Matthew Witkovsky

Diane Dufour

The short-lived Japanese magazine Provoke is recognized as a major achievement in world photography of the postwar era, uniting the country's most contentious examples of protest photography, vanguard fine art, and critical theory of the late 1960s and early 70s in only three issues overall. Provoke is accordingly treated here as a model synthesis of the complexities and overlapping uses of photography in postwar Japan. The writing and images by Provoke's members - critic Koji Taki, poet Takahiko Okada, photographers Takuma Nakahira, Yutaka Takanashi, Daido Moriyama - were suffused with the tactics developed in some Japanese protest books which made use of innovative graphic design and provocatively "poor" materials. Recording live actions, photography in these years was also an expressive form suited to emphasize and critique the mythologies of modern life with a wide spectrum of performing artists such as Nobuyoshi Araki, Koji Enokura and Jiro Takamatsu. This catalogue accompanies the first exhibition ever to be held about the magazine and its creators and focuses on its historical context. It covers the preliminary period leading to its first and the aftermath following its last issue. Provoke takes shape as a strongly interpretative explanation of currents in Japanese art and society at a moment of historical collapse and renewal.

Photography in Japan 1960-1975

Provoke: Between Protest and Performance

Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.)

Leah Dickerman

National Gallery of Art (U.S.)

Centre Georges Pompidou

Brigid Doherty

Dorothea Dietrich

Sabine T. Kriebel

Janine Mileaf

Michael Taylor, L.Th., B.Th.

Michael Taylor, Sr.

Dada includes many of the key figures in the history of modernism, such as Hans Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Hannah Hoch, John Heartfield, Francis Picabla, Kurt Schwitters, and Sophie Taeuber, and introduces artists who are less well known. This book explores the variety of art-making practices that emerged between 1916 and 1924 in the movement's primary centers: Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, and Paris. Six city essays by scholars of the movement; an illustrated chronology; more than forty artists' biographies; period photographs; and extensive plate sections document a provocative and influential artistic era. This illustrated book accompanies Dada, the most comprehensive museum exhibition of Dada art ever mounted in the United States, on view in 2006 at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition was on view at the Musee national d'art moderne-Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2005.

Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris

Dada

Matthew Witkovsky

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