ABSTRACT
The debut of Jasper Johns had prompted Alfred Barr to apply a label: neo-Dada. His logic was clear. Johns's ready-made images recalled the ready-made objects the Dadaists had presented as art four decades earlier. Man Ray's Gift (1921) is an iron with a row of tacks affixed to its flat surface, points outward. Dada offered puzzles and, on occasion, an affront. In 1920 Francis Picabia nailed a toy monkey to a slab of wood and called it Portrait of Cézanne. Johns annoyed some and baffled others with his Flags and Targets, yet the neo-Dada label did not stick firmly to these paintings.
