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Tzara, Tristan (1896-1963), French essayist and poet, born in Romania, known primarily as the founder of the Dada movement. First in Zürich, Switzerland, and later in Paris, Tzara wrote the movement's first manifestos, describing its nihilistic tenets. By 1930, however, he abandoned the pessimism and sterility of Dadaism and became interested in surrealism. He joined the French Resistance during World War II, and following the war he turned his poetic insight toward the more realistic problems of humankind.

Art

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. . . . We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.
Tristan Tzara (1896-1963), Rumanian-born French Dadaist. Dada 3, "Dada Manifesto 1918" (1918; repr. in The Dada Painters and Poets, ed. by Robert Motherwell, 1951).

Dada

DADA doubts everything. Dada is an armadillo. Everything is Dada, too. Beware of Dada. Anti-dadaism is a disease: selfkleptomania, man's normal condition, is DADA. But the real dadas are against DADA.
Tristan Tzara (1896-1963), Rumanian-born French Dadaist. "Dada Manifesto on Feeble Love and Bitter Love," sct. 7 (first published in La Vie des Lettres, no. 4, Paris, 1921; repr. in The Dada Painters and Poets, ed. by Robert Motherwell, 1951).

At a surrealist rally in the 1920s Tristan Tzara the man from nowhere proposed to create a poem on the spot by pulling words out of a hat. A riot ensued and wrecked the theater. Andre Breton expelled Tristan Tzara from the movement and grounded the cut-ups on the Freudian couch.

• Tristan Tzara, pseudonym of Sami Rosenstok, born at Moinesti,  Romania, in 1896, died in Paris in 1963. Poet and writer in the French language.  In 1917 he published the magazine _Dada_ and, in the third number, the first dadaist manifesto.
• sound poem track _The Holy Words Of Tristan Tzara_ MP3 (160k) by Jerome Rothenberg
• sound poem track _L'amiral Cherche Une Maison à Louer_ MP3 (192k) by Trio Exvoco
• translation: The Admiral Looks For A House To Rent
• written by Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco, Richard Huelsenbeck
• lecture _History Ends In Green Part 3_ MP3 (56k) - (89:42) by Terence McKenna (1993)
• "it's like a bugs bunny cartoon directed by Tristan Tzara..."
• subject matter in the book, _Lipstick Traces_   by Greil Marcus

first mention of Tristan Tzara in Usenet:

From: R. (rayt@heraclitus.UUCP)
Subject: Re: Art through Science
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Date: 1989-09-16 03:46:24 PST

In article <6433@hubcap.clemson.edu> Bill Wolfe writes:

[...]

>    To show this, let's consider one of the "hardest" cases: the painting,
>    sculpture, etc. which collectively is referred to as Art.  One might
>    think that there is no prospect for the evolution of these areas into
>    engineering discipline, or even into hard science.

[...]

>    Now why is it that we have trouble defining Art?  It is precisely
>    because we do not have a precise definition for the term "human".

Actually, artists are not so much concerned with defining art as BEING artists; that is, expressing their creativity through physical media (the world). Interestingly, much work HAS been done in the development of art as a science: it is called surrealism. See works and analyses by Andre Breton (especially), Louis Apollinaire, and Tristan Tzara (DADA) for a description of their efforts and objectives on the ideological plane. Dali (who is generally repudiated by the surrealists for `selling out' (in more than one sense), but nevertheless is the popularly conceived prototype), also is instructive insofar as one examines his ideas on `paranoia criticism'. A primary emphasis in this movement is to allowEVERYONE to become an artist by understanding, and willfully tapping, the wellsprings of artistic inspiration; which, from a practical point of view, involves the destruction of bourgeois mentality (or more concretely, the exaltation of desire and the freedom from sociological preconceptions of the possible and reality in general).

                                                        R.
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Ray Tigg                          |  Cognos Incorporated
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