ABSTRACT
Ruth Hemus's superb Dada's Women reads written work by Celine Arnauld—and visual arts production by other women Dadaists—against canonical Dada history, and offers some insights into individual texts by Arnauld. Naomi Sawelson-Gorse's collection Women in Dada has also been seminal in the initiation of critical thinking about both the representation and function of gender in Dada, and the work of individual women associated with the movement in different centres of activity. Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia's Dada writing includes a 'Petit Manifeste' from 391, which is both a presentation of statements to an implied audience or reader and an exercise in avant-garde prose poetique. Marguerite Buffet had first-hand experience of Dada, having taken part in the Dada soiree of 5 February 1920 during the very early part of the movement's Paris phase, but her parting reference to 'Geo and Co' evokes both Dada's widening geographical spread and a prescient feeling that Dada and its proprietors had begin to incorporate themselves.
