 UbuWeb | UbuWeb PapersDada Manifesto (March 1920 ) Francis Picabia
The Cubists want to cover Dada with snow; it may surprise you, but it is so, they want to
empty the snow out of their pipe on to Dada.
Are you sure? Perfectly, the facts speak for themselves from great grotesque mouths. They think that Dada wants to stop them in their hateful trade: selling pictures at a high price. Art is dearer than sausages, dearer than women, dearer than anything. Art is as easy to see as God (see Saint-Sulpice). Art is a pharmaceutical product for idiots. Tables turn, thanks to the spirits; pictures and other works of art are like strong- box-tables, the spirit is within them and gets more and more inspired as the prices rise in the salerooms. Comedy, comedy, comedy, comedy, comedy, dear friends. Dealers do not like painting, they know about the hidden spirit.... Buy reproductions of signed pictures. Don't be snobbish; having the same picture as your neighbour doesn't make you any less intelligent. No more fly-specks on the walls. There will be some, all the same, but not quite so many. Dada will certainly get more and more hated, for its wire-cutters allow it to cut processions singing " Come Darling ", what a sacrilege! Cubism represents total famine in ideas. They cubed primitive paintings, cubed Negro sculptures, cubed violins, cubed guitars, cubed picture magazines, cubed shit and girls' profiles and now they want to cube money!!! Dada, on the other hand, wants nothing, absolutely nothing, and what it does is to make the public say " We understand nothing, nothing, nothing ". "The Dadaists are nothing, nothing, nothing and they will surely succeed in nothing, nothing, nothing."
391, No. 12, Paris, March 1920
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