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Tate Modern Goes Dada

by Zoe Strimpel
Wed, 20 Feb 2008 at 2:03 PM

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Today the curtain rose on the Tate Modern's big spring show: a Modernist extravaganza of works by Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Francis Picabia, the founding fathers of Dadaism.

Critics have been delighted by the enormous show (more than 300 works), which spans the 20th century from the 1910s until 1976, when Man Ray, the last surviving of the three, died. The friendship among the artists is the exhibition's thematic glue — for although their work is different, Man Ray, Duchamp, and Picabia shared and encouraged a similar view of life, one that swore by a subversive, irreverent spirit. Irony, humor, and eroticism are present here in spades.

The show is arranged in loose chronological order, working its way through concepts including movement, photography, light and transparency, and verbal punnery in art and performance. There are films by each of the artists, the highlight being "Entr'acte" (1924), scripted by Picabia and featuring cameos from all of them.

There are icons aplenty, such as Duchamp's "Fountain," the urinal that the Times's art critic calls "the most influential artistic idea to emerge from the previous century"; his bicycle wheel balanced on a kitchen stool, and his "Large Glass." Man Ray's objects include "Cadeau," an upturned iron with little nails protruding, and "Obstruction," coat hangers made into a mobile, which sit alongside his rayographs (photos taken without a camera) and more famous photographs from the interwar years. Also here is Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2)," from 1912, which caused a storm when it first went on show in New York in 1913. Picabia's smutty, kitschy "Femmes au Bull-Dog" is a delight as well.

Surprise, surprise: The Tate has come up trumps again, and will undoubtedly profit from London's currently voracious appetite for all things art.

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