I thought readers of the Art Libraries Society Discussion List might be
interested in this book. For more information, please visit
http://mitpress.mit.edu/0262072319/ Thank you!

Best,
David

Baroness Elsa
Gender, Dada, and Everyday Modernity, a Cultural Biography
Irene Gammel

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927) is considered by many to be the
first American dadaist as well as the mother of dada. An innovator in poetic
form and an early creator of junk sculpture, "the Baroness" was best known
for her sexually charged, often controversial performances. Some thought her
merely crazed, others thought her a genius. The editor Margaret Anderson
called her "perhaps the only figure of our generation who deserves the
epithet extraordinary." Yet despite her great notoriety and influence, until
recently her story and work have been little known outside the circle of
modernist scholars.

In Baroness Elsa, Irene Gammel traces the extraordinary life and work of this
daring woman, viewing her in the context of female dada and the historical
battles fought by women in the early twentieth century. Striding through the
streets of Berlin, Munich, New York, and Paris wearing such adornments as a
tomato-soup can bra, teaspoon earrings, and black lipstick, the Baroness
erased the boundaries between life and art, between the everyday and the
outrageous, between the creative and the dangerous. Her art objects were
precursors to dada objects of the teens and twenties, her sound and visual
poetry were far more daring than those of the male modernists of her time,
and her performances prefigured feminist body art and performance art by
nearly half a century.

Irene Gammel is Professor of English at the University of Prince Edward
Island.


7 x 9, 472 pp., 90 illus., 16 color, cloth ISBN 0-262-07231-9

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