{"id":3240,"date":"2017-09-29T20:17:05","date_gmt":"2017-09-29T20:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/?p=3240"},"modified":"2017-09-30T00:10:41","modified_gmt":"2017-09-30T00:10:41","slug":"baroness-elsa-von-freytag-loringhoven-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/2017\/09\/29\/baroness-elsa-von-freytag-loringhoven-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although she shared the title of \u201cMother of Dada\u201d with Gertrude Stein, no one in New York could argue that Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven didn\u2019t look the part. The woman who would later electrify New York with her eccentric birdcage dress and bustle-taillight was born Else Pl\u00f6tz in 1874 in the small town of Swinem\u00fcnde, Germany. Elsa Pl\u00f6tz (then Elsa Endell after a brief marriage) came to the United States in 1910. She was accompanying her second husband, Felix Paul Greve, to Kentucky following his\u00a0staged suicide. They stayed in Kentucky for only a year before Greve once again absconded, leaving Elsa on her own to make a living. After working briefly as an artist\u2019s model in Cincinnati, she found her way to New York, settling at 130th<\/sup>\u00a0Street in Harlem. A quick marriage followed to the German Baron Leopold von Freytag-Loringhoven, who would later commit suicide after five years as a\u00a0prisoner of war in France during WWI. During this time, the Baroness made connections through the modeling she did for photographers and artists and through the New York Dada social scene, beginning friendships and collaborations with artists and writers such as Marcel Duchamp, Djuna Barnes, and Morton Schamberg.<\/p>\n

After a brief stint in Philadelphia and another in a Connecticut jail for espionage, the Baroness settled back in New York, this time on 14th<\/sup>\u00a0Street at the edge of Greenwich Village, and began working on her art with a renewed intensity. She sculpted a number of cutting-edge proto-Dadaist works during this time, including \u201cCathedral\u201d and \u201cThe Cast-Iron Lover.\u201d She also wrote a number of\u00a0experimental sound poetry pieces, once of which was published in the\u00a0Little Review<\/em>\u00a0at the same time as James Joyce\u2019s\u00a0Ulysses<\/em>\u00a0was serialized. She continued her relationships with a number of important Dadaist figures as the movement took off in New York; in 1921, Duchamp and photographer Man Ray released a since-lost film titled\u00a0Elsa, Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven, Shaving Her Pubic Hair.<\/em>\u00a0Her eccentric dress and behavior made her an enigmatic figure in the New York Dada scene, and she overlapped with Loy in attendance New York artistic salons such as the Arensberg Apartment.<\/p>\n

Although the Baroness was a prolific sculptor and frequently contributed poetry to little magazines such as\u00a0The Little Review<\/em>, her most important contribution to the art world was the character of the\u00a0Baroness herself: many credit her as an early pioneer of performance art. An outlandish dresser, she was known for wearing everything from a tin-can bra to a live bird to a set of postage stamps stuck on her face. The Baroness\u2019s affinity for the Dadaist movement, though, ran deeper than just costume. Publisher Jane Heap, who included the Baroness\u2019s works in her\u00a0Little Review<\/em>, described her as \u201cthe first American dada [\u2026] the only one living anywhere who dresses dada, loves dada, lives dada.\u201d Her prickly, exaggerated public persona was\u00a0a constant Dada performance, which made her both indispensable to the burgeoning movement and a deeply alienating presence. Both Marcel Duchamp and William Carlos Williams famously rejected her romantic advances, the latter of which proved an embarrassment that the Baroness later chronicled in her critical poem \u201cThee I Call Thee Hamlet of the Wedding Ring,\u201d published in the\u00a0Little Review.<\/em><\/p>\n

Many of the Baroness\u2019s creations were assemblages: she wore garbage picked up off the ground (or stolen), and she made her art from found materials as well. As such, her work provided a direct precursor to Loy\u2019s later assemblage art, and indeed to the Dadaist concept of the collage. Both Loy and the Baroness were much closer to famous men of the movement than they were with each other (often, as in the case of Duchamp, the same famous men). Nevertheless, the two women were key figures in the movement; they also proved to be useful figureheads. At the height of the obscenity trial facing the Little Review<\/em> after its publication of Joyce\u2019s Ulysses<\/em>, the Review<\/em>\u2019s editors planned an issue featuring both Loy and the Baroness \u201cas a defense of Art.\u201d The women were photographed together by Man Ray for this issue.<\/p>\n

Like Loy, the Baroness went through great periods of financial dependency and destitution, which led to her move from New York to Berlin in 1922. On December 14, 1927, the Baroness was found dead of asphyxiation by gas in her apartment. Although many suspect that her death was suicide, she never left a note. Barnes continued to manage her letters and estate; a full collection of the Baroness\u2019s poetry,\u00a0Body Sweats<\/em>, did not arrive until 2011. As with Loy, scholars have recently led a revival of interest in the Baroness\u2019s work and life, including\u00a0Mamadada<\/em>, a collaborative biodrama made collectively by over fifty filmmakers.<\/p>\n

Works Cited:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Burke, Carolyn.\u00a0Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy<\/em>. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996. Print.<\/p>\n

Gammel, Irene.\u00a0Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada, and Everyday Modernity \u2014 A Cultural Biography<\/em>. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. eBook.<\/p>\n

Jones, Amelia.\u00a0Irrational Modernism: A Neurasthenic History of New York Dada.\u00a0<\/em>Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004. eBook.<\/p>\n

Lappin, Linda. \u201cDada Queen in the Bad Boys\u2019 Club.\u201d\u00a0Southwest Review,<\/em>\u00a0vol. 89, no. 2\/3, 2004, pp. 307-319). Web.<\/p>\n

Mamadada.<\/em>\u00a0Directed by Lily Benson and Cassandra Guan, contributions by Leslie Allison, Raoul Anchondo, et al. Independently released, 2013.<\/p>\n

Miller, Christianne. \u201cTongues \u2018loosened in the melting pot:\u201d The Poets of Others and the Lower East Side.\u201d\u00a0Modernism\/modernity<\/em>, vol. 14, no. 3, 2007, pp. 455-476. Web.<\/p>\n

Voyce, Stephen. \u201c\u2018Make the World Your Salon\u2019: Poetry and Community at the Arensberg Apartment.\u201d\u00a0Modernism\/modernity<\/em>, vol. 15, no. 4, 2008, pp. 627-646. Web.<\/p>\n

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