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Title: dada, where art thou?
Review: In the interest of re-appropriating dada, read this book on the origins of the movement in Zurich at the Cabaret Voltaire. The Hanover period is less than compelling except for the brilliant Kurt Schwitters. His attempt to gatecrash the Club in Zurich led to marginal friendships with the progenitors - he was perceived as too bourgeois - and Schwitters went on to non-fame in exile in Britain, snubbed by the international art intelligentsia, which still denigrates his late work. Most interesting role? Hugo Ball, the impresario of the Cabaret Voltaire who championed the idea of the gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) then dropped out to live in the Ticino in Tolstoi-esque self-induced poverty. Greatest sub-narrative? The battle for the ownership of dada by the hangers-on.
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