that suggest the atmosphere in the cabarets and recital halls where the Dadaists took turns trying to antagonize or to bemuse or to seduce the public.

In Washington the show is pulling in younger museumgoers, who seem to enjoy strolling through galleries where the art is by turns easygoing, quizzical, and rambunctious. The Dadaist universe has a charmingly low-tech appeal, at least when compared with the computer-generated look of a lot of recent art. There is a mellowness about the way the Dadaists put the moves on the audience, and I have the impression that the college-age kids who are making their way through the show appreciate the nerd-next-door awkwardness of even some of Dada's most devious inventions. For museumgoers who are familiar with what the self-appointed grandchildren of the Dadaists have been up to of late--I am thinking of the deadeningly overproduced multimedia extravaganzas that Damien Hirst and Mike Kelley have mounted at the Gagosian Gallery in New York--one of the most striking things about this show is the modest scale of so much of the work and its schoolboy abashedness. It is hard not to warm to the cottage-industry aspect of the original Dadaists--though whenever I begin to appreciate the adorableness of one of Duchamp's Readymades, I feel the need to remind myself that charlatans have been known to operate out of cottages, too.

. . . more

[bridgit]

2. i really wanted to go see the exhibit at the national...

http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/index.shtm

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5191892

i have a non-theory, dada has no shelf life; but it is such that it becomes (to it's own chagrin perhaps) even more poignant in relation to the very sorts of governmental non-compliance to the basic tenants of a civil republic, and this bush kid has lent a brand new relevance to the irrelevancy of dada = that part i like, and antique notion onto which no handle can be fixed making more sense than a cowboy that cannot saddle a horse

excerpt: ---:(Omega Terminal, 1<):---

'“Yeah, that’s right, you just yuk it up, son of a bitch in your piss ant little blink of a gone-by country. You’re next, shit for brains! Just as soon as we can figure out how: to turn this damned thing around.” When broke into the ear, the wax of a security attaché; a whisper by half, “Don’t have that printed, son. The First Lady’s got me on some damn kind of ‘beta male scale’ or other. Says that I’m too bitchy in public. It’ll just make for serve’n cold soup every night of the week, son. From here on into: the depot. So help me out. Would’ya?” A line delivered from within plaintiff face, plaintiff tones.
“Yes, Sir. Not a word.”
“Good man. Ah shit! There it goes again! Son, I’ve got my hands full, here. Do your country a favor. Grab that stringy-black-bang, that noth’in right, yep, that’s it, right there; and stuff it back in that hole, straight to the middle, like you’ve done this all your life.”
“Actually, Mr. President…I have.”
“No shit?”
“Yes, sir…” grappling the Gordian.
“Hell, I like you ‘stem cell’ guys. I really do.”
“Well, sir.” The grunt, “It’s probably because…we’re so likable.” The groan.
“God, country, soft spot for Big Oil/Big Bizz…and a sense of humor too. Son, you’re an American Hero and you don’t even know it!” The Commander In Chief, watching his security attaché grapple dark-nothing nano moments prior to his being cast into the role of ‘witness’, sooner still: The Observer, as his attaché’ genome, his being…is being elongated, and made ‘otherly’…before the fact.
“Yes, sir…” stayed, within a mortal combat of grunt and groan, “My Grandma used to sing a song just like that to me…” his agents every chi pulled from within and then straight out the top of his head, The President Of The United States is made instead to gasp before a power un-tamed, “When I was little…” his plexus punched, “If I can remember the words…I could write them down…” and with a slurp, he too is gone.
“Dumb son of a bitch. What the hell did he think we were all up to anyhow?” Turning to his Chief of Staff, shaking his head. Along with a smirk.
“For the life of me, Mr. President, I really couldn’t say.” Pulling itinerary out from within a soft, tanned leather briefcase along with a smirk of/his/own. Having been elongated, slurped up when and now made bite-sized, personalized and in this process rend oh so very special; a security attaché no longer a threat or an asset to anyone, anywhere,

The Prez: he continue,

“Sure glad that we made’em…dumb-as-dirt. Half as proud.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Whelp, what’s next?”
“Sir, you’ve a photo-op. With Bola Sete.”
“Bowl-O, bowl-o. Peppy? What did you just say?”
“Mr. President. Brazil, is coming to see you and they’d like to get some snap-shots of you and they standing as near as close as is reasonably safe…sir.”
“They ain’t noth’in safe about this damn ‘thing’…Bowl-O…Seppy? Preppy?”
“Sir, the Brazilians are seeking contracted access to ‘the hole’. They’ve good use for ‘it’ throughout The Amazon and have ‘nick named’ it, sir. There’s a national infatuation with respect the ‘the hole’, spreading faster than cuts can be cleared. It’s really quite amazing. Children’s school lunch boxes with no bottoms. Garments with no: stitching. Soccer with no: fans and such. Policies complete and utterly void of: meaning or for that matter: purpose. And their Dadaists, well, they see ‘the hole’ as a maddening, randomly surgical, serendipitously portentous rebirth: of Dada itself.”
“What the fuck is that?”
“Dada?”
“Dummy up, Cornwall. You’re being paid to know my thoughts before I know them. Now get with the program.”
“Dada, it is none nor more than an antiquated Art Movement gone-by; meaning nothing to no one. Always was. Always is. And always will be, sir. Nothing, Mr. President, of any concern baring upon your agenda presently wobbling it’s way through congress, sir.”
“I think I like the sound of that. Did you know that I was going to think that I like the sound of that, Cornwall? Hmm?”
“Yes, Mr. President. I think that I did think that you were going to think that you would think that you like the sound of that.”
“I’m cut’n your pay-grade anyhow, Cornwall. Slippery Stanford party boy.”
“Yes, sir. Still though, Mr. President, it’s Spanish, more or less, more-more than less: Portuguese for: Eight Ball, sir. You know? The contentious little orb you will-need soon feel better: out from behind.”
“ME!”
“Mr. President, please. I merely mean to convey, in advance so as to say, the free-wheeling Brazilian Spirit Of The RainForest already en route from Ronald Wilson Reagan International Airport, Boston Tea Party, Flat Tax & Robber Barron Duty-Free Blast-Off & Saddle Soap/Cotton Candy & Jelly Bean Emporium…sir.”
“You left off…one title…me bucko. On purpose!” even The President Of The United States must if no less than from time to time…draw a narrow bead.
“Sir?”
“You just ain’t a good thinker, are you? Maybe I’ll crumple you up and get me some other jack-ass.”
“Mr. President, I um, sir, OH I KNOW WHAT IT IS! I remember. Very well, sir.”
“There you see? Tonight, you go home; and tell your children; then you tell your wife when y’all laying in bed, fun’n me for eat’n cold soup every night: that it took me to make you a good thinker of things today. Now. What? Is? The title?”
“….contra….” so said beneath the lash: of a bully puppet.
“That. Is. Co. Rect. My friend.”

The wryest of little moments; they do sometimes yield to a surrender marked with dimples and gentle, wagging faces filled with fingers…

“Sir…”
“That’s right.” Nodding along. Bringing it all: of the cow’ home to roost.
“Mr. President…” Though they, the so many at these echelon…flush with a blush? At: high noon? In: public? Humbug: be nearer the mark.
“Whose yer dad gum dada daddio now, Smart Ass?”'

---snip---


i think i may have posted this link to you previous http://www.toutfait.com it's just that i enjoy posting this link to you...and of course others :-) i'd seen components of your NYC itinerary posted some time ago; thank you, swag dearest, for having access to the freedom & liberty to live your life...

[Floogeldy]

3. Let's do and say we didn't.

:evilgrin:

[In_The_Wind]

4. Oh my.

:blush: