The Blindman's Ball [Dada Poster]

New York: The Blindman, 1917. Good. The rare poster for the most significant American Dada event, a party for The Blind Man, a short-lived (two issues) literary and arts journal. The French painter Marcel Duchamp and the American artist Beatrice Wood co-founded The Blind Man. The French writer Henri-Pierre Roché, the author of the novel Jules et Jim, published it. Man Ray pitched in as an editor. Mina Loy contributed to both issues.

The poster measures 10 by 27-5/8 inches. Lithographed, with letterpress, in red and blue on pink paper.

The Blindman's Ball, as a Dada event, had rules-or "Axioms du Bal" (according to the ad in the first issue of the journal)-the dance would go on all night ("The Blind Man must see the sun") and "romantic rags are requested." The axioms concluded with the admonition "There is a difference between a tuxedo and a Turk and guests not in costume must sit in bought-and-paid-for boxes."

Beatrice Wood designed the poster and its central figure, described by Andrea Barnet in All-Night Party: The Women of Bohemian Greenwich Village and Harlem, 1913-1930, as "an insolent, high-stepping stick figure thumbing its nose at the world." This poster is one of the few major New York art posters from the early twentieth century designed by a female artist.

According to Barnet, "Guests were told to dress as schools of modern art. Most invented their own schools. Clara Tice came as a steam radiator, a friend as a hard-boiled egg. Duchamp dressed in drag, [Mina Loy] came as a cross between a Pierrot and a lampshade. Beatrice Wood was clad as a Russian peasant."

In 2021, Pierre Bergé auctioned an original example described as "restored" and signed by Wood, for €20,800 ($24,700). The present example comes from the collection of the French bibliophile Paul Destribats. This copy seems to have been folded in half at some point, causing the stiff paper to crack across the center. The poster has been laid down on Japanese tissue paper and mounted to a linen backing with repairs to the tears. The fold line and a second nearby crack are visible on inspection, but the poster presents well.