[DADAISM]: A rare original printed broadside, Excursions & Visites Dada – 1ère Visite: Église Saint Julien le Pauvre, one page, large 4to, n.p. (Paris), April 1921, printed in black and blue on pale green paper and announcing the celebrated first Dada excursion, to take place at the church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, Paris, at 3pm on Thursday, 14th April 1921. The striking typographical design, attributed to Tristan Tzara, incorporates numerous characteristically provocative Dada slogans, including ´DADA un culte nouveau´ (Translation: ´DADA a new cult´), ´Distribution de bas de soie à 5,85´ (Translation: ´Distribution of silk stockings at 5.85´), ´La propreté est le luxe du pauvre: soyez sale´ (Translation: ´Cleanliness is the luxury of the poor: be dirty´), ´Lavez vos seins comme vos gants´ (Translation: ´Wash your breasts like your gloves´) and ´Merci pour le fusil´ (Translation: ´Thank you for the rifle´). The central text announces that ´Les dadaïstes de passage à Paris voulant remédier à l'incompétence de guides et de cicerones suspects, ont décidé d'entreprendre une série de visites à des endroits choisis, en particulier à ceux qui n'ont vraiment pas de raison d'exister´ (Translation: ´The Dadaists passing through Paris, wishing to remedy the incompetence of guides and suspicious cicerones, have decided to undertake a series of visits to selected places, particularly those which really have no reason to exist´), further declaring that participation in the first visit would enable the public ´de se rendre compte du progrès humain, des destructions possibles et de la nécessité de poursuivre notre action´ (Translation: ´to appreciate human progress, the possibilities of destruction and the necessity of continuing our action´). The excursion was advertised as being conducted by an exceptional assembly of leading figures of the Dada movement: Gabrielle Buffet, Louis Aragon, Jean Arp, André Breton, Paul Éluard, Théodore Fraenkel, J. Hussar, Benjamin Péret, Francis Picabia, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, Jacques Rigaut, Philippe Soupault and Tristan Tzara. Some light age wear and minor toning to the edges, otherwise VG

An important document of Paris Dada, announcing the first of a projected series of deliberately unconventional excursions intended to transfer Dadaist provocation from the conventional artistic arena into everyday life. Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, an ancient church on the Left Bank opposite Notre-Dame, was deliberately selected precisely because the Dadaists considered it a place of little apparent interest. Rather than directing the public towards celebrated monuments, picturesque scenery or sites of historical importance, Dada proposed excursions to locations which, as the present broadside mischievously declares, ´really have no reason to exist´.

The excursion took place on 14th April 1921 in poor weather and attracted only a modest audience. Breton and Tzara addressed the gathering in the church garden, while Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes conducted an absurdist guided tour, reportedly reading definitions selected at random from a Larousse dictionary. The event was not an immediate success and the projected subsequent visits – advertised here as including the Louvre, Buttes-Chaumont, Gare Saint-Lazare, Mont du Petit Cadenas and Canal de l'Ourcq – were abandoned.

Despite its contemporary failure, the Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre excursion has assumed considerable importance in the history of the avant-garde. By abandoning the theatre, gallery and literary meeting in favour of an apparently purposeless collective intervention in an ordinary urban location, the Dadaists anticipated later forms of performance art, the artistic happening and the Surrealists' explorations of the city. It also brought together an extraordinary constellation of figures who would soon follow divergent paths, with Aragon, Breton, Éluard and Péret subsequently becoming central figures in the emergence of Surrealism.

The event also belongs to the final phase of Paris Dada. The growing differences between Tzara and Breton would become increasingly pronounced during 1921, and Aragon later recalled the visit to Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre as the ´dernière manifestation Dada´ (Translation: ´last Dada demonstration´), after which meaningful relations between the different factions of the movement had largely broken down.