Dada, Surrealism and the Bongcloud Attack

The Dada Movement, which arose during the First World War, represented a complete break with conventional conceptions of aesthetics. A key member and link to chess was Marcel Duchamp . Dada was officially launched in 1916 at the Cafe Voltaire in Zurich by poets and artists, such as Tristan Tzara and Hans Arp, and was a direct reaction to the mass slaughter, contradictory propaganda and inexplicable insanity of World War One. Independent but sympathetic groups emerged soon afterwards in New York, Berlin and Paris. These various groups were thematically connected by their rejection of idealism, aesthetic conventions, which had outlived their relevance to contemporary conditions, and contemporary society’s continuing embrace of “rationalism” and “progress” in spite of the patent irrationality of the on-going world conflict. “They condemned the nationalist and capitalist values that led to the cataclysm of the war and employed unorthodox techniques, performances and provocations to jolt the rest of society into self-awareness. The absurdity of Dada activities created a mirror exposing the absurdity in the world around them.” (Oxford Art Online)

Marcel Duchamp, for example, outraged the art world with his ready-mades, such as  Fountain  (which is simply an inverted urinal). He further participated in that paean to illogic, the film Entr’acte (1924), where Duchamp’s game of chess against Man Ray, played on the roofs of Paris, is one of the few clips which even remotely approaches any kind of rational sense. Also complicit in the anti-rational fabric of Entr’acte were the composer Erik Satie, the director René Clair and the artist Francis Picabia.

After the close of hostilities, many of the Dada artists migrated to Surrealism, which in its turn was officially inaugurated (also in 1924), when the writer André Breton published his  Manifesto of Surrealism . Like its Dadaist precursor, Surrealism was characterised by a profound disillusionment with and condemnation of the Western emphasis on logic and reason. However, Breton wanted to create something more specific out of Dada’s nonsensical and seemingly disparate and unfocused activities. Consequently, Surrealist works veered towards predication on the psychoanalytical theories and  Traumdeutung  of Sigmund Freud, relating to the irrational and instinct-based drives of the unconscious or dreaming mind. 

Those artists who subscribed to Surrealism included René Magritte, Man Ray, Joan Miró, Meret Oppenheim, Dorothea Tanning and Salvador Dalí. Man Ray, as we have seen, was a chess sparring partner of Duchamp, while several of the above became obsessed with chess and, like Alexander Calder, joined Ernst, Man Ray and Picabia in creating their own chess sets  . The intention of both Dada and Surrealism was to undermine established values, while their contrarian stance served as an important precursor to many late 20th-century artistic developments.  

Marcel Duchamp: The Chess Game (Alamy)

I have often maintained that chess mirrors developments in life, in particular intellectual, artistic and military developments. A case in point is the elaboration of the theory of the chess blockade by Aron Nimzowitsch, inspired, perhaps, by trench warfare on the western front from 1914–1918. A further striking example is the rise of  Hypermodernism in chess, at around the same time as Dada and Surrealism began to emerge and in some ways dominated the intellectual post-Bellum landscape. To Grandmasters reared on the classical precepts of chess, as espoused by Dr Siegbert Tarrasch, Hypermodernism must have seemed irrational. However, the goal of chess is not just to challenge and shock, but primarily to win, therefore a core of reason and purpose must most certainly have lain behind the Hypermodern modes of thinking.

The Hypermodern school is the name given to a number of ingenious writers and players in the 1920s (Julius Breyer, Ernst Grünfeld, Aron Nimzowitsch, Richard Réti and Xavier Tartakower) who reacted strongly against the influence of Tarrasch and his classical school, which they regarded as over-dogmatic and tending to produce routine play. If Nimzowitsch represents the Marcel Duchamp of the group, and Duchamp eagerly used Nimzowitsch’s openings in his own games, then the ideologue Richard Reti was the André Breton, with perhaps Julius (aka Gyula) Breyer as Dada’s founder, Tristan Tzara. By the use of paradox and colourful imagery they made a convincing case that appealed very much to the young . Breyer’s famously controversial and provocative remark: “After 1. e4 White’s game is in the last throes”, reveals the chief domain for their activities: the chess openings. In particular Réti and Nimzowitsch, brought a new concept to the theory of the centre, preferring in many ways to observe it, rather than occupy it. 

In this arena, they favoured the half open and closed defences to the King‘s pawn (such as Alekhine’s Defence, 1.e4 Nf6; the French Defence, 1.e4 e6; the Sicilian Defence,1.e4 c5;  and the Caro-Kann 1.e4 c6). As Black against 1.d4 they chose, and developed to a great degree, the fianchetto defences, such as the King’s Indian and Queen’s Indian, while Grünfeld  invented an entirely new defence, named after him. The Grünfeld positively invited White to construct a mighty pawn centre, which Black would undermine from the wings (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 d5).

One name is, paradoxically, absent from the Hypermodern roster, the great Alexander Alekhine. Inventor of the most controversial and quintessentially Hypermodern defence, 1.e4 met by the ultimate provocation 1. …Nf6, Alekhine distanced himself from any association with schools or movements. A lone Titan he considered himself, and a lone Titan he was, in spite of his creation of the most extreme Hypermodern defence — one which, to an even greater extent than the Grünfeld Defence, tempts White into constructing a gigantic pawn centre. In art terms, Alekhine’s defence, along with Nimzowitsch’s parallel provocation 1.e4 Nc6, might be seen as the chessboard parallel to Duchamp’s  Fontaine . 

One of the major advantages of playing Hypermodern systems as White is that they rely far more on general strategic understanding than rote memorisation. However, this does not mean that both sides are not set onerous problems to solve. In the modern era Hypermodern systems as White have mainly been championed by Vladimir Kramnik and Lev Aronian. Both these players have frequently set very difficult problems for their elite opponents with these complex systems.

Richard Réti himself (pictured below) is one of the most fascinating and colourful characters in the history of chess. Réti developed theories that were regarded as little less than revolutionary in his era. He asserted that, contrary to classical principles, the centre need not be occupied by pawns. This must have seemed like heresy to the classically-minded grandmasters of his day. As we have seen, this new approach was dubbed “Hypermodern” and led to the development of the Réti Opening (1. Nf3).

Réti (1889–1929) was the grandmaster and writer who principally conveyed the teachings of the hypermoderns to the chess public. Réti was born in Pezzinok, at that time in Hungary and later (after the First World War) Czechoslovakia. It was for the latter country that he was to play in the international team tournaments between the wars. He, like Tartakower, went to Vienna to study mathematics at the University and, like most of the great players of central Europe of that time, was a product of the Viennese School of chess. His early appearances in international chess were far from impressive and in fact he came bottom in a tournament at Vienna in 1908.Then, under the influence of his friend Julius Breyer, there came a great change for the better in his play. He became well known for the brilliance of his ideas before 1914. For the next four years there was no international chess. However, once the nations were able once again, as Handel almost put it in his Messiah, to rage so peacefully together over the chessboard, it became apparent that Réti , doubtless benefiting from his profound thinking during his enforced absence from play during the war, had matured into a great master. He now ranked alongside the world‘s best. Reti’s results in quick succession were: first prize at Kaschau in 1918, ahead of such notables as Professor Milan Vidmar, the leading Yugoslav Grandmaster, and Breyer himself, followed by equal first at Budapest, then first again at Rotterdam in 1919. 

Réti had intended to complete his doctorate in mathematics at the University of Vienna and he carried his doctoral thesis around with him in a small booklet — which, however, he lost and never recovered. His absent mindedness was to become legendary: wherever his yellow briefcase was to be found, Réti was sure to be somewhere else. The loss of his mathematical notes apparently drove him near to suicide, as he later confided to his older brother Rudolph. Then destiny intervened, and Réti received an invitation to the Netherlands, as Chess Master in Residence. He accepted, resolving to pursue a chess career instead of becoming an academic.

This was a choice which has faced many young devotees of the game, including the maths genius Dr John Nunn, who renounced his tenure at Oriel College, Oxford, in order to pursue a professional chess career, which was to include victories against the world champions Tal, Petrosian, Karpov and Anand. As for myself, I had to decide between pursuing a doctorate in German literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, or trying to become a chess Grandmaster. Ultimately the siren summons of Nimzowitsch and Réti overcame my devotion to Goethe and Schiller. Regarding Réti’s dilemma, Brother Rudolph said, “ It haunted him throughout his life, and he never found a definite answer to it .” Others, such as Adrian Hollis, Professor Nathan Divinsky and Jonathan Mestel, juggled chess and university life, but ultimately preferred a professional career in the groves of Academe. In the case of Hollis, a kind of inner emigration took place, when he replaced the hurly burly of over the board combat, with the complexities of chess by correspondence, in which craft he rose to become a correspondence Grandmaster. 

With Réti, mathematics’s loss was chess’s gain, as more successes followed during 1920: first at Amsterdam ahead of leading Grandmasters Geza Maroczy and Xavier Tartakower, not to mention future World Champion Max Euwe. First at Vienna ahead of Breyer, Grünfeld and Tartakower, and most impressive of all, first prize at the great tournament of Gothenburg, Sweden, an event that included most of Europe‘s most prominent players.

As I have explained in previous columns, a 1 in the table indicates a win, ½ a draw and 0 a loss. This was, indeed, a result worthy of a potential world champion. 

Then came a pause in Réti’s chess playing career. He had become involved in the occupation of writing about chess. Starting off as a newspaper columnist, he was, in the words of Harry Golombek, to become “ a great and vital writer on the game ” . It was the writings of a certain German incompetent, Franz Gutmayer , that provoked him to react, refute and write his masterpiece  Die Neuen Ideen im Schachspiel , Vienna 1922, which appeared under the title  Modern Ideas in Chess , London/New York 1923. For the first time in the history of books on chess a writer capable of a genuine historical survey of the evolution of chess ideas, and also of a colourful and poetic picture of the state of contemporary chess, had made his appearance.

Returning to the active playing of the game, he now participated in practically all the great tournaments of the 1920s. In the great New York event of 1924 he won the brilliancy prize for a celebrated win over Bogoljubov and inflicted upon Capablanca his only defeat of the tournament — astonishingly, the world champion’s only loss in eight years. 

During a prolonged visit to South America, Réti exhibited a remarkable side to his skills, establishing a new world blindfold simultaneous record at São Paulo in Brazil, where he played 29 games with a score of 20 wins, seven draws and just two losses, without being able to see any of the boards or pieces. Chess had come a long way since Diderot, over a century beforehand, had warned the Immortal Philidor against taking on three opponents at once, without sight of the games, lest the stress cause his brain to explode  .

By 1927 Réti was coming back into true grandmaster form. Then, returning to Prague, he prepared for publication his second great book:  Masters of the Chessboard , but tragically, he never managed to complete it. He was taken ill with scarlet fever and died at the age of 40 in a Prague hospital in 1929. This premature death was a disaster for the chess-world, but, once again, in the hallowed opinion of Harry Golombek, “it should be stated that, had he written only  Modern Ideas in Chess , he would still have belonged to the chess Immortals.”  

Dada, Surrealism and Hypermodernism in chess: these movements might have seemed the epitome of illogic to the classically minded denizens of the bastions of traditionalism, but all three tendencies indicated evidence in their own fields of what Sigmund Freud had, somewhat belatedly, described as  Das Unbehagen in der Kultur  ( Civilisation and its discontents ) .  In chess we now, once again, see similar signs, of tremors on the chessboard, indicative of wider disturbing implications. For example, the ostensibly ridiculous  Bongcloud Opening (1.e4 e5 2.Ke2) and similarly weird offshoots are being given credence at the highest echelons, having been employed by such exalted figures as the present World Champion, Magnus Carlsen, and his rival Hikaru Nakamura, and claiming such illustrious victims as the current world number six, Wesley So .

Meanwhile, the exploits of that erratic British genius, Michael Basman, who has defeated not only John Nunn, with the eccentric 1.g4 but also World Title Candidate, Jon Speelman, with the even more eccentric 1.e4 g5, have been categorised and lauded by Gerard Welling in a new book   U Cannot be Serious! Avant-Garde Strategy in Chess .  

Does the intellectual weathervane, represented by chess, once again reflect a general retreat from reason and rationality in world affairs? Among such I might mention an hysterical drive to combat climate change, when wildfires (widely identified as the symptom) could alternatively be attributed to arson; abandonment of Lithium-rich Afghanistan, when Lithium is essential to power those selfsame “green” batteries, which are so necessary in the fight to quell the terrors of climate change; assaults on western culture and its traditions, by the very citizens which that culture is designed to protect. Additionally, in the canon of illogic one observes eccentric decisions concerning gender in the world of competitive sport, not to mention support from the most unlikely of quarters for political regimes who, to put it mildly, do not tolerate same sex relationships. Let us also not forget the raging of Greta Thunberg, and her extinction rebellion cohorts, against the UK, for our climate change failings, contrasted with the activists’ collective, and almost complete, absence of public vitriol against demonstrably worse offenders. 

In an impassioned peroration in a broadcast by Neil Oliver on GB News (21 August 2021), the Sage of Stirling pointed out that we in the UK live in a privileged time and place, a liberal democracy, rare both in human history and current human geography. He emphasised that preoccupation with tearing down statues, gender identity and pronouns could be a fatal distraction, about as relevant as the concern of the Roman Emperor for his chickens, while Rome was falling on 24th August to Alaric King of the Goths in 410 AD. Oliver added that gender identity and pronouns are probably not high on the list of priorities of The Taliban, and other similarly unpleasant regimes, whose general policies are entirely inimical to our interests. 

Chess, in its own modest way, may be indicative of the greater dangers: small symptoms, with far wider implications. Thomas Mann’s  Death in Venice   (1912, sometimes described as the most important novel of the twentieth century) brilliantly exposes in microcosm, those very ante-Bellum discontents which engaged the Dadaists and which Sigmund Freud eventually caught up with and delineated in his  Unbehagen  (1929). In my opinion, the English parallel to Mann’s masterpiece is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s  The Poison Belt , 1913, the original cover of which depicts the hero, Professor George Challenger, as the spitting image of World Chess Champion Wilhelm Steinitz, whom I am convinced that Sir Arthur encountered during dinners at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand. 

To quote Milton’s  Paradise Lost , Book II, “ to compare great things with small ”, Sir Arthur adduces a blurring of the ( sic)  Frauenhofer Lines   in the spectrum, as a portent of something far more hazardous. The fictitious Professor Challenger writes: “I have read with amusement, not wholly unmixed with some less complimentary emotion, the complacent and wholly fatuous letter of Professor XXX which has lately appeared in the columns of  The Times  , upon the subject of the blurring of Frauenhofer’s lines in the spectra ,both of the planets and of the fixed stars. He dismisses the matter as of no significance. To a wider intelligence it may well seem of very great possible importance- so great as to involve the ultimate welfare of every man, woman and child upon this planet.”

And as for Professor Challenger’s litmus test of the Frauenhofer Lines, in my Lexicon, read: chess openings! Perhaps the solution, in a bewildering ocean of global contradiction and apparent irrationality, is to cultivate one’s own garden and derive solace from the Panglossianly self assured words of that arch classicist, Alexander Pope:

“All nature is but art, unknown to thee;

All chance, direction which thou canst not see;

All discord, harmony not understood;

All partial evil, universal good. 

And spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,

One truth is clear, whatever is, is right.“

Pope, Essay on Man 1733

This week’s chess games involve classics from Richard Réti. 

The first   is when Réti won the brilliancy prize game from the great tournament at New York 1924 against Efim Bogoljubov. 

The second : Richard Réti vs Frederick Dewhurst Yates 1924, is an amazing Reti system win deploying extreme flank pressure against Black’s centre pawns. 

The third  , also in 1924, was the sensational win which broke José Capablanca’s run of eight years without loss.

And, finally, the fourth  is an early game in 1923 against a great classicist, Akiba Rubinstein, using Réti’s new methods.  

And the best book on Réti , distinguished not just by Réti’s superlatively creative games, but also by Grandmaster Emeritus Harry Golombek’s elegant  prose annotations. 

Ray Keene’s latest book is  Chess for Absolute Beginners   , written in conjunction with artist Barry Martin who masterminded the revolutionary teaching diagrams. 

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