The Cubists want to cover Dada with snow; that may surprise you but it is so, they want to empty the snow from their pipe and cover Dada like a blanket.
Are you sure about that?
Absolutely, the facts spill out from their grotesque mouths.
They think that Dada might put a stop to their odious trade: selling art for vast sums of money.
Art is worth more than sausages, more than women, more than everything.
Art can be seen as clearly as God! (see Saint-Sulpice).
Art is a drug for imbeciles.
The tables are turning thanks to the spirits: pictures and other works of art are like strong box-tables: the mind is locked inside and becomes more and more fantastic as sale-room prices rise.
Comedy, comedy, comedy, comedy, comedy, my dear friends.
Dealers don't like art, they know the mystery of the spirit.
Buy reproductions of signed works.
Don't be a snob, you are no less intelligent because your neighbour has the same as you.
No more fly shit on the walls.
There will be some in any case, obviously, but not quite so much.
Dada will certainly be increasingly vilified, its wire-cutters enabling it to cut through the procession singing 'Come on Darling' [a nineteenth-century popular song]. What sacrilege!!!
Cubism represents the dearth of ideas.
They have cubed primitive art, cubed Negro sculpture, cubed violins, cubed guitars, cubed comics, cubed shit and cubed the profiles of young women. Now they want to cube money!!!
As for Dada, it means nothing, nothing, nothing. It makes the public say 'We understand nothing, nothing, nothing.'
The Dadaists are nothing, nothing, nothing and they will certainly succeed in nothing, nothing, nothing.
We don’t feel obliged to build Pennsylvania Stations, skyscrapers, Handley Page Tract houses, turbo-compressors, and so on.
We didn’t create technology.
We didn’t create man.
BUT WE,
Artists yesterday
CONSTRUCTORS today,
1. WE PROCESSED
the human being
2. WE ORGANIZE
technology
1. WE DISCOVERED
2. PROPAGATE
3. CLEAN OUT
4. MERGE
PREVIOUSLY – Engineers relaxed with art
NOW - Artists relax with technology
WHAT’S NEEDED – IS NO REST
Who saw A WALL
Who saw JUST A PLANE -
EVERYONE ... AND NO ONE
Someone who had actually seen came and simply SHOWED:
the square
This means opening the eyes TO THE PLANE.
Who saw an ANGLE
Who saw an ARMATURE, SKETCH
EVERYONE ... AND NO ONE
Someone who had actually seen came and simply SHOWED:
A line
Who saw: an iron bridge
a dreadnought
a zeppelin
a helicopter
EVERYONE ... AND NO ONE.
We Came - the first working group of CONSTRUCTIVISTS -
ALEKSEI GAN, RODCHENKO, STEPANOVA
AND WE SIMPLY SAID: This is - today
Technology is - the mortal enemy of art.
TECHNOLOGY ...
We - are your first fighting and punitive force.
We are also your last slave-workers.
We are not dreamers from art who build in the imagination:
Aeroradiostations
Elevators and
Flaming cities
WE - ARE THE BEGINNING
OUR WORK IS TODAY:
A mug
A floor brush
Boots
A catalogue
And when a person in his laboratory set up
A square,
His radio carried it to all and sundry, to those who needed it and those who didn’t need it, and soon on all the 'ships of left art', sailing under red, black and white flags … everything all over, throughout, everything was covered in squares.
And yesterday, when one person in his laboratory set up
A line, grid, and point
His radio carried it to all and sundry, to those who needed it and those who didn’t need it, and soon, and especially on all the 'ships of left art' with the new title 'constructive', sailing under different flags ... everything all over ... everything throughout is being constructed of lines and grids. OF COURSE, the square existed previously, the line and the grid existed previously.
What's the deal.
Well it’s simply – THEY WERE POINTED OUT.
THEY WERE ANNOUNCED.
The square - 1915, the laboratory of MALEVICH
The line, grid, point - 1919, the laboratory of RODCHENKO
BUT - after this
The first working group of CONSTRUCTIVISTS (ALEKSEI GAN, RODCHENKO, STEPANOVA)
announced:
THE COMMUNIST EXPRESSION OF MATERIAL CONSTRUCTIONS and IRRECONCILABLE WAR AGAINST ART:
Everything came to a point, and 'new' constructivists jumped on the bandwagon, wrote 'constructive' poems, novels, paintings, and other such junk. Others, taken with our slogans, imagining themselves to be geniuses, designed elevators and radio posters, but they have forgotten that all attention should be concentrated on the experimental laboratories, which shows us
NEW
elements
routes
things
experiments.