Fashionable Ladies, Dada Dandies Author(s): Brigid Doherty Reviewed work(s): Source: Art Journal, Vol. 54, No.

1, Clothing as Subject (Spring, 1995), pp. 46-50 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777506 . Accessed: 26/03/2012 07:53
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Fashionable Ladies, Dada Dandies

Brigid Doherty

46

n Berlin, as in Paris, London,and New York,skirts got shorterin the 1920s, exposing legs swathed in shiny, synthetic silk stockings. "Legs have emergedaftercenturies of shrouding,and adult womanat last frankly admits herselfto be a biped ... her ankles, calves, and knees (all the more dazzling in their suddenly revealed beauty after their long sojourn in the dark) [are] her chief erotic wrotethe psychoanalystJ. C. Flugel in his 1930 weapons,"I The War, study, Psychologyof Clothes.After the First World Flugel argues, men's fashion did not keep pace with the modernization of women's wear. Tailorsfailed to answerdemandsfor increased comfort,convenience,and cleanliness, andmanymensuccumbed to cowardiceand clubbyconformism in refusingto give up their stuffy suits. Flugel's account fashof the attentionto the limbs that characterized women's ions of the 1920s was writtenat a momentwhen reactionary dressmakersand authoritieson haute couture had already to launcha campaignaimedat lowering hemlines, regrouped and his text speaks in the name of the sartorialemancipation of both womenand men. In 1924 Raoul Hausmann, previouslya centralfigure in BerlinDada, contributedan essay called "Fashion" to G, a Constructivistmagazine edited and published in Berlin by Hans Richter.2 Hausmann, it seems, shared Flugel's concerns about the repressive vestimentaryregime of the suit. "Fashion,"published in English for the first time in this to dress, callissue, takes a modern,functionalistapproach in for the rationalization of ing clothing design the interest of freedomof movement and, ultimately,hygiene.3The layout of "Fashion"-a clean sans-serif font, innovativepairings of blocksof textand photographic illustrations,eye-catchingyet discreet use of boldface and oversized type-is typical of 1920s Germanmodernism. One of the illustrations(fig. 1) shows Hausmann-shown from the back with his head in monocleexposed-raising his arm profileand his trademark he to demonstrate the freedom of movement matter-of-factly in and are wide his cut shirt ("shirts enjoys loosely striped blouselike,"reads the caption). For Hausmann, "fashionis the functionof the body made visible," and the illustration underscoresthe point graphically.4Wesee howthe motionof his arm showsin the give of the generoussleeve, and we are of madeawarethatthis ability to accommodate the movement
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FIG. 1 Raoul Hausmann, "Fashion," G, no. 3 (June 1924): 51. Berlinische Galerie, Berlin.

the body is not merelya propertyof the fabricitself, but is a of the garment.In case result of the functionalistconstruction we do not immediatelydiscern this fact fromthe drapeof the sleeve'svoluminous folds, a little arrowat the armpitpointsit out. On the final page of "Fashion" (fig. 2) we again see Hausmann himself-now photographed full figure and placed at left without caption, frame, or backgroundshowingoff an overcoatof his own design. His confident, upright pose emphasizes the careful cut of the coat'sback yoke and deep, architectonicpleats. (Below the hem of his dark, ankle-lengthtrouserswe glimpse his sensible rubbersoled shoes and hygienic, light-coloredsocks.) The clothes Hausmannwears are markedlydifferentfromthe frockcoats but preachand tubelike trousershe criticizes in "Fashion,"

ing practical reformand modeling functionalistfashion are only part of his aim here. On my reading, the sobriety is superficial,and the functionalismdoes nottell the full story.5 "Fashion" is, above all, an extended, splenetic complaint. Laced with breaks marked by broad typographical dashes, with rhetorical eruptions followed by exclamation points, and with breakneck-paced run-on sentences that is exemplifyaspects of the tailoringthey describe, "Fashion" a performative text, a manifestowrittenfor a magazineand still waitingto be declaimed. When, forexample,Hausmann gripes aboutthe inability of Germantailorsto producea suit jacket whose sleeve drapes gracefully from a wellconstructedshoulder,his sentence imitates the continuous cut of a tailor'sscissors and the careful trail of his stitches withoutpausing to pay heed to the rules of grammar.In the form of a broadside against reactionary German tailors, "Fashion" is a bitterlycomic account of the flawedbodies of middle-class men that has more to do with Dadaist satire than it does with modernistreform. When the text investigates the stuffiness of male dress, it finds an ultimatecause in the male body itself. The German gentleman "barely functions" because his posturehas been stiffenedby military discipline, his belly bloated with beer. For Hausmann, the German gentleman is not modern:just watch him trudge along the streets of the metropolis-or, better yet, capture him in cinematic slow-motion-and you'llsee that he does notknowhowto move, thathe does notunderstand that"tobe dressed is to have a consciousness of the body." To the German gentleman Hausmann opposes the well-dressed ladies of Berlin'swealthy West Side, representativesof the much discussed Neue Frau (New Woman)of WeimarGermany. Contemptfor "Germanness,"as embodied in beerbellied bourgeois men, not commitmentto functionalistretext and establishes the relationsof form,drives Hausmann's and body, gender, modernitythat result in his celebrationof fashionableladies. According to Flugel, male narcissistic and exhibitionistic desires, inhibited as they are by the sober conventions of modernmen'swear, usually get displaced in one of twopossible ways:throughthe voyeuristicviewingof women's bodies (scopophilia)orthroughthe projection of male exhibitionistic desire onto women, which, he adds, necessarily involves "an element of identification."6 FollowingFlugel, Kaja Silvermanhas called the latter strategy "male identification with woman-as-spectacle"and has argued for its centrality in the organizationof male sexuality and for its importanceto feminism as potentially destabilizing where conventional genderroles are concerned.' It seems to me that whenHausmannpraisedfashionableladies as the lone opponents of the culture of "clodhoppersand beer bellies" he despised, his praise containedsuch an identification.In the analyses that follow I look closely at two Dada photomonFiat Modes(fig. 3) and Hannah H6ch's tages, Hausmann's Da-Dandy (fig. 4), in which the spectaculardisplay of fash-

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FIG. 2 RaoulHausmann, "Fashion," G,no. 3 (June1924): 52. Berlinische Galerie,Berlin.

ionablefemalebodies, especially theirlegs ("[woman's] chief eroticweapons,"as Flugel called them),plays a centralrole. "FiatModes,pereatars"(Let therebe fashion,mayart perish)proclaimsthe bannerheadline on Hausmann's eponymousphotomontage. The title is takenfroma 1919portfolio of Max and it names an to mass Ernst, lithographs by allegiance culture and an abandonmentof art that we have come to expect of Berlin Dada's ironical announcements.Pasted on top of the frontispiece of Ernst's Fiat Modes, pereat ars portfolio, the next layer of Hausmann'sFiat Modes is a reproductionof his own 1920 watercolorKutschenbauch dichtet (Coachbellycomposes poetry). Elements of fashion are already present in Kutschenbauch dichtet, where Kutschenbauchthe mannequin-poetasterwrites verse by cranking the handle of a coffee grinder while a headless tailor's dummy lurks behind him on the tilted floor of a Chiricoesque interior. Our view of most of Kutschenbauch dichtetis obscured by two moremontagedlayers:an irregularly cut page of typographyin which each line is a continuousspill of letters, numbers,and punctuation marks,andon top of that an accumulation of women'sheads, legs, and athletic bodies clipped from newspaperand fashion photographs. The petite high-heeled shoe of one of the manylegs stands carefully balanced on Kutschenbauch's coffee backgrinder,anchoringthe mass of bodies to the montage's groundlayersand to the bottomof the picture. Eclipsing the
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...... ...... ..........

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graceful calves seem to be walking at a brisk pace, kicking the image into action. As I see it, this collectionof women's bodies dense with extra legs is neither the result nor the of a voyeuristic fantasy of visual possession representation and photographicdismemberment. On the contrary,Fiat Modes seems to me to be a picture in which Hausmann identifieswith the athletic and fashionablefemale bodies he assembles. Arrangingthem, he imagineshimself performing their fragmentary acrobatics. Hdch's Da-Dandy shows another cluster of female bodies in stylish attire. Here the bust of a man is described in profile by the overlapping heads and upper bodies of womenmodelingthe latest fashions:little black dresses that expose the arms and close-fitting hats of exotic fabric and lace that cover modish Bubikopf bobs. This dandy is a la Arcimboldo,of pieces of severalwell-dressed composite,"a modernwomen:graceful, bare, bracelet-ringedarms;pearl encirclednecks; and rouged, powdered,and lipstickedfaces with montaged,mix-and-matcheyes and mouths. Hoch has delineated his profile with a red contour,accentuatingthe elegant silhouette of forehead, nose, and chin against the of a tranquillandblack-and-white photographic background the scape. Completing dandy'scompact body are a pair of slender ankles with feet lodged in two-tone high-heeled pumps. These little legs, which descend fromthe half moon

OWN. ?4,7,
Location FiatModes, ca. 1920, photomontage. FIG. 3 RaoulHausmann, unknown.

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body attached to those big legs are several female athletes crossing the finish line of a foot race. Above a racerwith her arms thrustwide in victoryappearsthe head that belongsto the legs below. Hausmann'ssource for this figure was a of a youngAmericanwhose snug, fullnewspaper photograph body swimsuit made her the talk of a Spanish sea resort in 1920.8 Fromthe look of her sleek cap and cowl, this modern womanmight be equally well outfittedfora test flight orfora spin in the little vehicle thatexits, upside down,frombehind her buttocks. At the centerof Fiat Modesis a woman's broad,smiling face. Herbody has been takenapartand then compressedby Hausmann's cutting andpasting, and nowa pairof glamorous crossed below the knee emergeat her collarbone,maklegs ing herlap lie just belowher chin (the well-matchedshadows thatrun aroundthe jaw and downinto the space betweenthe knees heighten this uncannily convincing elision of the and a pendulous torso),while the figure'sremainingshoulder breast proceed organicallyfrom the other side of her neck. Herear sproutsgiant legs, and unlike the confidentlypoised lowerbody, these but static limbs that make up the woman's
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41

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113/ x 91i6inches. ca. 1920, photomontage, FIG. 4 Hannah H6ch,Da-Dandy, Private collection.

of black sequined fabric that is the dandy'sderriere, walk "backward" as if turned by the montagedbody'sextraordintorsion in the opposite direction of the figure's facial ary profile.As the title'sstutteringpun says, this man is a Dadadandy. And thoughthe facial features are not precisely his, of Hausmann,H6ch's perhapsthis picture is a representation loverduringthe Dadayears. As such it is a wittyimage of his identificationwith fashionableladies, an image that at the same time takes its own ironic distance from the dandy's fantasy. As the illustrations in G indicate, Hausmann was happyto serve as a mannequinformodernfashion.He did not sufferfromthose psychosartorial afflictionsof modernmasthe of narcissism and the erosion of culinity, repression his in the and exhibitionism, spectaculardisplayof pleasure his own body was evidentwhen in 1926 he danced a number dedicated to men'swear at Herwarth Walden's famousSturm A of of the gallery. photograph performance Hausmann's tribute to "Oxfordbags" that found its way into the Berlin newspapers(fig. 5) shows him midstep, gesturing expressively with his hands and letting the wide legs and well-cut pleatsof his trousersspeak forthemselvesandforthe dancing body they enclose.9
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49

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Appendix
Fashion A cap is a head covering. A suit is a clothing-object.Shoes are foot casings. Saying that may call to mind very much or forexample, a cap is a thing thatone verylittle. In Germany, can'tmanageto get ontoone'shead. It'sa "something," quite like a cow pat, made of a kind of stair carpeting.A suit exists onlyto spoil everyformand everymovement.Germantailors, even the so-called good ones, make the shouldersprettily slopingand narrow,the neck twice as wide as necessary, the jacket beautifully bulging in the regionof the stomach(fora are tubes, broad dignified man has to have a belly). Trousers at the bottom,narrowoverthe thigh; they'rea kilometerwide behind and have to be fastened to the body with a clothesline-for suspenders don't help; they pull the leg Of sheathup to the armpits, but don'tmake it any narrower. tailorshere. course, I'mwell awarethatthereare "American" I'veeven been to one. However,instead of cutting the shoulder wide enoughto reach out past the armpitin such a way thatit becomes broadand roundby virtueof the cut itself with a little arc downtowardthe armand the sleeve pouringdown like a waterfall-this gentlemanjust stuffed in two kilos of padding. The sleeve was a husk with no drape at all, it pinchedwith everyfree movement,it made dreadfulcreases at the back when the arm was motionless. The trouserswell, I can hardly bring myself to speak of them. Although they came up to my navel, fromthere on theyjust sat; that is

F"AE

Dancesthe OxfordBags,"fromNeue Berliner FIG.5 "TheOberdada Zeitung, November Galerie,Berlin. 26, 1926. Berlinische

to say, they had no drapeto them at all. They pulled when I sat or walked. Theyformeda splendidpair of bowlegs all by themselves. Of course, I knowthat thereare manytailoring"firms" in Berlin, but notone that has a clue whata suit is. Afterall, These people make I'm neithera film actor nor a profiteer! sheet metal, all with were suits as though they working padding, padding, padding. Fine forpeoplewho discovered the use of pajamas or a trouserpress only six monthsago. Whatdistinguishes the Americanor English suit is this: it is constructedto fit the humanbody and holdsit togetheron the outside. The suit is wide wherethe humanbody is wide, and narrowat the feet, neck, and hands. In between it's loose, loose, loose in a waythat no Germantailorwill evercomprehend. In an English or Americansuit one can stand on one's head, and it will hold its shape and still look good. If those wouldjust foronce go to anyAmericanfilm of their gentlemen choice in orderto free themselvesfromthe conceit that they have any ability at all. There they could see suits from all walksof life; even the tight-fitting,vaguelyBiedermeier-style suits that have been popular in America for the last three years are not mere tubes; they allow complete freedom of
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thathe knowshowto move. (He thinks: Why bother?) Above all I say to him: Fashion is not nonsense, fashion is the functionof the body madevisible-and to be dressed means to havea consciousnessof the body. Whichis whatthe ladies from the fashionable West End have, at least more than the "gentlemen." On the Kurfiirstendamm and the Tauentzienstrasse one sees women who are dressed. The undergarments they wear-or could wear-can be foundat With are not respect to form, undergarments Grtinfeld's. generallyas sophisticatedhere as in England or America. But one sees women who have a consciousness of their OTHERWISE womenwho function, who exercise-they are the to one of the fashionable a bodies, streets, go buy yourself shopping shirt. It will hang downto yourknees. Unless you're Germaninwardness a portly only opposingpole to thatcontemplative that finds in its police sergeant from the provinces-try buying yourself highest expression clodhoppersand beer some underpantsin Berlin! Whereveryou go-they'll be bellies. three times too wide and the "smallestgentleman's size"will Raoul Hausmann comeup to yournose! In Americaeven the richest man buys G, no. 3, Berlin, June 1924. his clothes off the rack. There, clothing is all well cut and simple, i.e., decent in form. Here, it'sridiculousto speak of fashion:"Afrockcoat is elegant,"yourwife is sure to tell you. But believe me, you'lldo better to join the "BerlinKnickerbocker Club" I'm planning! (Actually, I wouldn'tthink of Notes in the appendix to this article is by the author. foundingsuch a club: knickerswouldbe wornall daylong in Translationof "Fashion" 1. J. C. Flugel, The Psychology of Clothes (1930; reprint, New York:International Berlin, even at the theater!) So: underwearis out of the Universities Press, 1971), 161-62. question in Berlin. Pajamas-men can't wear women'spa- 2. Hausmannwouldreturnto the subject of men'sfashionin the early thirties, writing essays as well as an outline foran experimentalfilm about betteroff notbuying pajamas a numberof reform-minded jamas a la orientale-so you're clothing. These laterworks,all unpublished, belong to the Raoul HausmannArchive in Berlinat all. -Shirts! I gavethe firmWolff and Glaserfeld of the Berlinische Galerie, Museumfor ModerneKunst, Photographieund Architekan excellent American pattern, and they made me a set of tur, Berlin. I am indebted to WolfgangErler and Eva Zuchnerof the Berlinische Galerie for their generosityin making newly acquired unpublished materialsavailbeautiful shirts. If you can'tdo so yourself, force yourshirt able to me as soon as theyhad been catalogued.I amgratefulto MarthePrevortforher that accompaniesthis article. permissionto publish the translationof "Fashion" suppliersto ordertheir goods only fromfirms who are in the kind 3. Other1920s critics of modernmen'swear made similar demandsin the interest of know. comfortand hygiene. In England, the Men'sDress ReformPartyencouragedtailorsto
HATS AT ILKO

movement.They could also learn what a sleeve looks like, whata pairof trousersis, and a wholelot more.Capmakersof Berlin, off to an American film with you! Shoe manufacturers, off to the cinema!Or get yourselvessubscriptionsto Americanor English fashionmagazines!Shoes, say the experts, are sharp as needles or else very wide. Not true! In Berlin, the only shoes one can buy and actuallyweararefrom wherethey're madeby handon Americanlasts and Wichert's, then fitted with plantation-rubber soles.

or Habig's. But no caps! It'll kill you, puttinga thing like that on head! your
One buys overcoats at ILKO.--Yes-it's very hard

just to be dressed at all in Berlin!Beforethe warit was easier, mostlybecause the sale of fabric wasn'tsuch an outrageous racket back then. (Germantextiles were sent to England, stamped,andsold hereas English, but theyweregood-now they'repure crap and very expensive.) A little tailornear the Potsdamer Strasse has some fairly good English fabric: he 260 marksfor a passably made suit. Rice Brothers charges and Watson,the best custom tailors in England, charge 12 has no the German"gentleman" pounds. But unfortunately feeling for fashion. Either he believes that being squeezed into something narrow(a la militaire) is elegant, or since therehave been so manypeople fromthe Balkansin Berlin, he thinks that caftans are the orderof the day. The German man has not grasped the constructiveelementthat clothing BRIGID DOHERTY, doctoral candidate in art history at the must have. Perhaps because he himself barely functions. University a dissertation is completing Berkeley, of California, in slow mo- on montageand the representation SometimeI'd like to film the Tauentzienstrasse in of modernity tion. Onecan see thata German was in the military-but not BerlinDada.
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fashion-such as the use of lighter women's imitate certain aspects of contemporary fabrics and the adoptionof simpler lines and looser cuts-in the making of men's devotedto clothing. Also in England during the same period, a related organization women'swear, the Sensible Dress Society, campaigned against the reactionary movementto abandon the short skirt, while in the United States the Fashionof the MonthClub was organizedto fight the battle over hemline recidivism on this side of the Atlantic. See Flugel, Psychology of Clothes,165-66, 206-11. 4. Ibid., 52. as it appeared in G is also 5. The Constructivist design of Hausmann's"Mode" ultimately at odds with the essay's content. In a 1946 letter to Kurt Schwitters, and his Hausmannexpressed his oppositionto modernist,Bauhaus-styletypography continuing allegiance to the typographic principles of the Dadaist sound poem he wrote in (Lautgedicht). "I am against Tschichold and Bauhaus-typography," Raoul Hausmannto oughtto be optophonetic." English, "it'sa poorthing. Typography du Mus~e KurtSchwitters,September2, 1946, HausmannC2/677, Documentation nationald'art moderne,Centre Georges Pompidou,Paris. 6. Flugel, Psychologyof Clothes, 118-19. of a FashionableDiscourse," in TaniaModleski, ed., 7. KajaSilverman,"Fragments Indiana to Mass Culture(Bloomington: CriticalApproaches Studiesin Entertainment: UniversityPress, 1986), 141. 8. "SwimmingSeason in San Sebastian: The Peculiar Bathing Suit That MadeThis AmericanLady a Seaside Celebrity,"BerlinerIllustrirteZeitung 29, no. 46 (November 14, 1920): 540. 9. The caption in Neue Berliner Zeitung mistakenly refers to Hausmann as the Oberdada.In fact, that Dada monikerbelongedto JohannesBaader,while Hausmann was knownas the Dadasoph.