Home
sign up| reviews / editor art review |
 content by: editor |
 dada's boys
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Boys will be boys at Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket. As much an essay as an exhibition, Dada’s Boys, curated by David Hopkins of the University of Glasgow, suggests that Dada (the pre-WWI anti-art art “movement” which gave rise to Surrealism) may have inspired a lineage of ideas and attitudes on masculine identity over the last century.Focusing on the conversational nature of in-jokes, the exhibition is introduced by Duchamp’s Non-Dada, a small readymade denouncing conventional values like a note passed in the classroom. Oddly presented as a departure from Francis Picabia’s La Sainte Vierge (The Blessed Virgin), painted in 1920, is John Bock’s fantastically titled film, Porzellen Isoschizo Küchentat Des Neurodermitischen Brockenfalls Im Kaffeestrudel Und Das Alles Ganz Teur. Simultaneously hilarious and terrifying, it’s a rapidly edited caricature of male ineptitude in the kitchen, and one of the highlights of the show. Many works, including Paul McCarthy’s Cultural Soup, Martin Kippenberger’s Laughing Sack, and Matthew Barney’s CREMASTER 4 are given a fresh perspective by the premise of the exhibition, presenting a male condition of uncertainty in the wake of constantly redefined gender roles. Dada’s Boys is at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, until 16 July 06.
 comments
Read members' comments related to this art.
comment by droogg
Jun 15, 2006
Seeing Barney's Cremaster 4 in a neatly curated space of its own (complete with a vitrine exhibit of some unwearable costume from the piece) was a treat. Anticipating the journey of the 'roaming testicles' reminded me of stomach turning scenes I'd seen minutes earlier in MCarthy's mayonnaise aided film. Both truely debasing- flying in the face - of polite comment and participation. But is it dada? I'm not so sure, strongly influenced by Duchamp I understand, but not so anarchic as Tristan Tzara's poem-making or as playful as fluxus artists who I would say were more directly linked to dada's legacy. I'm just not sure that the curator's prescribed motives (like you say Shireen, more of an essay than a question or challenge) for the show work that well. I guess he did well to include so many egos, mind you, could smell awful tokenism with the inclusion of Lucas. Overall, quite confused by the experience.
|
 |
related info
 useful links
note: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
see also
art  art archive Watch artist interviews and see images from British exhibitions. |
send to a friend
access 1000s of articles