André Breton: Dossier Dada

To the Dadaists, a successful provocation had little meaning in itself. Content was less important than audience reaction. And what really consummated a Dada event was indignant commentary in the press–so much so that some legendary works occurred exclusively in newspapers, which trustingly printed the Dadaists’ invented stories. Andrª Breton’s recently discovered, unpublished album, Dossier Dada tracks his own publicity and press coverage, an intrinsic part of his work, from 1916 to 1924. Breton, a central figure in the Dada movement and later the driving force behind the Surrealists, included not only newspaper and magazine articles in which he was mentioned but all of his own original documentation for the events covered–invitations, posters and letters. At 12 by 15 inches across and about 8 inches thick, the album is, among its other distinctions, the largest known Dada collage. The more manageable 80 pages reprinted here have been chosen to present an almost complete chronicle of the public pieces and publications of the Dadaists in Paris.