Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada, and Everyday Modernity : a Cultural Biography

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874?1927) is considered by many to be thefirst American dadaist as well as the mother of dada. An innovator in poetic formand an early creator of junk sculpture, "the Baroness" was best known for hersexually charged, often controversial performances. Some thought her merely crazed, others thought her a genius. The editor Margaret Anderson called her "perhaps theonly figure of our generation who deserves the epithet extraordinary." Yet despiteher great notoriety and influence, until recently her story and work have beenlittle known outside the circle of modernist scholars.In Baroness Elsa, Irene Gammeltraces the extraordinary life and work of this daring woman, viewing her in thecontext of female dada and the historical battles fought by women in the earlytwentieth century. Striding through the streets of Berlin, Munich, New York, andParis wearing such adornments as a tomato-soup can bra, teaspoon earrings, and blacklipstick, the Baroness erased the boundaries between life and art, between theeveryday and the outrageous, between the creative and the dangerous. Her art objectswere precursors to dada objects of the teens and twenties, her sound and visualpoetry were far more daring than those of the male modernists of her time, and herperformances prefigured feminist body art and performance art by nearly half acentury.