Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries – Paperback

This volume contains Tristan Tzara’s famous manifestos which first appeared between 1916 and 1921 and which became basic texts of the modern movement and precursors and models for the surrealist manifestos that were to appear subsequently from Breton and his followers. Art for Tzara was both deadly serious and a game and the playfulness of his character is apparent not only in his polemic, often using dadaist typography, but in the delightful doodles and drawings contributed by his friend Francis Picabia. In addition to the seven manifestos, this volume also contains Tzara’s Lampisteries, articles that throw light on various art forms contemporary with his own work at the time when post-war art, weary of the old certainties and the holocaust that emerged from them, turned decisively into subjective and often abstract forms, exchanging the reality of the mind for that of the senses.