by Jon Lackman | 25 May 2010 | Books, Modern
In a recent issue of History of Photography (34:1), Jonathan P. Eburne reviews several recent books on surrealism and dada. He’s most taken with George Baker’s The Artwork Caught by the Tail: Francis Picabia and Dada in Paris:
Baker’s mannered yet often luminous [book] represents a major contribution to the study of avant-garde art … the project harbours ambitions that lie beyond the monographic … [It] unfolds around a central problematic first voiced by the poet Apollinaire, the project of ‘artists who want to become inhuman’ … What is ultimately most impressive about Baker’s book, in spite of its occasional excess, is its consistent pursuit of the conceptual work of the Dada movement … It is for this reason that Baker’s book will be of interest as much to scholars of photography as to theorists and specialists in other media … Baker unfolds what comes close to a unified field theory of Dada art.
