Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries (Oneworld Classics)

The famous manifestos that first appeared between 1916 and 1921 and would become the basic texts upon which Dada was based

Tristan Tzara—poet, literary iconoclast, and catalyst—was the founder of the Dada movement that began in Zürich during World War I. His ideas were inspired by his contempt for the bourgeois values and traditional attitudes toward art that existed at the time. For Tzara, art was both deadly serious and a game. The playfulness of Dada is evident in the manifestos collected here, both in Tzara's polemic—which often uses dadaist typography—as well as in the delightful doodles and drawings contributed by Francis Picabia. Also included are Tzara's Lampisteries, a series of articles that throw light on the various art forms contemporary to his own work. Post-war art had grown weary of the old certainties and the carnage they caused. Tzara was on the cutting edge at a time when art was becoming more subjective and abstract, and beginning to reject the reality of the mind for that of the senses.