The Muse Who Wrote Poetry

As students, we are presented with poetry in the most complex forms, causing a sort of alert to go off every time poetry is approached.  Poets had structure, and parameters to stay within, and then the avant-guardists hit, throwing the perfect techniques utilized out the window and creating a lack of limitations as to what can be poetry, and who a poet was.  

Using different techniques led to different types of outcomes in the poems that were produced.  One poet in particular, Alice Prin, also known as Kiki de Montparnasse, wrote in a way that left every feeling on the paper.  She would write the thoughts that came to her, allowing them to flow out through the pen.  If she came across something she did not want to keep for the final product she would cross the line out, leaving it there for the viewer, but yet separating it.  

Man Ray in front of a portrait of Kiki

Kiki served as a muse to many, but her personal life is sometimes overshadowed by the magnetic effect she had on artists that surround her life.  She did paint, and wrote her own autobiography in her 20's that was published and read as a document of the sought after world she was so involved in.  As a poet, she is even less known, leaving the poetry she has written only in her published books.  For being such a sought after woman in the modern age, she has almost been forgotten outside of Man Ray. 

Sitting in a busy airport, I attempted to write in this way, leaving behind the exact forms that are given to us, and just writing everything down. (My homage to Kiki) I continuously crossed out the lines that I did not see to fit upon completion of it as I carried on writing.  The final product:

Portrat of Kiki by Man Ray

Sitting 

Cold hard ground

Just laying there beneath you----

Band of light in front

Crossing the tips of your toes

Waiting

The warmth is coming-----

A once upon a time

The crossover

Warmth without that. 

Light hits

Blinds---

This place I've never been 

Now

- Rashel, 2012

To Make A Dadaist Poem

Tristan Tzara wrote down technique instructions of how he believed to make a Dadaist poem.  This was also known as the cut-up technique, and goes simply as follows. 

Take a newspaper.


Take some scissors.


Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.


Cut out the article.


Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.


Shake gently.


Next take out each cutting one after the other.


Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.


The poem will resemble you.


And there you are--an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.

-Tristan Tzara

Now to actually do and create this seems rather simple, and as if it takes a lot less thought put in to the creation of a poem.  As Tzara says, you will have created a new "you". 

 Using a paragraph from scrap paper, lines were cut up, separating the intentional location of words from each other and placed in a cup.  After the shaking and dumping on the table the pieces were assembled in this way.

"From enthousiazein theory depicted him.  All man from GK. enthousiasmes-onument.  The monument features and racial a pen rather then the believe to.  Their claim is that the from the Stratford m cushion Enthusiasm in 1749 was substituted for the original, the original monument to "divine inspiration".  Shakespeare the theory is that according to the anti- or some other such aspire happiness as a commodity dealer.  Knowledge as a source."   -Rashel 2012

This may seem like a jumbled mess, but I invite you to read it aloud, for it most likely will not be completed by you without some sort of laughter, and realization that most falls in to place.  After the papers were poured from the cup, that was the moment of the mess, where I had to rearrange and make a conscious decision to move, turn, or leave them upside down.   It may appear as if there was no sense to the way they were laid out, but there is freedom in this.  

Communicative Action for the Masses

Propaganda: the word that comes off negative, but gathers many people behind it.  When it comes to art, propaganda has been used over all points in history for the massive support. Propaganda is the leading force to bring unity to groups of people, leading their beliefs down a certain desirable path through the use of images and word play. 

World War I: the words that created mass panic throughout Europe.  This conflict changed everything for the people who lived through it.  This is the discord that the Dadaist movement unfolded from.

When it evolved to the area of Berlin in 1920, there was still tension.  Those who started to produce art under the Dada name were reacting to the horrors that plagued their country.  As the political atmosphere was turning and different parties exploded in to the scenes of life, the artists evolved, using their works to enlighten and mock the power hungry. 

Gustav Klutsis and John Heartfield, took the technique of Photomontage and created a form of communicative action that he wanted to reach every class in Germany.  Together they created propaganda as a model for artistic purposes.  The word went from negative to being used to address public happenings aesthetically, and they were able to deliver a message to the public, leading them through a thought process that questioned the politicization. 

One of these images being: Adolf the Superman: Swallows Gold and Spouts Junk, which took a political photograph and transformed it to be a powerful form of mass communication.  In this image Heartfield covered Hitler’s chest with an x-ray image, replacing the heart with a swastika and the liver with an iron cross.  The title says just as much as the image he produced.  In 1932 when he created this photomontage, Hitler was quickly rising to power, and with that power came the contributions from the wealthy.  The Gold.  And all he gave back to them was the junk he spewed out. 

Produced originally for the AIZ magazine that Heartfield frequently collaborated with, this composition became widespread as a political poster for the leftist party.

Photomontage used as propaganda that was so influential, Heartfield was one of the first to be persecuted under the Nazi regime in 1933.

The creation of a label

http://www.matthewlangley.com/blog/?p=526

A name.  Everything obtains its name in different ways.  There are words that are universal, while other symbols change throughout each language it encompasses.  A name though, sticks.  A name defines and gives meaning to something.  And everything that is, must begin with a name.

Dada- said by most to have no meaning.

This art movement was short, but significant.  The name is necessary for the artists who took part in it, even though they all wanted to reject the idea of “movements”. 

Those who began what is known today as Dada Art within the Cabaret Voltaire, Hugo Ball, Emmy Hemmings, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco, Arthur Segal, Jean Arp, and Richard Huelsenbeck, all came together to disrupt the art school ways.  So came about this word Dada. 

Supposedly, Huelsenbeck and Ball came upon the word in a French-German dictionary. To Ball, it fit.  As noted in Huelsenbeck’s diary, “Dada is ‘yes, yes’ in Romanian, ‘rocking horse’ and ‘hobby horse’ in French.” “For Germans it is a sign of foolish naiveté, joy in procreation, and preoccupation with the baby carriage.”   

It covered each language those joined together had known.

Although saying it was found in a dictionary rather than just a couple syllables that rolled off someone’s tongue and everyone yelled, “THAT’S IT! We should call what we are spending all our days doing Dada!”, takes away from the charm of randomness.  But we should always remember that names have purpose.

Ball Manifesto on Dada

The Magic of a Word

This is about the experimentation behind the fire that sparked Dada. 

Dada is about freedom.  The freedom of the individual to express in the format they chose.  It is the escape from the structure and form that the society approved of.  Dada is nothing, but yet everything.  Dada is Dada.

Beginning.  There is always something to start and another thing that always begins to end.  There must be a want. There must be charge against what is there and begin to move forward.  To bring a sense of movement, and the subtle action of breaking away.  There is a moment of taking action and tearing apart those things that were the start and the things that you wanted to change.  To change.

Change. What comes after what was there before.  Although there is a movement towards selfishness and bringing everyone along the way, but there is also a means of them not deserving the actions.  Deserving the road that you are going down.  Independence.  Breaking away from the people not just for your sake in development, but their sake as well.   (carnage)

Progress, law, morality.  The foundation of the place where society stands, and where the limits are created.  The place where there are explanations for the rational senses of the world.  The irrationality is when there is a calling out of all of these in one subtle, or even overpowering rendition.  The expressions that can conclude that there is a time of beginning and change that is independent and separate from the other.

The point of just doing and going on is safer.  It is the place to begin.   The active simplicity of lacking extreme thought, but letting chance take over the moment.  Chance.  Art.  Keeping the independence and the lack of focus on one way, one form and one logical technique.  Create for yourself and the others will take and absorb for their own means and their own experiences.

 Tristan Tzara Dada Manifesto 1918