Paris: Au sans pareil, March 1920. Quarto (27.3 × 19.3 cm). Original pictorial staple-stitched self-wrappers; [8] pp. With illustrations. Margins of leaves with some professional restoration; staples somewhat rusted; fold with two small rust spots; binding somewhat dust-stained; else good.

The seventh and final issue of the Journal of the Dadaists, founded in Zurich, was printed in only a thousand copies and distributed for the low price of 1 franc 50; it is questionable how many copies of the ephemeral publication have thus been preserved to this day (see Thacker/Brooker). With contributions by Aragon, Arnauld, Breton, Dermée, Éluard, Ribemont-Dessaignes, Picabia, Soupault, and Tzara. Other brief texts were contributed by Cocteau, Evola, Serner, and Ezra Pound.

After the Zurich Dadaists again left their Swiss exile at the end of World War I and moved to Berlin and Cologne, Tzara moved to Paris in January 1920 to work more closely with Francis Picabia, among others, who was publishing the journal 391. Tzara also joined the group around André Breton, the editors of the journal Litérature. For a year, the group of different personalities and interests succeeded in working together under the umbrella of "Dada". The three magazines exchanged ideas closely, organized joint programs, helped each other out with texts, and provided each other with a forum. Other journals were founded from this network, including Proverbe and L'Esprit Nouveau. The publishing and galleristic center for the Parisian avant-garde was the bookstore "Au sans pareil", which also served as publisher for Dadaphone. The fact that this issue was to be the last of the Paris Dadaists was due to the fact that the group finally split up in a dispute and Breton initiated Surrealism with his group as a counter-movement to Dadaism. But in this issue, the forces of the Parisian avant-gardists were still bundled under the label of Dadaism. Together, they even present themselves to the Parisian public in nine photo portraits, including, for example, Tzara, Breton, and Picabia (See Michel Giroud, in: Tendenzen der Zwanziger Jahre, pp. 3/60-64).

When Huelsenbeck, who had moved from Zurich to Berlin, held this issue in his hands, he wrote of the photo portraits: “All very nice and harmless-looking people with pince-nez, horn-rimmed glasses and monocles, with flowing ties, faithful eyes and significant gestures, who can be seen from afar to belong to literature” (En avant dada, Hanover and Leipzig 1920, p. 25). Huelsenbeck reports that after the issue appeared, Parisian journals were very agitated about the group's impertinences. For example, the issue contains Francis Picabia's "Manifeste cannibale Dada," in which he sought to put his readers into a "state of accusation” and finally took his leave with the words: “smash my face […] I will always tell you that you are stupid mutts. In three months we, my friends and I, will sell you our paintings for a few francs.” In terms of design, this issue is dominated by a “drawing poem” by Picabia, a form that gave the Paris Dadaists their own character and is clearly distinct from the typographic experiments of Tzara and the Berlin Dadaists (See Giroud).

Sale 112; Motherwell-Karpel 66 and p. 170 (Fig.); Dadaglobal 174; Raabe, Journals 34; Thacker/Brooker p. 196; Dietzel/Hügel 583; Cat. Tendencies of the Twenties 3/100.

As of March 2023, OCLC locates five copies in North America.

Book ID: 52768

Price: $6,000.00