Articles

Fall 2011

 

 

Letter from Europe
by Valery Oisteanu

From Dada to Surrealism:
Jewish Avant-Garde Artists From Romania
at the Jewish Historical Museum,
Amsterdam, through Oct. 2, 2011

The Roots and Echoes of the Avant Garde
in the Graphic Collections of
the Library of the Romanian Academy
Bucharest, Summer 2011

Surreal happenstance brought this writer to both Amsterdam and Bucharest this summer. My first visit was to the Dutch capital's Jewish Historical Museum, where an unusual exhibit was taking place. "From Dada to Surrealism: The Jewish Avant-Garde Artists From Romania" presented more than 70 works dating from 1910 to 1938.

I was curious to see this art, some of which had never been on display in the Netherlands, or anywhere outside Romania. Except for certain academics well versed in this subject, few know how or why Romanian culture nurtured leading Dadaists and Surrealists in art and literature.

It all began among artists and writers in Bucharest who were unified in a cosmopolitan anti-war, anti-inhumanity and anti-establishment movement. "Down with art, for it has prostituted itself!" raved the Romanian proto-Dadaists. In the beginning of the 20th century, these native literati were well informed about the writings of Arthur Rimbaud, Alfred Jarry and Guillaume Apollinaire. One of the first avant-garde magazines, Symbolul, edited by Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco and Ion Vinea, came out in 1912. They soon discovered and published the writer Urmuz, who was one of the key forerunners of Surrealism.

In Zurich, at the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916, the Dada insurrection began with a Romanian accent with the invention of a new style of performance called Simultaneism, in which masked performers put on dances and skits while reciting all at the same time. On March 30 that year, Richard Huelsenbeck, Tzara and Janco performed the first Simultaneist poem, "A General Is Looking to Rent a Room" performed in Romanian, French and German.

By 1919 the Dada diaspora had moved to Paris, where the Romanian gang was reunited with Constantin Brancusi and his circle of friends, who had arrived earlier, often on foot. Such are the barebones parameters of an artistic revolution.

"From Dada to Surrealism" is a scholarly exhibit that presents the viewer with the Jewish sensibility that was used to capture and translate the combined influences from Romanian folklore, Modernist sculpture and early avant-garde literature from abroad. The dynamic duo of Dr. Radu Stern (art historian/director of Museum Elysée, Lausanne, originally from Romania) and Edward van Voolen (rabbi/curator of the JHM/Portuguese Synagogue) have curated a multimedia presentation that gives us a fascinating look at an innocent moment in the development of "Integralism" (among other isms) at a time when revolutionary optimism and innovation flourished.

The masks by Janco, comprising the pivotal Dada-theater props from the Cabaret Voltaire, are my favorites. In the 1920s, Janco (1895-1984) and Victor Brauner (1903-1966) affirmed experimentalism in all forms, including abstraction, expressionism, picto-poetry, Surrealism and Constructivism. Nothing was too radical.

Also in this show, the art of Arthur Segal (1875-1944) represents the contribution of an earlier generation, the true originals of contemporary art. These works are early masterpieces of pointillist and cubist landscapes created in Berlin. Segal showed this work in Rotterdam and The Hague (1926), and later opened his studio in Berlin to younger artists. One of his students, Max Herman Maxy (1895-1971), who later became a teacher of the avant-garde, confronted "bourgeoisie taste" with his voluptuous cubist nudes.

Meanwhile, influenced by the poet Apollinaire, Tzara experimented with visual poetry, creating "Calligrams" (zincograph 1916/1959), where text becomes a cubist pictogram, and the linear ways of writing and reading this text are abandoned. For his part, Janco produced painting-collages and still lifes, using burlap, newspaper cut-ups, buttons and abstract color fields ("Le Poilu-Hairy," "The Front line Soldier & Throwing of Dice," both 1924), which today appear strikingly contemporary.

Victor Brauner's portraits of his close friends are the most revealing in the show. His rendition of the head of poet Sasa Pana floating in midair ("To my beloved S.P.," oil on canvas, 1930) is on the cover of the catalogue. "Portrait of Stefan Roll" (1928) depicts the contributor to the surrealist magazine UNU (One) and creator of the cubist "Dear Voronca" (1925), where the surface of the painting is "broken" into a series of colored areas and words. Other recurring motifs in Brauner's work include dragons and other fantastic animals and alchemical symbols, used to heighten the surreal dimension of his paintings and to emphasize his "autobiographical" dreams and repressed nightmares.

The works of Segal, M.H.Maxy, Brauner, Jules Perahim and Paul Paun are forgotten iconic masterpieces of the 20th century, predating more popularly known Italian Futurists, Russian Constructivists and German Expressionists.

What's most striking is how contemporary and fresh the portraits in this exhibit still look today. The conclusion of the curators is that Bucharest was an important epicenter of the avant-garde. Ironically, however, most of the artists left this Dada nursery and affirmed themselves in cities such as Paris, Zurich, London and New York.

By the 1930s and part of the '40s, nationalistic politics in Romania were against the avant-garde writers and artists who were pro-left or labeled "degenerate artists" by proto-fascist censors. Many were persecuted, and soon the communists declared them "Western putrefaction." Because of a long history of anti-Semitism, art historians shied away from publishing research on artists of Jewish origin. Finally, however, this surviving "surreal art" wins the chance to speak out again, emphasizing the importance of Bucharest to the European avant-garde and enabling the viewer to explore the relationship between Romanian-Jewish identity and the global radical art.

The other exhibit, in Bucharest, was entitled "The Roots and Echoes of the Avant Garde," culled from the permanent collection at the Library of the Romanian Academy and curated by Catalina Macovei and Mariuca Stanciu. Some of the graphic contributions were from recently donated collections (Prof. Stefan Baciu, Romanian-American avant-garde poet/historian), a treasure trove of 72 graphic artworks and paintings, 40 vintage books by Gherasim Luca and Gellu Naum, and rare "micrographie" — images created from text by Tzara.

The timeline here was longer than the exhibit in Amsterdam, with some works dating to the early 1970s. My favorites are "Nude" (1941) by Jean David, and bold, bright-colored aqua fortes by Brauner.

Several female artists such as Militza Petrascu, Margareta Sterian and Nina Arbore were assembled in a secret "reunion of largely unknown artworks." Also on display was a rare academic artifact, "40 Chansons et Dechansons" by Tzara as illustrated in a brilliant collaboration with Jacques Herold, reaffirming the deep connection between poetry and art.

The catalogue essay by art historian Dr. Magda Cirneci, "The Jews of the Romanian Avant Garde," balances theoretical regional/ethnic pride with factual demographic observations about the disproportionate number of Jews involved in the scene. Cirneci introduces the idea of the confluence of high standards in art among Jews as well as the influx into Bucharest of educated Jews from Transylvania and Moldavia at the beginning of the last century.

These twin shows have generated a high level of international conversation among several publications, along with the participation of art critics and academics from Paris, Amsterdam, Tel Aviv, Zurich and culminating in an International Conference held this summer at the University of Bucharest: "Romanian and Jewish Avant Garde in the Romanian Cultural Space."

"Finally, the "clouds of amnesia" are breaking up for the art lovers of new Europe, clouds that have covered the stellar achievements of Romanian avant-garde artists and poets for far too long.

 

Valery Oisteanu is a writer and artist with an international background. Born in Russia in 1943 and educated in Romania, he adopted Dada and Surrealism as philosophies of art and life. Immigrating to New York City in 1972, he has been writing in English for the past 33 years. Oisteanu is the author of 10 books of poetry, a book of short fiction and a book of essays: The Avant-Gods.

For the past 10 years he has worked as a columnist at New York Arts Magazine and as an art critic for Brooklyn Rail and www.artnet.com. He is also a contributing editor at www.artscape.com and a contributing writer for French, Spanish and Romanian art and literary magazines including La Page Blanche, Art.es, Balkon, Dilema, and Romania Literara.

As a performer Valery Oisteanu is well known to downtown New York City audiences, performing every season with the exception of the summer, when he goes on tour abroad. He is always well-received in theaters and clubs specializing in poetry and music where he presents original Zen Dada multi-media shows in his unmistakable style of "Jazzoetry."