New York Dada

Description

Marcel Duchamp edited this oversized leaflet, which features writing about the Dada movement by its founder, Tristian Tzara. The vibrant, halftone-printed cover depicts a perfume bottle with an image of Duchamp’s feminine alter ego Rrose Selavy affixed to the front. Entitled Belle Haleine, the perfume bottle is an example of an “assisted readymade,” a mass-produced object slightly altered by an artist, and elevated to the status of art through the artist’s designation. Although Dada’s activity was waning in Europe by 1921, World War I and the subsequent turmoil brought several artists associated with the movement to North America. Tzara’s text bestows a powerful “authorization” upon the growing artist population in New York, effectively blessing Dada’s global expansion. The publication also includes a reproduction of a Man Ray photograph depicting a nude woman, a comic by Rube Goldberg, and an advertisement for an exhibition of Kurt Schwitters’s work, among other Dadaist typography and hybrid literature. The large-scale glossy format parodies the style of visual advertising growing more common in New York magazines in the 1920s.

Medium

Two large sheets (wrapper printed in red on cream stock and insert printed on glossy white), folded twice, cover design featuring Belle Haleine by Duchamp; on the insert, several halftone printed photographs and illustrations in blue