Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada and Everyday Modernity - A Cultural Biography - Hardcover

Gammel, I

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262072319 ISBN 13: 9780262072311

Publisher: MIT Press, 2002

Synopsis

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874?1927) is considered by many to be the first American dadaist as well as the mother of dada. An innovator in poetic form and an early creator of junk sculpture, "the Baroness" was best known for her sexually charged, often controversial performances. Some thought her merely crazed, others thought her a genius. The editor Margaret Anderson called her "perhaps the only figure of our generation who deserves the epithet extraordinary." Yet despite her great notoriety and influence, until recently her story and work have been little known outside the circle of modernist scholars.In Baroness Elsa, Irene Gammel traces the extraordinary life and work of this daring woman, viewing her in the context of female dada and the historical battles fought by women in the early twentieth century. Striding through the streets of Berlin, Munich, New York, and Paris wearing such adornments as a tomato-soup can bra, teaspoon earrings, and black lipstick, the Baroness erased the boundaries between life and art, between the everyday and the outrageous, between the creative and the dangerous. Her art objects were precursors to dada objects of the teens and twenties, her sound and visual poetry were far more daring than those of the male modernists of her time, and her performances prefigured feminist body art and performance art by nearly half a century.

About this title

Review:

"Irene Gammel's Baroness Elsa mounts an enthusiastic case for her as one of the great unsung modernists." Joy Press Village Voice "The Baroness could not have asked for a more thoughtful and engaged monument than Gammel's book." Holland Cotter New York Times "The Baroness could not have asked for a more thoughtful and engaged monument than Gammel's book... a dense, passionate book." Holland Cotter The New York Times Book Review

About the Author:

Irene Gammel is Professor of English at the University of Prince Edward Island.

About this edition

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0262072319
• ISBN 13: 9780262072311
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 472