The Blind Man

The Blind Man was an art and Dada journal published briefly by the New York Dadaists in 1917.

History

Henri-Pierre Roché and Marcel Duchamp, visiting from France, organized the magazine with Beatrice Wood in New York City. Mina Loy also contributed to the first, Independents' Number issue.

They published only one more issue, with the following contributors:

Walter Arensberg (Axiom, Theorem, poems),
Gabrièle Buffet-Picabia (Marie Laurencin, essay),
Robert Carlton (Bob) Brown (poems),
Frank Crowninshield (letter),
Charles Demuth (For Richard Mutt, poem),
Marcel Duchamp, "Charles Duncan" (poem), an essay about Louis Michael Eilshemius,
Mina Loy (prose),
Louise Norton (essay),
Francis Picabia (Medusa, poem),
Joseph Stella (Coney Island, picture),
Frances Simpson Stevens (poem),
Alfred Stieglitz (Fountain by R. Mutt, photography; letter) and
Clara Tice (drawing).

Volume 2 is best known for the group's reaction to the rejection of Duchamp's Fountain by an unjuried art show in 1917. Although the magazine had a brief life, it was influential as the first publication by Dadaists in the United States.

After The Blind Man, Duchamp also launched another short-lived magazine, of which only a single issue was made, Rongwrong.^[1]^[2]

Facsimile

As part of the Dada centennial celebrations, Ugly Duckling Presse published a 1000-copy, boxed-set, limited-edition facsimile of the two editions of The Blind Man, called The Blind Man: New York Dada, 1917.^[3]

Footnotes

^ "DADA and Modernist Magazines – Rongwrong". www.dada-companion.com. Archived from the original on 11 November 2018. Retrieved 22 November 2018.
^ Hofmann, Irene E. (1996). "Documents of Dada and Surrealism: Dada and Surrealist Journals in the Mary Reynolds Collection". Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies. 22 (2): 131–197. doi:10.2307/4104318. JSTOR 4104318. Text also published here.
^ "A Trove of Dadaist Fun Is Reissued" by Joseph Nechvatal, Hyperallergic, January 19, 2018