The Girl Born Without a Mother

[Richard Fiero]

 From V.:
"Come. May I show you a mechanical doll. An electro-mechanical doll."
"'I am one,' Bongo-Shaftsbury smiled. And pushed 
back the sleeve of his coat to remove a cufflink. 
He rolled up the shirt cuff and thrust the naked 
underside of his arm at the girl. Shiny and 
black, sewn into the flesh, was a miniature electric switch."

Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia in "Some Memories of 
Pre-Dada: Picabia and Duchamp" (1949) translated from the French wrote:
". . . 'The American Girl' is a sparkplug 
(kindler of flame). These objects are depicted 
with the precision and relief of a mail order 
catalogue with no attempt at aesthetic expression."
". . . in 1918, the publication of a volume of 
poems, with illustrations, the 'Girl Born Without 
a Mother' (in other words, the machine), brought 
him [Francis Picabia] to the attention of unknown 
comrades in Zurich, and in February 1918, the two currents met [391 and Dada]"
Georges Hugenet in "The Dada Spirit in Painting."
" . . . the glass painting, finally entitled 'The 
Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even' sums 
up Duchamp's short but immense life's work, 
permanently abandoned around 1923 in favor of 
chess. In these works, he invented an attitude 
that distorted and transposed the 'mechanical 
style' and then assumed a subversive aspect . . ."
The latter statement is not quite true. Duchamp 
continued until his death work on another large piece.
Alice has offered McLuhan's "Mechanical Bride" 
along with the Wikipedia.org canard that "the 
title The Mechanical Bride is derived from a 
piece by the Dadaist artist, Marcel Duchamp." 
That remark must have been inserted by Phillip B 
Meggs since it appears in exactly the same 
language on the Gingko Press site, the book's publisher.

Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia and Georges Hugenet from 
"DADA" edited by Robert Motherwell.

The Mechanical Bride
http://www.gingkopress.com/02-mcl/z_philip-b-meggs-mech-bride.html
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan#The_Mechanical_Bride_.281951.29

Phillip B. Meggs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_B._Meggs

 From A Conversation with Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia
http://davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com/2009/06/from-conversation-with-gabrielle-buffet.html
where some of my children's ancestors' photos 
appear-Geronimo and the boys. My twenty year old 
granddaughter who is White Mountain Apache has 
just received a medal for doing a great job in combat in Afghanistan.

Poems and Drawings of the Girl Born Without A Mother
http://www.metafilter.com/63588/Poems-and-Drawings-of-the-Girl-Born-Without-A-Mother

Francis Picabia. Poèmes et dessins de la fille 
née sans mère. Lausanne: Imprimeries réunies, 1918.
http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/poemes/index.htm

Picabia painting "Girl Born Without a Mother"
http://www.nationalgalleries.org/media_collection/6/GMA%203545.jpg