Global Context • 1916 • III
The boxer-poet Arthur Cravan (whose other listed occupations include forger, critic, sailor, thief, chauffeur, editor, professor and dandy) challenges the legendary US heavyweight champion Jack Johnson to a boxing match in Barcelona. Cravan loses dismally, the press speculates later that the fight was organised in favour of the 50 000 francs that Cravan won after betting against himself. Cravan leaves Barcelona for New York shortly afterwards, travelling on the same transatlantic liner as Leon Trotsky who wrote of "meeting a boxer, occasional literary hack and cousin of Oscar Wilde's, [who] admitted frankly that he would rather demolish the jaws of Yankee gentlemen in a noble sport than have his ribs broken by a German."
An entry from the timeline included in the exhibition Dada South? Experimentation, Radicalism and Resistance (2009–2010) at the Iziko National Gallery, which proposed connections between art production in South Africa and abroad against the social and political contexts that framed them. A revised version of this timeline was later featured in the retroactive Flight Paths (2011) exhibition guide commissioned by Clare Butcher.