âDada Is the Best Paying Concern of the Dayâ: Consumer Culture, Performativity, and the Avant-Garde in Romania

Alexandra Chiriac

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Chapter 9 âDada Is the Best Paying Concern of the Dayâ: Consumer Culture, Performativity, and the Avant-Garde in Romania

In: Cannibalizing the Canon

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Alexandra Chiriac

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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 190â217

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004526747_011

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Abstract

From Tristan Tzaraâs titular parodic affirmation to Marcel Duchampâs faux advertorials, the engagement of Dada with commerce and popular culture is often shown to be critical and satirical. Such a reading supports an exclusionary definition of the avant-garde, perceived as an âauthenticâ endeavour that critiques the mercantile and considers commercial artistic ventures as frivolous, theatrical acts. Similarly, the avant-garde credentials of artists active in Bucharest have often been questioned due to their connections to urban commodity culture. Instead, this essay reframes their interest as a gesture of resistance. Using a theoretical framework drawn from performance studies, the essay argues that embracing the performative and construing it as both transgressive and liminal can help to normalise marginalised forms of avant-garde artmaking. In the case of post-World War I Romania, nationalist discourse hailed rural areas as repositories of an âauthenticâ local culture in contrast to urban spaces inhabited in large proportion by ethnic minorities. Thus, when Marcel Iancu, Victor Brauner, M. H. Maxy and their avant-garde peers embraced the performative spaces of the city, from neon advertising to shop windows and the latest Hollywood cinematic productions, they were carving out a space in which they could exist as Jewish-Romanians. The Bucharest avant-gardeâs embrace of consumer culture and its theatrical potential functioned as a disruptive tool in the manner of Dada.

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Cannibalizing the Canon

Dada Techniques in East-Central Europe

Series:Â Avant-Garde Critical Studies, Volume: 42Â andÂ Avant-Garde Critical Studies, Volume: 42

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004526747

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 16 Jan 2024

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- Literature and Cultural Studies

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Chapter 9 âDada Is the Best Paying Concern of the Dayâ: Consumer Culture, Performativity, and the Avant-Garde in Romania

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Cannibalizing the Canon

Dada Techniques in East-Central Europe

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Chapter 9 âDada Is the Best Paying Concern of the Dayâ: Consumer Culture, Performativity, and the Avant-Garde in Romania