dada - book - 2006 - Dada East: The Romanians of Cabaret Voltaire

Dada East: The Romanians of Cabaret Voltaire
Tom Sandqvist
The MIT Press
2006
434 pages

Dada, the group of WWI-era anarchistic anti-artists was, in essence, an international art movement when so many other modernist movements were based in a specific country (and often a particular city/region), and it was the shock of the first world war that induced the waves of migration that led to the coalescence of the Dada movement in a neutral European centre.

Many of the original members of the Dada movement in Zurich were from Romania, including the Janco brothers (Marcel, Georges, and Jules) Arthur Segal, and Tristan Tzara (one of the movement's core members).  These individuals were highly involved in the formation of Dada (Marcel Janco constructed masks for the group’s performances), Tzara made numerous innovations on performance, bringing a sense of chaos and absurd humor to the performance events he led.  These artists that Sandqvist (a professor of art history at the University College of Arts, Crafts, and Design in Stockholm Sweden) takes as his focus.


 

Many of the great Romanian artists of the modernist period, such as Constantin Brancusi, are known to us because they made their career in Western Europe, and this includes the Romanians of the Dada movement.  The relevance of Sandqvist’s book is not simply that he focuses on some of the members of the movement that have largely been pushed to the margins by history (such as the Janco’s) but also that he investigates the cultural influences that played upon the Dadaists before they ever left their home.  An already vibrant Romanian avant-garde scene had a heavy influence upon the young artists, as did the culture of the Jewish communities these artists grew up in.  Sandqvist’s text includes lots of information about this overlooked aspect of the Dada movement, and lots of images of Urban Romania circa 1910s.