Tristan Tzara and his work in a modern context

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The modern world is changing every second. It seems to us that everything that happens is unique and belongs to our age. However, at all times people have been worried about similar problems.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young artists were looking for their own way of self-expression, the way to fight against the hypocritical public morality and art of that post-war period.

Revolution in art

One of the famous "revolutionaries" of art was Tristan Tzara. It is believed that it was he who called the trend invented with friends "Dadaism". Such an intricate word came from the French "dada", which means "wooden rocking horse", and also personifies children's simple fun, a primitive infantile attitude to life.

And Tristan gave the familiar word a new meaning. Dadaism in art has become a kind of protest form. Against war, against the absurdity of life, against the hypocrisy of society.

Tzara and Dadaism

Dadaism appeared in Switzerland in 1916, where Tristan Tzara lived at that time. During the First World War, many creative youth gathered in this country, seeking salvation from military service. Switzerland remained neutral and did not directly participate in the war. In the biography, Tristan is called a Romanian-French poet, as well as a publicist, publisher and one of the founders of surrealism in literature. Tristan Tzara is a pseudonym. The real name of the Dadaist poet is Samuel Rosenstock. He was born into a we althy Jewish family, lived and studied in Romania, was a student of the Faculty of Mathematics and Philosophy at the University of Bucharest, and studied French literature. Because of the war and in search of a creative life, he decided to emigrate to Switzerland. In 1915, a Romanian student became the Swiss poet Tristan Tzara. This pseudonym was inspired by Wagner's opera "Tristan and Isolde", and the word "tzara" in Romanian means "land" or "country".

Poetry

The works of Tristan Tzara were translated into Russian and published in anthologies of foreign poetry, and also came out as a collection of individual poems. In Romania, Tzara's poetic idols were Arthur Rambo, Christian Morgenstern, the Romanian writer and poet Demeter Demetrescu-Buzau (Urmuz). Later, in Switzerland, he began to correspond with the French poets André Breton, Philippe Soupault and Louis Aragon. They were fascinated by the works of Tzara, which were published inDada literary magazine and other publications.

Our hero was engaged in publishing activities, published the Dada magazine, where he published poems by Dadaists - his own and like-minded people.

Current art

Quotes from community members still sound relevant today:

"The Dadaist is the freest person on earth."

"Who lives for today lives forever."

“I am against any system. The most acceptable system is to have no system.”

“A poet must be hard on his work to make it necessary. Everything else called literature is a collection of human stupidity intended for future professors.”

"Dada means nothing, nothing, nothing, leaves nothing, nothing, nothing."

However, Tzara began publishing his first magazine back in Romania, in 1912, together with his lyceum comrade Marcel Janco. The magazine was called Simbolul and talked about the achievements of the French Symbolists, whose work young Samuel was fond of.

What achievements of the Dadaists are still relevant today? Collage became one of the artistic expressive means of the Dadaists. It was used to create both paintings and poems. Tzara cut out words from newspaper articles, shuffled them, and added them in random order. This is how entire works were born - seemingly meaningless phrases, to which numbers, scribbles, and just letters were added. Such creativity was called "ver libre" - free verse. Such provocations in art have become a trademarkDadaist handwriting. For the paintings, pictures were cut out from various books on zoology, anatomy, old engravings, which were pasted onto the base without any system.

Other inventions of the Dadaists - installation, graffiti, photomontage. These forms of artist's self-expression are extremely popular these days and are considered modern and fashionable. However, all this is just a development of the discoveries of art revolutionaries who lived a hundred years ago.

The verses written by Tristan Tzara sound like this:

Mute the century of Sunday blood current, Weeks of burden will break the knees.

Inside a newfound prone

The bells ring in vain, and we

And we rejoice in the clanging of chains, What sounds like a bell in us.

Creativity by Tristan Tzara

In 1920, Tzara arrives in Paris. And in 1922 he would "bury" the trend he had born, in the traditions of Dadaism he would compose a funeral speech for the style. However, the Dadaists will not leave the stage and will continue to experiment within the framework of such movements as surrealism and expressionism.

The works of artists of that time, friends of the poet, depicting Tristan Tzara are known. Pictures with titles are shown below.

First of all, it is necessary to highlight the "Portrait of Tristan Tzara". It was painted by the artist Robert Delaunay in 1923. There is also "Pajamas for Tristan Tzara. Its author is Sonia Delaunay. It is impossible not to mention the mask-portrait of Tristan. This is a work of the artist Marcel Janko.

Tristan Tzara lived not very long, but bright and richlife. He was born April 16, 1896 and died in Paris on Christmas Day 1963.

Tristan is considered the founder of a new direction, a strong emotional poet who had a great influence on the further development of art. Poetry was life itself for Tristan, he did not deal with it as some kind of activity, he lived it, and even Tzar's manifestos are poetic. They are also interesting because they are an excellent example of a kind of poetic and literary provocation destroying the canons in the name of pure art.