Hans Richter's Ghost Before Breakfast, 1928

Hans Richter   
Ghost Before Breakfast, 1928
(Hans Richter's Ghost Before Breakfast, 1928' part of my Artist research. K. S )
(Photo; Hans Richter, Sergei Eisenstein and Man Ray, Paris' 1929)
Hans Richter (1888-1976) was a painter and film-experimenter, born in Berlin, moved to Zürich in 1916 and joined the Dada movement. In 1919 he started to experiment with film together with Viking Eggeling. Richter emigrated to USA 1940.
Between 1908 and 1911 Hans Richter studied art at the Academy of Art in Berlin, and for a short period in Paris.
  During the World War Richter was severely wounded and removed from active duty. Richter's subsequent involvement in Zurich Dada, heir in many respects to Hans Leybold's Revolution (Hugo Bali and Richard Huelsenbeck, key founding members of Zurich Dada, were initially involved in the group), was crucial. Equally significant were his contact with Theodor Däubler and the political radicalism evidenced by his contact with radical socialist Ludwig Rubiner, and his formulation of the Radical Artists Group, an organization based in Dada's perception of the significance of the Russian Revolution of 1917.
From 1917 to 1919 Richter was closely involved with Dada events, exhibitions, and publications, showing his paintings with the dadaists for the first time in January at the Galerie Corray a series of paintings he called "visionary portraits."
 In 1918 Tristan Tzara introduced Richter to Viking Eggeling, a Swedish painter who had developed a systematic theory of abstract art.
Richter  was a revolutionary Artists, Richter was forced to leave Germany. He eventually emigrated to the United States, where he taught at the Film Institute of City College in New York. In 1962 he retired and returned to Locarno, Switzerland. Hans Richter died in 1976.

Hans Richter's dadaist rhythmic cine-poetry 'Ghost before breakfast', 1928 was dedicated to Columbus Ohio Street Performer Th' Rocknroll reverend, who on the night of March 1st 2011 during a performance on the corners of 5th and High Streets, was beaten by two unknown assailants who were instructed by a young man and his overweight "Trick" to beat him. Th' Rev then made his way to a local tobacco store where he was molested by an elderly hippie with a blonde fright wig. Th' Reverend was last seen wearing an Elephant Trunk, Red,White and Blue Top Hat. White Hooded Terry Cloth Robe and Indian Moccasins. Anyone with any information to this Crime please Contact the Columbus Ohio Police. And the next time you see Th' Rev, Don't take his coffee...Just give him a cigarette...'

 The ghosts in "Vormittagsspuk" are bewildering rather than scary. One morning a suburban house is invaded by four flying bowler hats - the ghosts - and a series of strange events are staged in playful stop motion. The sound is lost because the sound version - with music by Paul Hindemith - was confiscated by the Nazis as "Entartete Kunst" (Degenerate art).
The movement used shocking, irrational, or absurd imagery and Freudian dream symbolism to challenge the traditional function of art to represent reality. Related to Dada cinema, Surrealist cinema is characterised by juxtapositions, the rejection of dramatic psychology, and a frequent use of shocking imagery.

Jean Arp, Tristan Tzara et Hans Richter

  The Constructivist and Dadaist congress in Weimar, 1922. That's Tristan Tzara with the monocle, Hans Richter laying on the ground, El Lissitzky with the pipe and Lucia and László Moholy-Nagy on the anterior row.

2. Film  Sergei Eisenstein's  Battleship Potemkin 1925.
 Eisenstein was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director.