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Arthur Cravan: The Disappearing Dadaist

Unconventional and provocative, did the Dada artist sometimes known as Arthur Cravan save his boldest work for last? The last time anyone saw Arthur Cravan alive, he was sailing off, alone, into the Pacific Ocean on a leaky boat. The nephew of Oscar Wilde, he was a poet, a boxer, a fraudster, a draft-dodger – and, according to some, the inventor of performance art.

After arranging to meet his pregnant wife in Argentina, he had bought the only boat he could afford and set off from Puerto Angel in southern Mexico, intending to pick up some friends along the way. André Breton, the ‘father’ of Surrealism, thought him inspired, while the situationist philosopher Guy Debord declared Cravan one of the people he esteemed most in the whole world. While Loy boarded a Japanese hospital ship at Salina Cruz, Cravan went to buy a sailing boat in Puerto Angel, intending to meet in Buenos Aires.

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