Jennifer Wild - Chaplin and the Parisian Avant-garde.pdf

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The automatic chance of the moderntramp: Chaplin and the ParisianavantgardeJennifer Wild aa Department of Cinema and Media Studies , The University ofChicago , Chicago, Illinois, USAPublished online: 12 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Jennifer Wild (2010) The automatic chance of the modern tramp:Chaplin and the Parisian avantgarde, Early Popular Visual Culture, 8:3, 263-283, DOI:10.1080/17460654.2010.498165

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Early Popular Visual CultureVol. 8, No. 3, August 2010, 263283

ISSN 1746-0654 print/ISSN 1746-0662 online 2010 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/17460654.2010.498165http://www.informaworld.com

The automatic chance of the modern tramp: Chaplin and the Parisian avant-garde

Jennifer Wild*

Department of Cinema and Media Studies, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USATaylor and FrancisREPV_A_498165.sgm10.1080/17460654.2010.498165Early Popular Visual Culture1746-0654 (print)/1746-0662 (online)Original Article2010Taylor & Francis83000000August [email protected]

Charlie Chaplins nimble ascension into the forefront of international stardom isalso the popular cultural context for the rise and international proliferation of theDada movement in Europe. In this essay, I argue that by drawing upon earlycinema stardoms signifying practices, and the attributes of the cinematographicimage itself, Parisian Dadaists radicalized their concept of identity to express thesimultaneously recognizable and unknowable aspects of the modern self. I suggestthat by 1920 cinematographic stardom presents itself as a succinct model for theDadaists transformation of artistic identity into a set of radical art practices. Bypilfering mass popular techniques of cinema stardom, they re-routed the economyof individual production and reception. Parisian Dadaists drew upon the sameoperations that transformed Chaplins uniquely expressive style into aninternationally identifiable semantics that made the most oblique gesture apowerfully articulate statement capable of mobilizing the masses.

Keywords: Charles Chaplin; Charlot; historical avant-garde; Dada; stardom;French cinema

True thinkers cannot hope to be glorified, at least in their lifetime, in the manner ofCharlot

Francis Picabia

Dada kicks you in the behind and you like it!

Berlin Dada slogan

The examination of identitys function in the art of Parisian Dada first requires anexploration of names, signatures, portraits, and performative appropriations of themass media. It also requires a sustained look at a field of logic in which the signoperates as an independent circuit simultaneously attached to and liberated from itsreferent a logic I will suggest is succinctly defined by early twentieth-centurycinematic stardom, and the film industrys deft elaboration and distribution of it in anorchestrated media performance comprised of names, signatures, and portraits.

In now classic theories of the avant-garde, the signature and other identitysignifiers are conceived as powerful loci demonstrating the Dada movements critiqueof the bourgeois art market, individual production, as well as the totalizing categoryof individual reception (Brger 1984). In more recent studies, such loci are also

*Email: [email protected]

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newly about the logic of the sign, about the full infiltration of the space of paintingby a procession of deracinated signs (Baker 2001, 53). Art historian George Baker(2001, 503) describes Francis Picabias 1921 painting LOeil Cacodylate:

And so here is Picabia. He is staring at us, smiling, a face without a body, or rather, aface that has lost its body, a portrait of the artist under the knife. Decimated. Decapitated. Here we dont have the body without a head, but heads without bodies, for there ismore than one. Picabia may be the only face that meets our gaze, but there is alsoMetzinger And there, just below him, is Cocteau. And there is Gabrielle. And there isMarcel. All so many heads floating free of their bodies, they roll through the space ofthis painting, turning now this way and now that backward, forward, sideways, andupside-down. These heads, however had companions. For the heads were joined, notto bodies, but to words. To signatures. So that along with Picabia, there is Germaine.And there is Tristan, and Man Ray, and Georges. And there is Isadora, and Pierre, andMarthe, and Clment, and Suzanne, and Marguerite, and Benjamin. And there is Jean,and Hania, and Renata, and Lo, and Michel, and Ren, and Paul, and Alice, and Marie,and Roland, and Serge, and Cline, and Vanentine, and Franois.

Bakers enumerated, first-name panoply of personages and signs performs not onlyhis own adoration and identification of these Dada figures. It also encapsulateshow Picabias Dada tactics deracinate the marks of individual identity in order toformulate a radical operation of avant-garde logic: I find myself very Tristan Tzara(Je me trouve trs Tristan Tzara) reads the inscription in the lower right hand cornerof LOeil Cacodylate. Here, Tzara fuses spectatorial and semantic recognition withself-proclamation and promotion. In doing so, he launches a signifying circuit thatmoves between his human identity as index and the paintings field where self-reference iconically performs his location relative to other artists names and faces whether authentic or not.1 Combining [s]elf-celebration, idiotic subjectivism, aschizophrenic and despotic Moi a solipsism lauding moral disengagement and averitable activism of the ego, mixing psychoanalysis and publicity into an orchestratedcacophony, as art historian Aurlie Verdier (2004, 55) puts it, Dada artists used alanguage paralleled only by the newly wrought language of cinema stardom: thecelebratory semantics of the sign of the star that makes its meaning by way of a simul-taneous attachment to and liberation from its human referent, and also by way of thecircuitous relay within the mass medias particularly dense field of deracinated faces,names, gestures, and images.

My aim in this essay is to examine the rise of both cinema stardom in the Frenchcontext and Parisian Dadas tactical, highly orchestrated appropriation of, and conver-sation with, cinema stardoms methods and achievements. As it was generatedthrough the international network of mass popular media (aspects that should recallimportant features of the Dada movement itself), early twentieth-century stardom wasa modern language built upon specific yet liberated identity signifiers that find theirearliest and most successful example in Charles Chaplin, or, to give him his Frenchmoniker, Charlot. I have built my argument upon an archive of filmic and extra-filmictexts from 1908 to 1924 that enthralled the masses and avant-garde artists alike. Myarchive therefore includes a cache of art works, documents, texts, and citations thatemerge from the Dada movement in Paris primarily, but also in Germany, theNetherlands, and Spain.2 I use these works to elaborate Chaplins expansive stararchive beyond film-specific or industrial sources insofar as they provide an historicalaccount of Chaplins reception, and the evolution of his stars discursive formationand signifying capability. However, I also use these avant-garde works to illustrate the

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Early Popular Visual Culture 265

communication network that formed between internationally situated Dada artists andthat was in large part facilitated by the international distribution flow of Chaplinsfilms, image, and publicity materials. Chaplins star became a calling-card ofcommonality and mutual recognition between Dada artists who wanted to achieve, notunlike the Hollywood film industry, international distribution and attention.3

Insofar as Chaplin became a signifier for the Dada movements shared artisticethos that could not like Chaplins films be confined within national borders, theexpressive system behind Chaplins stars formation was an essential component ofthe avant-gardes own language of art as tactics action, performance, appropriation,and deracination as myriad works attest, including Picabias aforementionedcanvas and, most iconically, Marcel Duchamps alter ego Rrose Slavy. Hence, Iunderstand the Chaplin-centred complex of art works here as also a map that testifiesto the avant-gardes understanding of cinematic stardom as a distinctly modern revo-lution in reception and signification. Francis and Marcel, as well as Tristan, Philippe,Andr, and their cohort undoubtedly adored Charlot for his absurdist comic range thatechoed their own sensibility: these artists were early cinema spectators who, like themass audience members of their day, found an empathic resonance and identificationin Chaplins modern, physical comedy. But as radical artists, the Dadaists recognizedand seized upon the mass medias operations that transformed Chaplins name, iden-tity, and uniquely performative style into an internationally identifiable formal seman-tics that made the most oblique gesture a powerfully articulate statement capable ofmobilizing the masses, as Chaplin himself recognized in an interview: I am a beingmade inside out and upside down. When I turn my back on you in the screen you arelooking at something as expressive as a face. I am back foremost (Hayes 2005, 49)(Figure 1).Figure 1. Cin-Journal (13 November 1915). Image courtesy Thierry G. Mathieu.By drawing upon the often deracinated and metonymic means of early cinemastardoms signifying practices, as well as the attributes of the cinematographic imageitself, the Parisian Dadaists radicalized their concept of identity to express thesimultaneously recognizable and unknowable aspects of the modern self, or thosecontradictory qualities of the human beings new, modern capacity to signify as a star.For the young inheritors of Alfred Jarry, Rimbaud, and Lautramont, the cinemaspopular-cultural language of international stardom was a vast new horizon for modernsignification that encouraged its own appropriation. With it, they forwarded an artpractice that exchanged making for acts, tactics, and concepts that critically exam-ined the artists modern cultural experience as well as self-consciously exploited theirparticular pleasures in its consumption.4

From name alone to the meaning of a walk, a shadow: the rise of the star vernacular

The years leading up to the Great War coincide with a surge in the stabilization of thestar system in both America and France. Although the French film industry differsfrom its transatlantic rival insofar as it never has possessed an industry sector devotedstrictly to the conception and management of the star persona, the development ofstardom in France is nonetheless a distinct phenomenon originating in caf-concertand music-hall traditions.5 As we follow its evolution in the French film industry, andin avant-garde art works and texts, we recognize that by 1918 the cinema star hadbecome a concept in its own right. But we also find that its most articulate, and devel-oped, point in French culture arises arguably from American films and industry

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Figure 1. Cin-Journal (13 November 1915). Image courtesy of Thierry G. Mathieu.

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tactics introduced during World War I. This moment was unquestionably significantfor the spate of avant-garde artists who were, with the exception of Picabia, in theirlate teens around 1915 (Picabia, born in 1879, was one of the oldest members of theParisian Dada movement). While the threat of combat loomed, the Americancinemas modern semiotics of identity offered an entirely new fabric with whichnascent avant-garde artists could begin to fashion their own radial means of selfexpression.

By 1908, Path Frres and its Films dart production unit began to foreground seri-ous stage actors as well as popular caf-concert performers such as Sarah Bernhardtand Mistinguett to attract more white-collar spectators to the moving pictures as wellas to raise the moral and artistic status of their cinematographic productions(Bernardini 1994, 113).6 Paths production unit SCAGL (Socit Cinmatographiquedes Auteurs et Gens des Lettres) was early to foreground the real identities of its play-ers by promoting the names of its actors who hailed from the Comdie Franaise andwho starred in, for example, its 1908 film Assassinat du Duc de Guise. SCAGLsposters from the same year often cut the bodies from their stars heads to render earlycelebrity portraits from under the cinematographic knife, so to speak (Figure 2). Thisparticularly iconic strategy of visual promotion was also used in arts journals such asComoedia well into the teens. Often taking the form of a miniature sketch that waspublished alongside the program bill, the bodiless head, as small as it was, linked thestyle of caf-concert performers with the recognizability of their countenance alone.By 1913, Comoedia, which would have been read on a regular basis by the Parisianavant-garde, began publishing regular cinema columns and film listings alongsidethose for caf-concert players. The cinemas promotional expansion into thisjournalistic realm may have helped ultimately to link the dcoup celebrity headwith the address of cinematic rather than music-hall stardom whose cultural domi-nance was seriously diminished by the cinematographes mass-popularity during thelate 1900s.Figure 2. Candido de Faria, poster, Tous les grands artistes jouent dans les Films dArt Path frres & les films dauteurs (SCAGL, c. 1908). Image courtesy La Fondation Jrme Seydoux-Path, Paris.The cinematic grammar of the emblematic shot should also be noted for itscontribution, both before and during this period, to an evolving visual vernacular offilm star discourse. Used to end or begin a majority of Paths chase-film comedies inthis period, for example, this medium to medium-close-up shot of a films principalplayer maintained the films narrative status as a not yet closed object by haltingnarrative coherence for the pleasures of pure visual display (Burch 1979, 79).7 Theemblematic shot was a step nonetheless in the development of dominant narrative filmlanguage and style, but it did so by setting a character into a closer proximity with theaudience, thereby suturing the audiences gaze to a particular human player as thesignature of a films comic style. In turn, the emblematic shot mobilized spectatorialrecognition of the actor/character as part and parcel of a films comic resonance, whileit also encouraged a pattern of recognition insofar as early chase comedies were anascent form of film genre. By demonstrating the early cinemas particular strength asa system of figural enunciation, the proximity offered by the emblematic shot placedthe actors face as the object of predilection in an emerging system of star significa-tion that would soon depend alone on the power of an actors image or face toprovide a simultaneous encounter with a human being and fictive persona (Bello2004, 181).

Some scholars have argued that the first international star hailed not from Americabut from the Hexagon: by 1910, Max Linder was celebrated as the king of the cine-matographe, but found his monosyllabic moniker Max pronounced upon film

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advertisements by 1909 (Abel 1998).8 Linders emergence as a largely unified filmstar (Linder was making films with Path, beginning in 1905) depended on the coher-ence of his persona as the eccentric if bourgeois dandy prone to domestic and socialconundrums and mishaps. Another early star by the name of Prince was one of

Figure 2. Candido de Faria, poster, Tous les grands artistes jouent dans les Films dArtPath frres & les films dauteurs (SCAGL, c. 1908). Image courtesy of La Fondation JrmeSeydoux-Path, Paris.

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Linders most significant rivals during the late 1900s. At times similarly styled as adandy yet more bumbling, less overtly bourgeois, and typed more aptly as a wide-eyedrube, Prince starred in and subsequently directed SCGAL comedies that featured hisscreen character, Rigadin (Abel 1998, 253).

Yet it was neither Max nor Prince who piqued the interest of Maurice Raynal(1913, 67), film critic for Guillaume Apollinaires journal Les Soires de Paris asearly as 1913. A friend of Picasso, Raynals art criticism from this period fiercelypromoted cubisms importance as a radical style; yet in his film column, hechampioned the low-brow film comedies of Polydor (Andr Deed) or the comicpeople new-yorkais epitomized by F.C. Buny (sic), whom he described as havingescaped from the comic-strip world of Happy Hooligan.9 It is important that such astaunch proponent of modernism took time in his column to distinguish his cinemat-ographic preferences, and that he did so on the basis of his encounter with cinemasearly stars. He found Path Frres reproduction of historical scenes particularlyrevolting for their vulgar stars (Raynal refers to Madeleine Roch and StaciaNapierkowska) who hailed from the Parisian theatre world and who were, in his view,both thoroughly uninteresting and un-cinematographic (Raynal 1913, 6).10 Raynaldemonstrates several essential aspects regarding early cinema stardom in this period,and its relationship to the emerging avant-garde. On the one hand, cinemas were fullysecular and lawless spaces opposed to the trappings of a bourgeois art market; hence,they were attractive venues where radical artists at all stages of their careers couldexpress a fascination with a popular, even louche world, an outlaw medium, comicviolence, anti-naturalism, irony and biting humor (Staller 2001, 2078). On theother hand, Raynals specific rejection of Paths Film DArt productions a rejectionmade more succinct by his identification of the films actors confirms the extent towhich early French star discourse remained tied to bourgeois theatre traditions, andthus to discourses of cinematic legitimization throughout the early teens. WhileRaynal may have appreciated the cinemas visual, sensorial, and quite libidinousspace where smoking and drinking accompanied wry commentary on everything frommusical accompaniment to film acting, his distaste for Film dArts outmoded theat-rical style anticipates what became a pervasive sentiment among the avant-gardetoward French film by the time of the war.11 Hence, despite the iconic and potentiallycritical resonance of Maxs silk top hat and tails, or the comic puissance of Princescharacterization as a naive arriviste, it seems the avant-garde of 1913 could not yetperceive star discourse as a development in either figuration or their burgeoning senseof radical address. Although the avant-garde was being nurtured by early cinema andits early star-system vernacular, the conceptual and iconic palette of stardom stillremained an outcropping of legitimate culture that would soon be the object of theirown attacks.

Following this logic, there is little wonder that neither Maxs nor Princes nameappears in Louis Aragons schema for a Project of Contemporary Literary History(Projet dhistoire littraire contemporaine) that was first printed in an autumn 1922issue of the avant-garde journal Littrature.12 Meant as a retrospective evaluation ofthe developmental trajectory behind Parisian avant-gardism, Aragon first lists Futur-ism, the Ballets Russes, the comic-book figure Nick Carter, Apollinaires Alcools,Lautramont, Rimbaud, Arthur Cravan, de Chirico all remarkable entities andfigures, all recognizable in their own right. But it is in the third section of AragonsProjet that dates between August 1, 1914 and the death of Apollinarie (November 10,1918) that we remark the first mention of cinema stardom: the first line reads Le

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Cinma, Charlot et les Vampires. On the one hand, Aragons periodization suggeststhat by 1914 the cinema had finally been recognized as a powerful force in the avant-gardes cultural experience quite generally; on the other hand, the mention of the nameCharlot more importantly confirms that by 1914 the concept of the film star hadtransformed within French culture. Charlot was a purely filmic creation with anidentity fully liberated from any trace of theatrical discourse that had previouslysignaled the cinemas cultural legitimacy. With Charlot came another stage in theformation of cinema stardom that, as we shall see, made the identity of the filmic char-acter and the human being not only contingent but assimilable.

The reasons for this transformation stem in large part from the wartime influx ofAmerican cinema into France that ignited a second period of a cinema of attractionswhose effect was felt among the avant-garde as well as within the French film industryat large (Gunning 1992).13 This cinemas new attractivity what Walter Benjaminlabeled as a ballistics (Benjamin 2002) was built on the introduction of Americanforms of cinematographic address, gender representation, mise-en-scne, and on-location shooting that garnered exotic views of Western landscapes, for example.But this cinemas effect was also generated by the American cinema industrys moreadvanced strategies of star discourse. In fact, as William DeCordova (1990) hasshown, the American film industry ushered in the picture personality, a transitionalphase of fully developed stardom that mentioned neither an actors previous theatricalrenown, nor any information concerning the stars real-world identity. Distinct fromthe French example, the American industry consciously integrated the audienceslack of knowledge about film actors into its promotional rhetoric by privilegingsecrecy and revelation as a central hermeneutic (845). With the picture personality,DeCordova writes, the spectator was encouraged to follow through all of theassociations created through a specific actors appearance from film to film. The morefilms the spectator saw, and the more she or he focused on the actors, the richer theassociations would be (51).

Hence, when Chaplin arrived upon French screens in March, 1915 only a yearpreceding the first appearances of Dada in Zurich so too did American promotionaltactics that utilized an entirely new semiotics of fame and identity. By 1915, Cin-Journal and Le Film, the most prolific early French journals devoted to the cinema,were replete with images and advertisements that simultaneously promoted the filmsand Chaplin the character, the star. The symbolic economy of recognition generatedby the spectators successive encounter with Chaplin was probably the motor behindAragons own declaration in his literary history, or the one found in Blaise Cendrarspoem Le Musickissme in which he writes: CHARLOT orchestra conductor taps thebaton/Before/the hatted European and his corseted wife.14

But insofar as the name (Aragon and Cendrars use Charlot, and not Chaplin, afterall) and its circulation were central components of the extra-filmic discourseencouraging such spectatorial recognition, Chaplins appellation in the French contextdeserves special attention. The French trade presss promotion of Chaplin mostcertainly took the form of images (hand-drawn illustrations and, later, photographs),but the copyright war surrounding use of Charlot is fascinating for its particularlylithe symbolic economy that the avant-garde later used to great effect. Severalcompanies distributed Chaplins films during this period, but from 1915 until the early1920s the name Charlot was the sole property of Jacques Hak, independent distrib-utor of Keystone and Essanay films (Mathieu, n.d.). Hak fought continuously with theindustry giant Path Frres, whose advertisements were bound by law to use the name

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Charlie Chaplin, and who subsequently insisted on the veritable nature of theirdistributions (Figure 3). Although Chaplin quickly became assimilated into Frenchculture as Charlot, the squabble over the names authenticity was in large part aresponse to a spate of imitators who mimicked Chaplins unique expressivity, andwhose own promotion hailed the spectator with a similarly metonymic image style.One such imitator was comedian Billie Ritchie who was also strongly promoted in

Figure 3. Le film no. 19 Nouvelle Srie (22 July 1916). Image courtesy of Thierry G.Mathieu.

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Cin-Journal and La Cinmatographie Franaise throughout the mid-teens. Thejournals advertisements for Ritchie, who had also crossed the Atlantic to make youlaugh, used publicity tactics that directly challenged Chaplins growing recognizabil-ity as a visual form, including life-sized silhouettes to adorn a cinemas faade (Cin-Journal, 13 November 1915).Figure 3. Cin-Journal (22 July 1916). Image courtesy Thierry G. Mathieu.Despite the natural assimilation of Charlot into the French language, the signify-ing capacity of Chaplins body did not need linguistic support. Only eight months afterChaplins image became fare for French audiences, Cin-Journal promoted Chaplinon its cover without a trace of either Chaplins name or his copyrighted appellation.15

Rather, his gestural form and vestiture made his identity metonymically recognizableeven when his back is turned. Always IMITATED Never EQUALLED the jour-nal announced, underscoring the readers comprehension that Chaplins style wasinimitable and recognizable even when performed by another filmic body, even as itwas detached deracinated from its name (Figure 4).Figure 4. Cin-Journal (1 August 1915). Image courtesy Thierry G. Mathieu.Insofar as Cendrars early poem bears witness to the semiotic density of Charlot,Max Jacobs comparative meditation (1918) on the cinema and the theater (Nord-Sud,1980) traces the further evolution in cinematic stardom that was taking place inFrance near the end of the war. Jacob argues that film advertisements use of real-lifeinformation about their celebrities were merely remnants of an outmoded rhetoricbelonging to bourgeois theatre traditions evidence of theatrical mores in thecinematographic (Jacob 1980). On the one hand, Jacob shares Aragons stance takenthe same year regarding the avant-gardes challenge to contemporary theatre: LesMamelles [de Tiresias, Guillaume Apollinaire, 1917] finally liberates us from

Figure 4. Cin-Journal (1 August 1915). Image courtesy of Thierry G. Mathieu.

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boulevard theatre already the cinema has given us Charlie Chaplin (wont he act inLes Mamelles!), Apollinaire has given us Tirsias (Aragon 1993, 206).

On the other hand, Jacob also delineates the emergence of, precisely, cinemato-graphic stardom as a distinct phenomenal operation opposed to the indigenous onesstill at work in the French context. For Jacob, Charlot, the only name to appear inhis treatise, did not simply denote a player, a man, or a character. Rather, Charlotwas an assimilated signifier connoting Chaplins simultaneous immortality andhumanity, a man made large by this art. Jacob (1980, n.p.) explains that such an effectis made possible through the photographic nature of the cinema: The mirror offeredby the theatre, in an attempt to aggrandize us as heroes, only deforms us; without wish-ing to, the photographic mirror aggrandizes us by externalizing us, by recreating us .16

The French avant-garde made no mistake in their ability to identify the object oftheir filmic attention, and in doing so in poems, essays, plays and art works, theyalso attested to cinema stardoms modern signifying range.17 But the case of Chaplinwas singular insofar as the signs of his particular star could be read apart from of itsimage and name its most specific identity signifiers, or used as a semiotic bridgebetween figuration and abstraction. An incident during the production of JeanCocteaus 1917 ballet Parade perhaps best describes the extent to which by the lateteens Charlot as name, image, metonymic or even conceptual form became radi-cally recognizable. Parade has become known to Chaplin scholars through the playsLittle American Girl character whose jittery walk explicitly referenced Chaplinsgestural neurasthenia.18

In 1917, Cocteau addressed the readers of Nord-Sud, and described the creativeprocess that he shared with choreographer Lonide Massine and costume and setdesigner Pablo Picasso (Cocteau 1980, 2931). Ostensibly, they worked to render anoverall marriage of choreography, decor and costuming, while they also strived tomake the dancers movements recall the ferocious habits of insects from early scien-tific films.19 However, Cocteau also described how Chaplins silhouette appeared byhappenstance during one of the last rehearsals. Suddenly, when the shadow of an enor-mous and poorly constructed two-man horse appeared against the backdrop, it seemedto metamorphose into the silhouette of Fntomass Hackney, with Chaplin in themount.20 The laugh that the shadow apparently generated in Picasso and the stage-hands convinced Cocteau to leave this chimera intact as a rather ghostly presence ofthe star who quite literally possessed the Little American Girl (Maria Chabelska) asshe performed live, on stage.

Chaplins spontaneous and planned appearances as shadow and motion demon-strate his stars transversal mobility across varied fields and material circumstances.By the late teens in Europe, the avant-garde witnessed and took part in Chaplinsunprecedented mass-public renown as a comic persona. But with Charlots increasingcapability to be recognized despite the reduction of identity signifiers, or in his totalabsence, they also realized that his star formation went far beyond the parameters ofthe cinemas mass-public domain. It had entered into the vocabulary of modern art,which by 1918 had already exchanged the classic contours of figurative expression fora signifying economy of traces, shadows, and spatial decomposition.

Cubism may have been the first to execute this feat, but in 1918 MarcelDuchamps Tu m declared itself to be a painting to end all painting, just as the artistrenounced painting for chess. Commissioned by the artists American patronKatherine Drier, the tableaus title alone set a self-referential circuit into motion withits interdependent yet deracinated use of personal and impersonal pronouns. The

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canvas forms themselves perform a similar signifying relay across the horizontalstretch of the picture plane: the shadow of Duchamps earlier readymade BicycleWheel (1913) mobilizes the gaze toward an iconographically painted manicule, orhand that seemingly points both to and beyond another shadow-reference to Ready-made (Hat-Rack, 1917). Picabia would alight upon this self-referential strategy afew years later in LOeil Cacodylate, providing Tzara with a place for his own iconicself-pronouncement that he visually amplified by drawing the outline sketch ofanother hand, this time pointing back toward Tzaras Tzara.

While these examples do not explicitly refer to Chaplin, they nonetheless demon-strate a parallel with cinema stardoms signifying strategies, which, especially inChaplins case, construct identity from the relational distribution of both identitysignifiers, and flat symbols that alone are rather vacuous signs pointing only to them-selves. I am thinking here of the manicule, the phoneme, or, in Chaplins case, thebowler hat, a pair of baggy trousers, or a cane. In the case of Tu m, Duchamps iden-tity was encapsulated by the rendered shadows of previous works alongside the mass-produced symbol of the pointing hand; yet, in works that emerge a few years laterfrom the Parisian Dada movement, a circuit of creation, distribution and reception isformed around the specific economy of artistic identity as also a star identity. In aformulation that Andy Warhol would regenerate on a much larger scale decades later,the Dadaists drew from the very modern circuits of perception that early cinema star-dom provided: human form turned iconic, metonymic, and endlessly reproducible,with a capacity to be recognized across international boarders, languages, andmaterials, and in vastly different circumstances of reception.21

Becoming an avant-garde icon

What Im most impressed with is when I meet somebody I thought I could never meet that Id never dream Id be talking to one day. People like Kate Smith, Lassie, PalomaPicassos mother, Nixon, Mamie Eisenhower, Tab Hunter, Charlie Chaplin.

Andy Warhol

Beginning in 1920, the ubiquitous mobility of Chaplins star is demonstrated in a hostof works and texts that corroborate the Dada ethos and attitude, and that mimic thecirculation flow of Chaplins image and films to artists spread across Europe. Alone,Ivan Golls 1920 film-poem Die Chaplinade [La Chaplinade or Charlot Pote] doesjust this (Goll 1965). It is a fascinating point of intersection between the variousstrains of Dada as an international movement; but it also pinpoints Chaplins value asbridge across cultural, linguistic, and geographical divides. Illustrated by FernandLger in Paris, its German-language text depicted the prima facie visual presence ofChaplins star discourse in the modern urban context. It begins with a description ofhundreds of giant, colourful advertising posters for Chaplins films that would havelined the walls and kiosks of European streets during the teens, while it goes on torecount the story of the Tramps travels through Europe as if on a promotional tour forhis films.22

However, when Golls text ends with a cinematographically inspired passage thatannounces a Chaplin-Christ, we are provided with an important segue to ErwinBlumenfelds 1921 Charlie-Christus who at that time was living in the Netherlands.Blumenfelds watercolour drawing was made the same year as the postcard

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photomontage that he addressed to Tristan Tzara. Titled PresidentDadaChaplinist,Blumenfelds visual missive is a clear response to a message sent previously fromTzaras address: To my Dear Tzara is inscribed above a whimsical and thoroughlyChaplinesque depiction of himself, hands posed under his chin. This gesture,combined with Chaplins name, establishes a circuit of signification that positionsBlumenfelds identity, Chaplins gestural iconicity, and the Dada movement into avoluble relay. Furthermore, the photomontages bottom inscription reads Charlotin a play on the similarity between the name Charlot and the French word charlatan.It thereby summarizes Blumenfelds recognition of the underlying tension containedin his self-portrait: by positing himself as both Chaplin and PresidentDada, he infact performs a playfully fraudulent imitation of two far more powerful sources behindthe formation of his artistic identity and the one expressed in this collage: Chaplin, aswell as Tzara, the authentic DadaPresident.

Epistolary exchange was a mainstay among Tzaras efforts to grow the Dadamovement and to effect a transformation in art practice on an international scale.These exchanges were at times less iconographic than those had with Blumenfeld, butnonetheless they often stitched Chaplin into their fabric of content, such as we find inthe aerogram from Spanish Dadaist Guillermo de Torre in 1920. Addressed to Tzara,de Torre wrote, All of Madrid is becoming hiper-Dadaist [sic]. For my part, I amgoing to read an [sic] study of spasmodic erudition on the influence of Charlot in theDADA movement (de Torre 1920, n.p.). Although the text to which he refersremains regrettably unknown, his message concludes with an enthusiastic descriptionof his plans to organize a cinema screening with his fellow artists. As a twentieth-century carte de visite, the cinema generally and Chaplin quite specifically werecommunication technologies that helped transform shared cultural experience into astructure for radical, artistic identity. But as the self-proclaimed leader of the Dadamovement, it was Tzara who performed the most thoroughgoing elaboration of star-dom in the service of avant-garde revolution. As I will show, Tzaras activities havemuch broader implications for how we should understand the parallel province ofDadas and the cinemas identity formations.

In the years before Tristan Tzara relocated to Paris from Zurich in 1920, he hadalready established the popular press as a key factor in the construction of Dadapractice and its international circulation. As art historians and Dadaists alike haveattested, the vast number of newspaper clippings amassed by Tzara, his colleagues,and by the professional agency the artists hired to track mention of Dada in the press,amounts to nothing short of a life-panorama of both Tzara and the movement Dada:Supposedly this is how it went: day by day, in their local caf, the Dadaists read toone another newspaper critiques from all over the world and delighted in the echo ofDada, each offering new proof that Dada had struck yet another heart (Meyer2004, 11).23 With this image in mind, it is easy to imagine Tzara newspaper in hand,undoubtedly surrounded by Hugo Ball, Marcel Janco, Sophie Taeuber, and JeanArp delighted by the international attention his antics were gaining, as well asnarcissistically titillated to see his own name in print along side those of criminals,politicians, and movie stars. The Genevan newspaper La Feuille (3 August 1918)reported that A new literary school, recently launched by Tristan Tzara, is makinglots of noise in Zurich Anarchy and disorder dominate in the manifesto read byTristan Tzara (Watts 2004, 35). In another Swiss publication from 1920 (LOpinion,No. 8, 21 February 1920), a reporter applies a tone better suited for a bank robberythan an avant-garde event:

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Mr. Tristan Tzara whose nationality remains unknown works in Paris. But the DadaWorld Congress took place last month in Zurich.

During a discussion, at the point of argumentation, Mr. Tzara, it seems, fired four shotsfrom a revolver blanks, fortunately at one of his interlocutors. Intervention by thepolice, appearance at the station. (Watts 2004, 61)

In another particularly successful Dada bluff that was again reported from Geneva,the Zurich Dadaists used a tactic that took far more from slapstick comedy thancriminality. More specifically, the stunt remarkably echoed Chaplins roving treecostume gag that he used in Shoulder Arms (1918), a film that was released in Francein March, 1919. Apparently, Tzara and his cohort built a shapeless cardboardconstruction that stood three metres tall and covered it with boards and coloured paperbearing different inscriptions. Placed between some trees in Burkli Platz on theBahnhofstrasse, the structure probably resembled a deconstructed Morris columnreplete with similarly recomposed advertising posters. However, when a mass ofpeople gathered around to proclaim their outrage at this object or its odd placement,the column was quite literally uprooted from its function as an inanimate object:shouts were uttered from within the structures hollow centre just before the columnwent walking, much to the onlookers surprise. Dada or gaga, its all the same, thereporter concluded (Watts 2004, 59).24

It is important to note the extent to which the Dada movement, in all of its urbancentres, critically drew upon the visual and verbal address of mass journalism in theirown publications. As with the March 1920 issue of Dada, these avant-garde journalswere designed to parody the contents and formal layout of the mainstream press: readalongside the adjacent yet free-standing photograph of Andr Breton, the title forTzaras poem Mr. Aa Submitted to the Tax [Monsieur Aa Soumis la Taxe] reso-nates more aptly as newspaper headline than poetry.25 In the lower right-hand cornerof the same page, above a photograph of Aragon, a small poem might at first glancebe mistaken for a petite annonce, or classified ad: Charlot//lets disconcert/letsdisrupt/lets annoy/everywhere/war by starch (Edwards 1920).26 Another prose poemfound below, this time by Aragon, operates in the guise of a short report on the cinema(or salle de spectacle), the Electric Palace (located in the 2nd arrondissement at 5,Blvd. des Italians), and was no doubt an homage to Aragons particularly cinphilicattitude at the time. Only six months later, Aragon would publish the first two chaptersof Anicet, ou Le Panorama in the Nouvelle Revue Franaise, a work that indisputablytook Chaplin as inspiration for its main character, Pol.

However much these examples signal the Dada movements appropriation ofpopular journalism or the star systems own language within it, Tzaras mediatizedroute to the French capital in 1920 bears even clearer witness. In 1919, the same yearDuchamp travelled to Paris and dismantled a reproduction of the Mona Lisas iconiccountenance with a moustache, Tristan Tzara sent his poster The Only Expression ofthe Modern Man [La seule expression de lhomme moderne] to Andr Breton,Aragon, and Philippe Soupault. The poets were to include it in their journal Littrature a gesture that undoubtedly served both to advertise the international growth of themovement Dada, and to further prepare the Parisians for Tzaras arrival into theFrench capital the following year. Originally created for Tzaras own Zurich-basedjournal Dada, the poster denotes three kinds of subscribers to both the journal and themovement Dada, as Michel Sanouillet (Sanouillet and Poupard-Leiussou 1974, 23)initially observed: first, actual Dada agents (Aragon, Hans Arp, Paul luard, Paul

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Derme, Francis Picabia); second, supporters who had ties with Littrature such asAndr Gide, Jean Paulhan, and Paul Valry; and third, a purely fantastical list ofnames that together stand as icons for a transitional moment in European politics,contemporary thought, and popular culture: the Prince of Monaco (Prince Albert I),Henri Bergson, and Charlie Chaplin. While all of the names on the poster are fascinat-ing and interpretable, Chaplins is the most readable as a source for Tzaras forDadas conceptual project that materially manifested in Paris, Hanover, Berlin, NewYork, and Madrid like Chaplins films.

Yet the subtler implications of this pre-emptive, star-studded advertisingcampaign for Dada are revealed if we recall Andr Bretons letter to Tzara in June,1919. At this moment, we can be sure that Breton had already received the poster (orword of it), because near the letters end Breton pens a two-line paragraph thatterminates with a question mark: This echo of Charlie Chaplin is a delicioussurprise. But of course, its not true? (Sanouillet 2005, 409). The tentative nature ofBretons language is surprising in the context of a missive replete with names, refer-ences, confessions, and seductively effusive remarks. I understand his inquiry indeed, that question mark to mean that somewhere Breton believes, or wants tobelieve, that among all of Tzaras outlandish new subscribers to Dada, Chaplin mayvery well have been authentic. Perhaps unknown to himself, Breton subtly reveals aconfession of his own fandom, his own desire, or his own identification with the starCharlot.

It seems that the poet Paul luard best perceived Bretons love for, if not identifi-cation with, Chaplin. In Prsentations de Circonstance (1920), submitted to FrancisPicabias journal 391 (at the time published as Cannibale), luard enumerated aplayful list describing the various participants of what, by 1920, had become theParisian Dada movement: Tzara was an inventor of subterranean flowers for volca-nos; Soupault was a fragment of a bottle; Picabia had succeeded in making itknown that young girls had only one charm. Breton, however, was a tragic Charlot:Breton, eleven petits morts. Sure to never finish it with this heart, his doorknob(Sanouillet 2005, 182).

When Tzara eventually arrived on Picabias and Germaine Everlings doorstep on17 January 1920, his mechanical mannerisms and appearance as well as hisfamously overstuffed suitcase made him seem not unlike the iconic Tramp. Everling(Sanouillet 2005, 119) recalled:

He was short, slightly stooped over, swinging two short arms at the end of which hungtwo chubby hands. His skin was waxy, his myopic eyes seemed to search behind hispince-nez for a stable point to fix upon. Raising himself up at any moment, with amachine-like gesture, a long tuft of black hair swooped down over his forehead

Only weeks later, at the second official Dada event of 5 February 1920, hisconceptual, clownishly decadent, and undoubtedly philosophic project composed ofstar-based operations became more direct, and operated on a much larger scale. Toassure that a vast and varied public would be in attendance at this event held at theSalon des Indpendants in the Grand Palais des Champs Elyses, days before Tzaracontacted Le Journal du Peuple with information that was published on 2 February:

Charlie Chaplin, the illustrious Charlot, has just arrived in Paris. He is going to give usreason to applaud; his friends the poets of the Movement Dada invite us to the morningmeeting they are organizing the famous American actor will give an address We

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only recently learned that Charlie Chaplin has joined the Dada Movement GabrieledAnnunzio, Henri Bergson, the Prince of Monaco will be converted to Dadaism.27

This stunt indeed drew a large audience that historians have described as raucous:projectiles were thrown, insults hurled, and general outrage expressed because, ofcourse, Charlot was not mentioned and he certainly did not appear.28 In his place stoodthe Dadaists, who read manifestos or poems: Aragon pronounced, Me all that is notme is incomprehensible, while Picabia, speaking as American art collector W.C.Arensberg, declared, Dada is American, Dada is Russian, Dada is Spanish, Dada isSwiss (Sanouillet 2005, 1323). Tzara later recalled in 1950 that the artists simplycontinued to perform with an iconic indifference to the climate of hostility that hismedia stunt had created (Lacte and Haldas 1952, 26).29

If we were to imagine this scene as it really took place, we would have to imaginethe excitement of success the Dadaists felt as the room at the Grand Palais filled tomaximum capacity by noon (Sanouillet 2005, 131). We would also have to imaginehow the eager audience would have been filled with adoring possibly fanatical film enthusiasts who undoubtedly would have looked for Chaplin in the face of eachDadaist who presented himself on stage. Some may have even wondered from adistance if the dark-haired Breton was in fact Charlot himself, albeit a rather tragicone. We would finally be pressed to imagine the moments leading up to the scandal:would have Tristan, Andr, Louis, Paul, Francis, Jean, and Georges all potentiallyenvisioned themselves as the star the masses were feverishly expecting to see inperson?

This is an exercise in speculation, but it nonetheless encourages us to recognize thespectatorial dynamics that Tzara both used and set into motion as he drew upon themost potent effects of cinema stardom. Accepted as a media coup alone, Tzaras stuntwould be deprived of its lithe economy that parallels American film-industry starpromotion, and that also anticipated it: over a year later, on 18 September 1921,Chaplin finally arrived in Paris from London (Anon 1921). With his actions, Tzara didnot simply convey his understanding of stardom as a modern effect of the popularcultures combinatory strategies; he also performed an elaborated conversation withthem so as to transform the spectatorial behaviour before art works into an altogethermore active and affective affair of the masses. There is little doubt that Tzara also usedthis event to further his own identity and notoriety within the Parisian avant-gardescene. In doing so, he instructed the Parisian Dadaists in the ways of iconicity, celeb-rity, and tactical self-promotion such that artistic identity itself became a medium fortwentieth-century art practice.

Replacing genius for the self-possession of a nonetheless highly styled and self-aware anti-artist, artistic identity in the Dada movement was fashioned in countlessaffectations of nimbly mediatized selfhood. Perhaps its best-known avant-garde iconis Rrose Slavy, whose image, when compared with that of the silent starlet MaeMurray (Figure 5), might well have arrived directly from the star unit of anyHollywood-based film production company.30 Duchamps image did in fact arrive inParis from New York, where he regularly posed for Man Rays camera. Yet RroseSlavy is only one of Duchamps many other identity formations that, as David Joselit(2001, 106) suggests, are defined by Nietzsche as the vicious circle, the cycle ofalternate identities through which one must pass to will the self out of its lavalikeformlessness. Cinema stardom was a modern formulation that countered the form-lessness of early twentieth-century artistic identity as Duchamp, Tzara, Picabia and

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Figure 5. Anonymous, publicity image, Mae Murray (c. 1920). Source: Authors collection.

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others understood it. Stardom offered a network of identity signifiers whose relationalcombination promoted spurious human grandeur, beauty, wit, notoriety, and, aboveall, recognizability. But it also made these artists at times deliriously sick with thesymptoms of Chaplinitis symptoms they recognized in the masses around them,and that they then placed into signifying relays that revolutionized modern art prac-tice. With this particular strain of the disease, as Chaplin might have described it, Theslapstick, of course, is a symbol (Hayes 2005, 72).Figure 5. Anonymous, publicity image, Mae Murray (c. 1920). Collection of the author.

AcknowledgementsUnless otherwise noted, all translations are by the author. This essay was originally written forThe Charles Chaplin Conference, London College of Communication, London, July 2005. Theauthor would like to thank Mike Hammond, the journals peer reviewers, and Karl Schoonover.

Notes1. Baker has suggested that Roscoe Fatty Arbuckles signature appears on LOeil

Cacodylate. This would necessarily be a forgery because in 1921, Arbuckle would havebeen in Hollywood caught up in the notorious and highly publicized scandal wherein hewas charged of murder, and later manslaughter. See Baker, 2007.

2. Richard Abels (1975, 1976) early research has been indispensable to my own. As Abelmakes clear, there are many more mentions of Chaplin in avant-garde literature than I canaddress here. For excellent work on Chaplins reception outside of France, see Hake (1990)and Simmons (1999, 2001).

3. Since I began this project, a few art historians have begun to make similar observations;see Janine Mileaf and Matthew S. Witkovsky (2006, 352). In the same volume, BrigidDoherty also offers an insightful interpretation of the cinemas function in Berlin Dada.

4. My formulation for appropriation here is derived in large part from Michel de Certeau(1988).

5. For a sustained discussion of French cinema, caf-concert practices and stars, see KellyConway (2004).

6. Bernhardt signed with Paths Films dArt in 1908, the same year that StaciaNapierkowska, who will be mentioned later, made her first film with Path: LArlsienne(Albert Capellani, 1908). For an excellent, and more recent, volume on Films dArt, see thejournal 1895 (vol. 56, December 2008).

7. See also Burch (1973). For a discussion of the emblematic shot and emblematic close-upsee Salt (1992) and Gunning (1982).

8. It should be noted that Linder was also promoted early by SCGAL. Richard Abels defin-itive account of early French cinema provides the basis for my understanding of earlyFrench stardom; he has remarked that Path renamed Linders film series simply Max by1910 (see Abel 1998). For further reading on French stars, see Vincendeau (2000).

9. Raynals writing contains many misspellings and misattributions. Stuart J. Blackton madeseveral films based on Frederick Burr Oppers comic strip Happy Hooligan around 1900;I have yet to confirm that these films circulated in Paris in 1913.

10. Cest dans ce sens que le cinma pourrait, peut-tre, crer quelque chose et non dans lareproduction de scnes historiques, telle que cette Clopatre coeurante et vue ailleurs, quela vulgarit de Mlle Roche et les dsarticulations de Mlle Napierkowska, la dsosse, neparvinrent pas rendre interessante [It is in this sense that the cinema can, perhaps, createsomething and not in the reproduction of historical scenes, such as this Cleopatra, revoltingand seen elsewhere, and that the vulgarity of Mlle. Roche and the dislocations of Mlle.Napierkowska, the boneless one, do not make interesting.]. Roch, Napierkowska, and MaxLinder are featured on the 1908 poster from SCGAL.

11. See Soupault (1979), who in an essay from 1924 describes how French cinema had becomea wasteland of bourgeois melodramas.

12. The prose of Aragons full manuscript was largely composed in 1923, but remained unpub-lished until 1994. See Aragon (1994), where a facsimile of the time-line is also published.

13. For an elaboration of this second period of attractions, see Wild (2007).

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14. CHARLOT chef dorchestre bat la mesure/Devant/Leuropen chapeaut et sa femmeen corset. According to Abel (1976), Cendrars text was dated November 1916, butwas published in LOeuf dur, 14 (Autumn 1923). Cendrars may be referencing A Nightin the Show (1915) in which an orchestra conductor taps Charlot on the head with hisbaton.

15. Throughout the late teens, close-up images adorn covers of the French film press such asLa Cinmatographie Franaise. Customarily, two covers ran for each issue and featuredthe close-up image of an actor rarely in character. One exception would be issue No. 21,29 March 1919: a close-up of Chaplin appears as his character from Shoulder Arms. Witha gun slung over his shoulder, he addresses the reader with a knowing wink.

16. Le miroir quoffre le thtre voulant nous agrandir en hros nous dforme; le miroirphotographique nous agrandit sans le vouloir en nous extriorisant, en nous recrant.

17. Aragon published his poem Charlot sentimental in Le Film (March 1918), and again inNord-Sud (May 1918).

18. For an analysis of the figure of La Jeune Fille Amricaine in works of the historical avant-garde, see Turner (1998). On the topic of neurasthenia and Chaplins expressivity, seeGordon (2001).

19. Nos bonshommes ressemblrent vite aux insectes dont le film dnonce les habitudesfroces. [Our fellows quickly resembled insects, the film of which reveals their ferocioushabits.]

20. The horse was inspired by the Cirque Mdranos Fratellini Brothers. See Rothschild(1991).

21. See Jones (1995) for a discussion of Chris Makoss portrait of Andy Warhol titled AlterEgo (Andy Warhol in Tribute to Rrose Slavy).

22. Witkovsky (2004) has suggested that Golls poem possibly inspired Vtzslav Nezvals1922 short film script, Charlie in Court (Charlie pred soudem).

23. See also Foster (1996).24. In the French language, gaga might mean doddering, or, as in English, to be crazy

about.25. This journal and many others can be found in the online archive from the University of

Iowa, http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/.26. Charlot//Dconcertons/troublons/nervons//partout//guerre lamidon.27. Charlie Chaplin, lillustre Charlot, vient darriver Paris. Il va nous tre donn de

lapplaudir; ses amis les potes du Mouvement Dada nous convient la matine quilsorganisent Le clbre acteur amricain y prendra la parole On a su dernirement queCharlie Chaplin venait dadhrer au Movement Dada Gabriele dAnnunzio, HenriBergson, Le prince de Monaco [se seraient ] convertis au Dadaisme. mile Duharme wasthe articles author (quoted in Sanouillet 2005, 131).

28. See Lacte and Haldas (1952, 26).29. Incidentally, when Ribemont-Dessaignes was asked to respond to the journal Du Cinmas

survey entitled Are You Afraid of the Cinema?, he responded at length but onlymentioned two names: Jusqu prsent cest dans les films de Charlie Chaplin et de ManRay que jai saisi la prsence immdiate de ce qui peut faire peur [As yet, its in the filmsof Charlie Chaplin and Man Ray that I seized the immediate presence of that which fright-ens.] (see Ribemont-Dessaignes 1994, 511).

30. Incidentally, Mae Murray was the subject of Jacques Rigauts eponymous poem publishedin Littrature (March 1922).

Notes on contributorJennifer Wild is Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago.She is currently completing a manuscript titled The Cinematic Idiom of Modernism.

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Jennifer Wild - Chaplin and the Parisian Avant-garde.pdf

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