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Sophie Taeuber-Arp and "Lockdown Dada Dance" at Kunstmuseum Basel


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This could also be, with some reservations, the cheerful video of the day. Kunstmuseum Basel has used the puppets of Sophie Taeuber-Arp's King Stag Dance, a work of "sharp, bright pointed gestures" (Hugo Ball) to create a new piece by Anita Hugi and Patrick Lindenmaier for the Taeuber-Arp exhibition. King Stag Dance originally premiered at the Gallerie Dada in 1917 and had only three performances, in part due to Spanish flu restrictions, making it in a way a double lockdown video.

Taeuber-Arp studied dance with Rudolf Laban and Mary Wigman, and dance notations seem to run through her sparking graphic work. Today's NYTimes article, from which these links are borrowed, notes that "Many of the objects in the Basel exhibition were intended to 'dance' — or at least serve a function — and the curators have brought life to the works."

The dance figures could perhaps be compared to those of Oscar Schlemmer later at the Bauhaus. Taeuber-Arp's kind of hard edged abstraction is something we seem to be reclaiming a taste for with the revivals of works by Carmen Herrera and the Brazilian Neo-Concrete group (Willys de Castro, Hércules Barsotti) in recent shows at the Musuem of Modern Art. 

Lockdown Dada dance:

Great virtual tour of the museum show with a major stop at the puppet display.

https://kunstmuseumbasel.ch/en/exhibitions/2021/sophie-taeuber-arp/virtual-tour

 

Sophie Taeuber-Arp

 

 

Edited by Quiggin
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