Dada: Art and Anti-art by Hans Richter (review)

Books 71 'communication theories' are unconvincing to me. I believe that an artist through his art work transmits not his thoughts but a kind of vital shaking. Art is much more than 'language' or metaphor, for it contributes to communion among people, which is of the highest importance to society. I regret that Berleant has not recognized this role of art. Among the debris of all the hypotheses, Berleant presents his own. His notion of the 'aesthetic field' may be new, at least I find that I am sympathetic to it. It merges the artist (as well as the performer), the art object and the perceiver into one whole or field where the transaction of art takes place purely as experience. The elements of the 'field' are studied separately and I was especially interested in his views on the role of the artist, whom he obviously considers mainly from the outside. Contrary to Berleant, I believe an artist is neither a master ofknowledge nor is he 'the voice ofthe gods', he simply does his best; that for a perceiver to know the genesis and technique ofan art work is ofsecond importance, if not a 'surrogate', and that the artist is a little more than just a 'participant' in the aesthetic field. The author studies nine characteristics of the aesthetic field: active-reactive, qualitative, sensuous, immediate, intuitive, non-cognitive, unique, intrinsic and integral. But save for a few excellent paragraphs (pp. 112-113) that are exceptionally metaphorical and poetic, the art experience itself is rarely described and, indeed, is declared as undescribable (p. 139, quoting Santayana). It is a pity, for that was the substance for which I was longing. Perhaps such a supreme experience can be conveyed only by resort to a lyrical description ofillustrated examples. Berleant is conscious of the austere limitations he has imposed on himself. He confesses that he has given 'an analytic portrayal of what is perceptually unified and continuous' (p. 156). This will hardly satisfy artists and art lovers. Undoubtedly he has written an excellent book for aestheticians and their students. It has the merit of pointing out the existence of human aesthetic experience in such a way that one is led to think about it in what seems to me to be the right direction. Dada: Art and Anti-art. Hans Richter. Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1971. 246 pp., illus. $7.50. Reviewed by: Peter C. Marzio* For those of us who were born a decade or two after the Dada movement died, it is difficult to comprehend what the social fuss in artistic circles of the 1910's was all about. Why did it annoy critics to see unadorned toilets exhibited as works of fine art? Why didn't the traditionalists simply ignore Duchamp, Picabia, Cocteau, Ernst, Arp, and the other non-artists-just make believe they did not exist? The answer is the heart of Hans Richter's ebullient but well reasoned book. It is the kind of *Associate Curator of Prints, The National Museum of History and Technology, The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 20560, U.S.A. book that becomes more important with age. It was first published in the Fed. Rep. of Germany in 1964, then translated into English in 1965 and now it appears for a second showing. It deserves a long life. One obtains an insider's view of an international school of creativity. Hans Richter was an original member of Dada, so he has correctly assumed the job of zeroing-in on given events and providing a minute by minute account. He recreates specific environments and saves for us those too soon forgotten juxtapositions that are the heart of history. Who else but a person who was there could write: 'To understand the climate in which Dada began, it is necessary to recall how much freedom there was in Zurich, even during a world war. The Cabaret Voltaire played and raised hell at No.1, Spiegelgasse. Diagonally opposite, at No. 12, Spiegelgasse, the same narrow thoroughfare in which the Cabaret Voltaire mounted its nightly orgies of singing, poetry and dancing, lived Lenin. Radek, Lenin and Zinoviev were allowed complete liberty. I saw Lenin in the...