Opiate of the Messes

Francis Picabia, "Edtaonisl (Clergyman)"
1913; oil on canvas, 118.75" x 118.25"; Art Institute of Chicago.
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

Francis Picabia, 1879-1953.

The Cubists want to cover Dada with snow; that may surprise you, but it is so, they want to empty the snow from their pipe to bury Dada.

Are you sure?

Perfectly sure, the facts are revealed by grotesque mouths. They think that Dada can prevent them from practising this odious trade: Selling art expensively.

Art costs more than sausages, more than women, more than everything.

Art is visible like God! (see Saint-Sulpice.)

Art is a pharmaceutical product for imbeciles.

~ from Francis Picabia's "Dada Manifesto" (1920), as translated in Manifesto: A Century of Isms, by Mary Ann Caws