Lucy Byford
Published: 21 January 2019
‘Staging the Carnivalesque: Subversive Strategies in Print Culture and Performance from Simplicissimus to Dada’
University of Edinburgh
‘Staging the Carnivalesque: Subversive Strategies in Print Culture and Performance from Simplicissimus to Dada’
By viewing the incorporation of ‘carnivalesque’ elements across pre- and post-WWI performance, print culture, and graphic art as a strategy for the ridicule of Prussian, governmental or ecclesiastical authority, engaged by common players, the study problematises art historical narratives that identify a rupture between satirical fin-de-siècle culture and the radicalised, post-war Dada movement in Berlin. Through close analysis of the ways in which the group’s interests extended to an older German generation they ostensibly rejected, the thesis aims to demonstrate how the Berlin Dadaists in fact employed many of the same motifs and broadcast strategies as their satirical predecessors, such as the Munich-based political cabaret act, the Elf Scharfrichter (Eleven Executioners).
The project scrutinises intergenerational creative networks, using archival material to cross-reference avant-garde locales in Berlin and Munich and thus illuminate overlooked connections between Munich’s fin-de-siècle magazines, such as Jugend and Simplicissimus, the Dada members and their affiliates, and popular comedy.
First published: 21 January 2019