Baker, George (George Thomas), 1970-

The artwork caught by the tail : Francis Picabia and Dada in Paris / George Baker.

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, ©2007.

xvii, 476 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

"The artist Francis Picabia - notorious dandy, bon vivant, painter, poet, filmmaker, and polemicist - has emerged as the Dadaist with postmodern appeal, and one of the most enigmatic forces behind the enigma that was Dada. In this first book in English to focus on Picabia's work in Paris during the Dada years, art historian and critic George Baker reimagines Dada through Picabia's eyes."
"Such reimagining involves a new account of the readymade - Marcel Duchamp's anti-art invention, which opened fine art to mass culture and the commodity. But in Picabia's hands, Baker argues, the Dada readymade aimed to reinvent art rather than destroy it. Picabia's readymade opened art not just to the commodity, but to the larger world from which the commodity stems: the fluid sea of capital and money that transforms all objects and experiences in its wake. The book thus tells the story of a set of newly transformed artistic practices, claiming them for art history - and naming them - for the first time: Dada Drawing, Dada Painting, Dada Photography, Dada Abstraction, Dada Cinema, Dada Montage.
Along the way, Baker describes a series of nearly forgotten objects and events, from the almost lunatic range of the Paris Dada "manifestations" to Picabia's polemical writings; from a lost work by Picabia in the form of a hole (called, suggestively, The Young Girl) to his "painting" Cacodylic Eye, covered in autographs by luminaries ranging from Ezra Pound to Fatty Arbuckle." "Baker ends with readymades in prose: a vast interweaving of citations and quotations that converge to create a heated conversation among Picabia, Andri Breton, Tristan Tzara, James Joyce, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and others. Art history has never looked like this before. But then again, Dada has never looked like art history."--Jacket.

9780262026185 (hardcover ; alk. paper)
026202618X (hardcover ; alk. paper)

Picabia, Francis, 1879-1953.
Picabia Francis 1879-1953.
Picabia, Francis, 1879-1953 Criticism and interpretation.
Picabia, Francis.
Dadaism France Paris.
Avant-garde (Aesthetics) France Paris History 20th century.
Dadaïsme France Paris.
Avant-garde (Aesthetics)
Dadaism.
Dadaismus
Avantgarde
Avant-garde (Aesthetics) France Paris 20th century.
Dadaism (konst) Frankrike Paris 1900-talet.
Avantgarde (estetik) historia Frankrike Paris 1900-talet.
France Paris.

History.

October book.

Location: Library main 299980
Call No.: BIB 246130
Status: Available