Enduring Ornament by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

April 5, 2023April 2, 2023 ~ JezzieG

Enduring Ornament
1913
Readymade
Rusted metal ring
Private Collection

The Baroness’ earliest known found object, “Enduring Ornament” is said to have been found on the way to marry the Baron Leo von Freytag-Loringhoven in New York. It consists of a rusted iron ring, however, the Baroness saw in its roundness a female symbol and not a wedding ring. The Baroness found the ring and anointed it a piece of art in 1913

Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven 1874-1927

Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
Dada, Performance Art, Readymade and The Found Object, Modern Photography, Proto-Feminist Artists
Born: 12 July 1874, Swinemunde, Germany
Nationality: German-American
Died: 14 December 1927, Paris, France

The Baroness, as Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven was known, was a living legend in the bohemian enclave of Greenwich Village, New York in the years before and after the First World War. She was a catalyst and provocateur of the burgeoning Dada movement in New York, and the Baroness obliterated the conventional boundaries and norms of womanhood and femininity whilst upending the notions of what was considered to be art

God by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

March 30, 2023March 26, 2023 ~ JezzieG

God
1917
Dada
Plumbing trap mounted on mitre box
The Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA

“God,” a readymade sculpture exemplifies the spirit and avant-garde strategies of New York Dada. Made in the same year as Duchamp’s “Fountain” it consists of a cast iron drain trap set on its end and mounted on a mitre box. The Baroness elevates everyday and industrial art and questions the view on the use value and aesthetic value of art. The piece shows a Dadaist irreverence towards the authority of higher powers, substituting the holy with lowly plumbing materials. The sculpture, a pipe no longer fit for purpose is also suggestive of a twisted phallus and perhaps the Baroness is making a critique of a male-dominated, phallocentric society.

Dada Portrait of Berenice Abbott by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

February 26, 2023February 26, 2023 ~ JezzieG

Dada Portrait of Berenice Abbott
1923-1926
Dada
Gouache, metallic paint, and tinted lacquer with varnish, metal foil, celluloid, fiberglass, glass beads, metal objects, cut-and-pasted painted paper, gesso, and cloth on paperboard
The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Bernice Abbot was a lifelong friend of the Baroness. They met in New York in 1919 and Abbott was taken with the Baroness’s performance transgressions. The portrait is rich with references to Abbott’s appearance and life and captures the close relationship they shared. The Baroness’s dog is pictured at the bottom of the canvas, symbolic of the animal’s fondness for Abbott.

The Baroness, as Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven was known, was a living legend in the bohemian enclave of Greenwich Village, New York in the years before and after the First World War. She was a catalyst and provocateur of the burgeoning Dada movement in New York, and the Baroness obliterated the conventional boundaries and norms of woman hood and femininity whilst upending the notions of what was considered to be art

Cathedral by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

February 9, 2023February 7, 2023 ~ JezzieG

Cathedral
1918
Sculpture
Wood fragment, 10 7/16 in.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA

Freytag-Loringhoven’s “Cathedral” is formed from a piece of fractured wood mounted on a scrap of construction wood. Sleek lines are replaced with jagged wood offering an organic riposte of the steel and glass skyscrapers that were beginning to rise in New York City. One of those early buildings, the Woolworth Building (1912) was known as the “Cathedral of Commerce”. Freytag-Loringhoven’s suggestively named readymade offers a critique of the capitalist society that worshipped the gods of commerce.