Elsa Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven (née Else Hildegard Plötz; (12 July 1874 – 14 December 1927) was a German-born

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

visual artist and

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

, who was active in

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

, New York, from 1913 to 1923, where her radical self-displays came to embody a living

Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Pari ...

. She was considered one of the most controversial and radical women artists of the era. Her provocative poetry was published posthumously in 2011 in '' Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven''. ''The New York Times'' praised the book as one of the notable art books of 2011.

Early life

Elsa Plötz was born, on 12 July 1874, in Swinemünde in

Pomerania Pomerania ( pl, Pomorze; german: Pommern; Kashubian: ''Pòmòrskô''; sv, Pommern) is a historical region on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea in Central Europe, split between Poland and Germany. The western part of Pomerania belongs to ...

, Germany, to Adolf Plötz, a mason, and Ida Marie Kleist. Her relationship with her father was temperamental—she emphasized how controlling he was in the family, as well as how cruel, yet big-hearted he was. In her art, she related the ways that political structures promote masculine authority in family settings, maintaining the state's patriarchal societal order. Her discontent with her father's masculine control may have fostered her anti-patriarchal activist approach to life. On the other hand, the relationship that she had with her mother was full of admiration—her mother's craft involving the repurposing of found objects could have spawned Freytag-Loringhoven's utilization of street debris/found objects in her own artworks. She trained and worked as an actress and vaudeville performer and had numerous affairs with artists in Berlin, Munich and Italy. She studied art in Dachau, near Munich. She married Berlin-based architect

August Endell August Endell (1871–1925) was a designer, writer, teacher, and German architect. He was one of the founders of the Jugendstil movement, the German counterpart of Art Nouveau. His first marriage was with Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Life Augus ...

in a civil service on August 22, 1901, in Berlin, becoming Elsa Endell. They had an "open relationship", and in 1902 she became romantically involved with a friend of Endell, the minor poet and translator Felix Paul Greve (who later went by the name Frederick Philip Grove). After the trio travelled together to Palermo, Sicily in late January 1903, the Endells' marriage disintegrated. They divorced in 1906. Although their separation was acrimonious, she dedicated several satirical poems to Endell. In 1906, she and Greve returned to Berlin, where they were married on August 22, 1907. By 1909, Greve was in deep financial trouble. With his wife's help, he staged a suicide and departed for North America in late July 1909. In July 1910, Elsa joined him in the United States, where they operated a small farm in Sparta, Kentucky, not far from Cincinnati. Greve suddenly deserted her in 1911 and went west to a bonanza farm near Fargo, North Dakota, and to Manitoba in 1912. There are no records of a divorce from Greve. Elsa started modeling for artists in Cincinnati, and made her way east via West Virginia and Philadelphia, and then she married her third husband, the German Baron Leopold von Freytag-Loringhoven (son of

Hugo von Freytag-Loringhoven Hugo Friedrich Philipp Johann Freiherr von Freytag-Loringhoven (May 20, 1855 – October 19, 1924) was a Prussia, Prussian general and a writer on military matters, being awarded the Pour le Mérite in 1916 for his work as a historian. Biog ...

), in November 1913 in New York. At that time Elsa began to make sculptures out of found and discarded objects. She later became known as "the dadaist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven".

Work

Baroness Von Freytag - Loringhoven LCCN2014714092

In New York City, Freytag-Loringhoven supported herself by working in a cigarette factory and by posing as a model for artists such as

Louis Bouché Louis George Bouché (March 18, 1896 – August 7, 1969) was an American artist, muralist, and decorator. He was a 1933 Guggenheim Fellow. Life Bouché was born in New York City. He traveled to Paris at age thirteen in 1909 to live with famil ...

George Biddle George Biddle (January 24, 1885 – November 6, 1973) was an American painter, muralist and lithographer, best known for his social realism and combat art. A childhood friend of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he played a major role in establi ...

, and

Theresa Bernstein Theresa Ferber Bernstein-Meyerowitz (March 1, 1890 – February 13, 2002) was an American artist and writer born in Kraków, in what is now Poland, and raised in Philadelphia. She received her art training in Philadelphia and New York City. Over ...

. She appeared in photographs by

Man Ray Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to eac ...

George Grantham Bain George Grantham Bain (January 7, 1865 – April 20, 1944) was a New York City photographer. He was known as "the father of foreign photographic news". Biography He was born in Chicago, Illinois, on January 7, 1865, to George Bain and Clara Mathe ...

and others.

Poetry

The Baroness was given a platform for her poetry in ''

The Little Review ''The Little Review'', an American literary magazine founded by Margaret Anderson in Chicago's historic Fine Arts Building, published literary and art work from 1914 to May 1929. With the help of Jane Heap and Ezra Pound, Anderson created a m ...

'', where, starting in 1918, her work was featured alongside chapters of

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

's '' Ulysses''.

Jane Heap Jane Heap (November 1, 1883 – June 18, 1964) was an American publisher and a significant figure in the development and promotion of literary modernism. Together with Margaret Anderson, her friend and business partner (who for some years was al ...

considered the Baroness "the first American dada." She was an early female pioneer of

sound poetry Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging literacy and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words". By definition, sound p ...

, but also made creative use of the dash, while many of her

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsBody Sweats''. Her personal papers were preserved after her death by her editor, literary agent, artistic collaborator, and lover

Djuna Barnes Djuna Barnes (, June 12, 1892 – June 18, 1982) was an American artist, illustrator, journalist, and writer who is perhaps best known for her novel ''Nightwood'' (1936), a cult classic of lesbian fiction and an important work of modernist liter ...

. University of Maryland Libraries acquired a collection of her work with the papers of Barnes in 1973 and subsequently separated von Freytag-Lorninghoven's papers and treated them as an individual collection. The collection contains correspondences, visual poems, and other artistic/literary works by the artist. The University of Maryland's special collections has an extensive digital archive of her manuscripts.

Collage, performance and assemblage

In New York, the Baroness also worked on assemblage, sculptures and paintings, creating art out of the rubbish and refuse she collected from the streets. The Baroness was known to construct elaborate costumes from found objects, creating a "kind of living collage" that erased the boundaries between life and art. The Baroness' elaborate costumes both critiqued and challenged the bourgeoisie notions of feminine beauty and economic worth. She adorned herself with utilitarian objects like spoons, tin cans, and curtain rings, as well as street debris that she came across. The Baroness' use of her own body as medium was deliberate, to transform herself into a specific type of spectacle—one that women who complied to the constraints of femininity of the time would be humiliated to embody. By doing so, she controlled and established agency over the visual access to her own nudity, unhinged the presentational expectations of femininity by appearing androgynous, drew upon ideas of women's selfhood and sexual politics, and provided emphasis on her anti-consumerism and anti-aestheticism outlooks. She included her body's smells, perceived imperfections, and leakages in her body art, encompassing Irrational Modernism. Irrational Modernism "...maintains a finely calibrated balance between rationality and irrationality, reason and affect, public and personal. Boundaries are crossed, but not collapsed." That being said, the placement of her raw, true personal body/self in a public space by her own means and her own fashion, could not be better explained than as Irrational Modernism. The Baroness' body art was not only a sculpture and living collage, but also a form of dadaist performance art and activism. Few artworks by the Baroness exist today. Several known found object works include ''Enduring Ornament'' (1913), ''Earring-Object'' (1917–1919), ''Cathedral'' (c. 1918) and ''Limbswish'' (c. 1920). Rediscovered by the

Whitney Museum The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

in New York City in 1996, her '' Portrait of Marcel Duchamp'' (1920–1922) is another example of her assemblages. There has been speculation that some artworks attributed to other artists of the period can now either be partially attributed to the Baroness, or raise the possibility that she may have created the works. One work, called ''

God In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...

'' (1917) had for a number of years been solely attributed to the artist Morton Livingston Schamberg. The Philadelphia Museum of Art, which collection includes ''God'', now credits the Baroness as a co-author of this piece. Amelia Jones suggested that this artwork's concept and title was created by the Baroness, however, it was likely constructed by both Schamberg and the Baroness. This sculpture, ''God'', involved a cast iron plumbing trap and a wooden mitre box, assembled in a phallic-like manner.Lappin, Lunda. "Dada Queen in the Bad Boys' Club: Baroness Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven." Southwest Review 89, no. 2/3 (2004): 307–19. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43472537. Her concept behind the shape and choice of materials is indicative of her commentary on the worship and love that Americans have for plumbing that trumps all else; additionally, it is revealing of the Baroness's rejection of technology.

''Fountain'' (1917)

Perhaps the most notable of plumbing sculptures in Modern art history is ''

Fountain A fountain, from the Latin "fons" (genitive "fontis"), meaning source or spring, is a decorative reservoir used for discharging water. It is also a structure that jets water into the air for a decorative or dramatic effect. Fountains were ori ...

'' (1917), by

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...

. The ready-made has recently been connected to the Baroness speculatively. This is supported by a "great deal of circumstantial evidence." The speculation is largely based on a letter written by Marcel Duchamp to his sister Suzanne (dated April 11, 1917) where he refers to the famous ready-made: "One of my female friends under a masculine pseudonym, Richard Mutt, ''sent'' in a porcelain urinal as a sculpture." Literary historian

Irene Gammel Irene Gammel is a Canadian literary historian, biographer, and curator. She has published numerous books including ''Baroness Elsa'', a groundbreaking cultural biography of New York Dada artist and poet Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, and ...

suggested in 2002 that the "female friend" in question was the Baroness. Duchamp never identified his female friend, but three candidates have been proposed: an early appearance of Duchamp's female alter ego

Rrose Sélavy Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...

, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, or Louise Norton (a close friend of Duchamp, later married to the avant-garde French composer Edgard Varèse, who contributed an essay to ''The Blind Man'' defending ''Fountain'', and whose address is discernible on the paper entry ticket in the Stieglitz photograph). "It is important to note, however, that Duchamp wrote ‘sent’ not ‘made’, and his words do not indicate that he was implying that someone else was the work's creator." The piece is a ready-made apart from the signature.

Death

In 1923, Freytag-Loringhoven went back to Berlin, expecting better opportunities to make money, but instead found an economically devastated post-World War I Germany. Despite her difficulties in the

Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is ...

, she remained in Germany, penniless and on the verge of insanity. Several friends in the expatriate community, in particular

Bryher Bryher ( kw, Breyer "place of hills") is one of the smallest inhabited islands of the Isles of Scilly, with a population of 84 in 2011, spread across . History The name of the island is recorded as ''Brayer'' in 1336 and ''Brear'' in 1500. Ge ...

, Berenice Abbott, and

Peggy Guggenheim Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim ( ; August 26, 1898 – December 23, 1979) was an American art collector, bohemian and socialite. Born to the wealthy New York City Guggenheim family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down wi ...

, provided emotional and financial support. Freytag-Loringhoven's mental stability steadily improved when she moved to Paris. She died on 14 December 1927 of gas suffocation. She may have forgotten to turn the gas off; someone else may have turned it on; or it may have been an intentional act. She is buried in

Père Lachaise Cemetery Père Lachaise Cemetery (french: Cimetière du Père-Lachaise ; formerly , "East Cemetery") is the largest cemetery in Paris, France (). With more than 3.5 million visitors annually, it is the most visited necropolis in the world. Notable figure ...

, Paris. In 1943, Freytag-Loringhoven's work was included in Guggenheim's show '' Exhibition by 31 Women'' at the Art of This Century gallery in New York.

Biographies

The Baroness was one of the "characters, one of the terrors of the district," wrote her first biographer

, whose book remained unfinished. In ''Irrational Modernism: A Neurasthenic History of New York Dada'',

Amelia Jones Amelia Jones (born July 14, 1961) originally from Durham, North Carolina is an American art historian, art theorist, art critic, author, professor and curator. Her research specialisms include feminist art, body art, performance art, video art, ...

provides a revisionist history of

New York Dada New York Dada was a regionalized extension of Dada, an artistic and cultural movement between the years 1913 and 1923. Usually considered to have been instigated by Marcel Duchamp's '' Fountain'' exhibited at the first exhibition of the Society o ...

, expressed through the life and works of The Baroness. The 2002 biography, ''Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada and Everyday Modernity'', by

, makes a case for the Baroness's artistic brilliance and avant-garde spirit. The book explores the Baroness's personal and artistic relationships with Djuna Barnes, Berenice Abbott, and Jane Heap, as well as with Duchamp, Man Ray, and

William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician practicing both pedia ...

. It shows the Baroness breaking every erotic boundary, reveling in anarchic performance, but the biography also presents her as Elsa's friend Emily Coleman saw her, "not as a saint or a madwoman, but as a woman of genius, alone in the world, frantic." In 2013, the artists Lily Benson and Cassandra Guan released ''The Filmballad of Mamadada'', an experimental biopic on the Baroness. The story of The Baroness' life was told through contributions from over 50 artists and filmmakers. The film premiered at Copenhagen International Documentary Festival and was described as a, "playful and chaotic experiment that posits a return to a grand collective narrative via the postqueer populism of YouTube and crowdsourcing," by

Art Forum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ x 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably, ...

Cultural references

The novel ''Holy Skirts'', by Rene Steinke, a finalist for the 2005

National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The Nat ...

, is based on the life of Freytag-Loringhoven. ''Holy Skirts'' comes from the title of a poem by Freytag-Loringhoven. She also appears in Siri Hustvedt's 2019 novel ''Memories of the Future'' as "an insurrectionist inspiration for ustvedt'snarrator." In August 2002, actress

Brittany Murphy Brittany Anne Murphy-Monjack (; November 10, 1977 – December 20, 2009) was an American actress and singer. Born in Atlanta, Murphy moved to Los Angeles as a teenager and pursued a career in acting. Her breakthrough role was as Tai Fras ...

dressed as Freytag-Loringhoven in a photoshoot session for ''The New York Times''. In 2019, graphic designer Astrid Seme published ''Baroness Elsa’s em dashes. An anthology of dashing in print, poetry and performance.'' The book zooms into the pointed use of em dashes in the poems of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and shows her work in conversation with the likes of well-known dashers such as

Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...

Laurence Sterne Laurence Sterne (24 November 1713 – 18 March 1768), was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric who wrote the novels ''The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'' and '' A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy'', publishe ...

Heinrich von Kleist Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist (18 October 177721 November 1811) was a German poet, dramatist, novelist, short story writer and journalist. His best known works are the theatre plays '' Das Käthchen von Heilbronn'', ''The Broken Jug'', ''Amph ...

Emily Dickinson Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massac ...

. In 2022 there was an exhibition of some of her work, including ''Cathedral'' and ''Enduring Ornament'', in London. These were accompanied by art inspired by her.

References

External links

Christopher Lane's ill. FrL Article, including a brief biography, & some of her poems and writings

In Transition: Selected Poems by the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
University of Maryland Libraries. Retrieved 1 October 2014.

Retrieved 23 August 2013.
University of Maryland Freytag-Loringhoven collection finding aid
Dr. Beth Alvarez. Retrieved 17 June 2013.
University of Manitoba FPG (Greve/Grove) & FrL Collections

''The Little Review'' Collection
Finding-Aid, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

FrL Exhibition, 30 March to May, 2005 {{DEFAULTSORT:Freytag-Loringhoven, Elsa von 1874 births 1927 deaths People from Świnoujście German artists' models Dada German expatriates in the United States People from the Province of Pomerania Bisexual artists Bisexual poets Bisexual women German LGBT artists German LGBT poets Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery 20th-century German women artists 20th-century German women writers 20th-century German poets German women poets German dadaists Wikipedia articles containing unlinked shortened footnotes