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In the neglected sculpture garden of the De Pisis Museum in Ferrara, Italy, stands Man Ray's Monument to the Unknown Painter, a slender steel shaft mounted on a pedestal. Encoded in this sculpture, we may read Man Ray's challenge to the militarism of his era, his tribute to the many artists who died in the First World War, or his homage to artists of all times who have died unrecognized. Yet the equating of painters with soldiers also bespeaks the masculine exclusivity of Man Ray and his circle. Although Dadaism and its offshoots sought to outrage bourgeois morality and to disrupt prevailing conceptual schemes, many of the (male) artists connected to this avant-garde movement remained peculiarly blind to the sexist conventions of their times, viewing women primarily as muses, models, and sexual objects.
As Paul B. Franklin writes in Women in Dada, a collection of essays devoted to women's contribution to Dada published by MIT Press, "the history of Dada tells the tale of male artists and writers grappling with the moral bankruptcy of modern civilization in the aftermath of World War I. In this gendered narrative, men's experiences-whether in the trenches or in the art studio-have taken precedence over those of women. If and when women gained entry into this exclusive Boys' Club, they did so as artistic muses rather than as active participants."
Despite its reputation as a bad boys' club, Dada in New York and Paris was largely promoted, performed, financed, and documented by women such as Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, the editors of the influential Little Review, who were among the first to publish Dada poetry and art work; Katherine Dreir, Boston socialite and painter, patron of Duchamp; and Peggy Guggenheim, who provided money to numerous artists connected to the movement. Among the many female artists in Europe and America inspired by the confrontational spirit of Dada were Clara Tice, Beatrice Wood, Suzanne Duchamp, Berenice Abbot, and Baroness Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven. In their careers as patrons and artists, most of these women struggled to have their efforts taken seriously by the public.
Among these Dada women, one emblematic figure stands out in stark detail in a photograph from 1915: shaved head, aviator's helmet topped by a jaunty feather, boldly striped...