The death of the editor: Theo van Doesburg, Dada, and International Constructivist magazines

Interwar European avant-garde magazines were often used by their editors to experiment with and question the role of the editor. One such editor was Dutch modernist Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931), who simultaneously worked on two interwar avant-garde magazines belonging to two different art movements: Dada Mécano (1922–23) and International Constructivist De Stijl (1917–32). This project report historically contextualizes the 1921–24 issues of Van Doesburg's magazines and analyzes them based mainly on their selection of contributions, the languages these employ, their attributions, and their genres. It further compares them to four other contemporary Dada and International Constructivist avant-garde magazines: Tristan Tzara's Dada and Raoul Hausmann's Der Dada, and Hans Richter's G and Kurt Schwitters's Merz, respectively. This project report argues that Van Doesburg, in his simultaneous editing of De Stijl and Mécano, polemically responded to contemporary Dada and International Constructivist magazine editing practices by showing that the only way to fully reach their mutually desired renunciation of editorial control was through these two practices' intersection.