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.
Zürich, 1917.
Dada or
Dadaism is a
cultural movement that began in neutral Zürich,
Switzerland, during
World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1920. The movement primarily involved visual arts,
literature (
poetry, art manifestoes, aesthetics), theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti war politic through a rejection of the prevailing standards in
art through
anti-art cultural works. Dada activities included public gatherings, demonstrations, and publication of art/literary journals. Passionate coverage of art, politics, and culture filled their publications. The movement influenced later styles, movements, and groups including Surrealism, Pop Art, and Fluxus.
Overview
,
Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919, collage of pasted papers, 90x144 cm, Staatliche Museum, Berlin.
Dada was an informal international movement, with participants in Europe and North America. The beginnings of Dada correspond to the outbreak of World War I. For many participants, the movement was a protest against the barbarism of that War, against the bourgeoisie nationalist and colonialist interests which many Dadaists believed were the root cause of the war, and against the cultural and intellectual conformity — in art and more broadly in society — that corresponded to the war. {{Citation|last=Richter|first=Hans|date=1965. They expressed their rejection of that ideology in artistic expression that appeared to reject logic and embrace [chaos and
irrationality. For example, George Grosz later recalled that his Dadaist art was intended as a protest "against this world of mutual destruction".{{Citation]|title=George Grosz, His life and work|city = New York|publisher = Universe Books-->
According to its proponents, Dada was not art — it was "anti-art". It was anti-art in the sense that Dadaists protested against the contemporary academic and cultured values of art. For everything that art stood for, Dada was to represent the opposite. Where art was concerned with traditional
aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. If art was to appeal to sensibilities, Dada was intended to offend. Through their rejection of traditional culture and aesthetics the Dadaists hoped to destroy traditional culture and aesthetics. Dada became an influential movement in modern art, a commentary on bourgeois order and the carnage Dadaists believed it wreaked.
A reviewer from the
ARTnews stated at the time that "The Dada philosophy is the sickest, most paralyzing and most destructive thing that has ever originated from the brain of man." Art historians have described Dada as being, in large part, "in reaction to what many of these artists saw as nothing more than an insane spectacle of collective homicide."{{cite book| author = Fred S. Kleiner| coauthors = Christin J. Mamiya| title = Gardner's Art Through the Ages| edition = 12th edition| year = 2005| publisher = Wadsworth Publishing| pages = page 980-->
Years later, Dada artists described the movement as "a phenomenon bursting forth in the midst of the postwar economic and
Lost Generation, a savior, a monster, which would lay waste to everything in its path. was a systematic work of destruction and demoralization...In the end it became nothing but an act of sacrilege."
History
Origin of the word
Dada
The origin of the name
Dada is unclear; some believe that it is a nonsensical word. Others maintain that it originates from the Romanian artists Tristan Tzara and Marcel Janco's frequent use of the words
da, da, meaning
yes, yes in the Romanian language (Engl. equivalent:
yeah, yeah, as in a sarcastic or facetious
yeah, right). Still others believe that a group of artists assembled in
Zürich in 1916, wanting a name for their new movement, chose it at random by stabbing a French language-
German language dictionary with a paper knife, and picking the name that the point landed upon.
Dada in French is a child's word for
hobby-horse. In French the colloquialism,
c'est mon dada, means
it's my hobby.
It has also been suggested that the word "dada" was chosen randomly from the
Petit Larousse.
According to the Dada ideal, the movement would not be called
Dadaism, much less designated an
art-movement.
Zürich
In 1916,
Hugo Ball,
Emmy Hennings,
Tristan Tzara,
Jean/Hans Arp,
Marcel Janco,
Richard Huelsenbeck, Sophie Täuber; along with others discussed art and put on performances in the Cabaret Voltaire (Zürich) expressing their disgust with the war and the interests that inspired it. By some accounts Dada coalesced on October 6 at the cabaret.
At the first public soiree at the cabaret on
July 14,
1916, Ball recited the first manifesto (see
wikisource:Dada Manifesto (1916, Hugo Ball)). Tzara, in 1918, wrote a
wikisource:Dada Manifesto considered one of the most important of the Dada writings. Other manifestos followed.
Marcel Janco recalled,
We had lost confidence in our culture. Everything had to be demolished. We would begin again after the "tabula rasa". At the Cabaret Voltaire we began by shocking common sense, public opinion, education, institutions, museums, good taste, in short, the whole prevailing order.
A single issue of
Cabaret Voltaire was the first publication to come out of the movement.
After the cabaret closed down, activities moved to a new gallery, and Ball left Europe. Tzara began a relentless campaign to spread Dada ideas. He bombarded French and Italian artists and writers with letters, and soon emerged as the Dada leader and master strategist. The
Cabaret Voltaire (Zürich) has by now re-opened, and is still in the same place at the Spiegelgasse 1 in the Niederdorf.
Zürich Dada, with Tzara at the helm, published the art and literature review
Dada beginning in July 1917, with five editions from Zürich and the final two from Paris.
When World War I ended in 1918, most of the Zürich Dadaists returned to their home countries, and some began Dada activities in other cities.
Berlin
The groups in Germany were not as strongly
anti-art as other groups. Their activity and art was more politics and social, with corrosive
art manifesto and
propaganda, biting
satire, large public
demonstration (people) and overt political activities. It has been suggested that this is at least partially due to Berlin's proximity to the front, and that for an opposite effect, New York's geographic distance from the war spawned its more theoretically-driven, less political nature.
In February 1918, Richard Huelsenbeck gave his first Dada speech in
Berlin, and produced a Dada manifesto later in the year.
Hannah Höch and George Grosz used Dada to express post-World War I
Communism sympathies. Grosz, together with
John Heartfield, developed the wikt:technique of photomontage during this period. The artists published a series of short-lived political journals, and held the
International Dada Fair in 1920.
The Berlin group saw much in-fighting; Kurt Schwitters and others were excluded from the group. Schwitters moved to Hanover where he developed his individual type of Dada, which he dubbed
Kurt Schwitters.
The Berlin group published periodicals such as
Club Dada,
Der Dada,
Everyman His Own Football (
Jedermann sein eigner Fussball), and
Dada Almanach.
Cologne
In Cologne (Köln),
Max Ernst,
Johannes Theodor Baargeld and
Jean Arp launched a controversial Dada exhibition in 1920 which focused on nonsense and anti-bourgeois sentiments. Cologne's Early Spring Exhibition was set up in a pub, and required that participants walk past urinals while being read lewd poetry by a woman in a communion dress. The police closed the exhibition on grounds of obscenity, but it was re-opened when the charges were dropped.{{Citation|last=Schaefer|first=Robert A.|date=
September 7, 2006|title=Das Ist Dada–An Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC|periodical=Double Exposure|url=http://www.doubleexposure.com/DadaExhibit.shtml-->
New York
by Marcel Duchamp, 1917, photograph by Alfred Stieglitz.
Like Zürich, New York was a refuge for writers and artists from
World War I. Soon after arriving from France in 1915,
Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia met American artist Man Ray. By 1916 the three of them became the center of radical anti-art activities in the United States. American Beatrice Wood, who had been studying in France, soon joined them. Much of their activity centered in Alfred Stieglitz's gallery, 291, and the home of
Walter Conrad Arensberg.
The New Yorkers, though not particularly organized, called their activities
Dada, but they did not issue manifestos. They issued challenges to art and culture through publications such as
The Blind Man,
Rongwrong, and
New York Dada in which they criticized the traditionalist basis for
museum art. New York Dada lacked the disillusionment of European Dada and was instead driven by a sense of irony and humor. In his book
Adventures in the arts: informal chapters on painters, vaudeville and poets Marsden Hartley included an essay on "
s:The Importance of Being Dada".
During this time Duchamp began exhibiting "
Readymades of Marcel Duchamp" (found objects) such as a bottle rack, and got involved with the
Society of Independent Artists. In 1917 he submitted the now famous
Fountain (Duchamp), a urinal signed R. Mutt, to the Society of Independent Artists show only to have the piece rejected. First an object of scorn within the arts community, the
Fountain (Duchamp) has since become almost canonized by some. The committee presiding over Britain's prestigious
Turner Prize in 2004, for example, called it "the most influential work of modern art." "Duchamp's urinal tops art survey", BBC News
December 1,
2004. In an attempt to "pay homage to the spirit of Dada" a performance artist named Pierre Pinoncelli made a crack in The Fountain with a hammer in January of 2006; he also urinated on it in 1993.
Picabia's travels tied New York, Zürich and Paris groups together during the Dadaist period. For seven years he also published the Dada periodical
391 (magazine) in Barcelona, Spain, New York City, Zürich, and Paris from 1917 through 1924.
By 1921, most of the original players moved to Paris where Dada experienced its last major incarnation (see Neo-Dada for later activity).
Paris
The French
avant-garde kept abreast of Dada activities in Zürich with regular communications from Tristan Tzara (whose pseudonym means "sad in country," a name chosen to protest the treatment of Jews in his native Romania), who exchanged letters, poems, and magazines with
Guillaume Apollinaire, André Breton,
Max Jacob, and other French writers, critics and artists.
Dada in Paris surged in 1920 when many of the originators converged there. Inspired by Tzara, Paris Dada soon issued manifestos, organized demonstrations, staged performances and produced a number of journals (the final two editions of
Dada,
Le Cannibale, and
Littérature featured Dada in several editions.)
The first introduction of Dada artwork to the Parisian public was at the Salon des Indépendants in 1921.
Jean Crotti exhibited works associated with Dada including a work entitled,
Explicatif bearing the word
Tabu.
The Netherlands
In The Netherlands the Dada movement centered mainly around
Theo van Doesburg, most well known for establishing the De Stijl movement and magazine of the same name. Van Doesburg mainly focused on poetry, and included poems from many well-known Dada writers in
De Stijl such as
Hugo Ball, Hans Arp and Kurt Schwitters. Van Doesburg became a friend of Schwitters, and together they organized the so-called
Dutch Dada campaign in 1923, where Van Doesburg promoted a leaflet about Dada (entitled
What is Dada?), Schwitters read his poems, Vilmos Huszàr demonstrated a mechanical dancing doll and Van Doesburg's wife, Nelly, played
avant-garde compositions on piano.
Van Doesburg wrote Dada poetry himself in
De Stijl, although under a pseudonym, I.K. Bonset, which was only revealed after his tragic death in 1931. 'Together' with I.K. Bonset, he also published a short-lived Dutch Dada magazine called
Mécano.
Georgia
Although Dada itself was unknown in
Georgia (country) until at least 1920, from 1917-1921 a group of poets called themselves "41st Degree" (referring both to the latitude of
Tbilisi, Georgia and to the temperature of a high fever) organized along Dadaist lines. The most important figure in this group was Iliazd, whose radical typographical designs visually echo the publications of the Dadaists. After his flight to Paris in 1921, he collaborated with Dadaists on publications and events.
Poetry; music and sound
Dada was not confined to the visual and literary arts; its influence reached into sound and music. Kurt Schwitters developed what he called
sound poems and composers such as
Erwin Schulhoff, Hans Heusser and
Albert Savinio wrote
Dada music, while members of
Les Six collaborated with members of the Dada movement and had their works performed at Dada gatherings.
In the very first Dada publication, Hugo Ball describes a "balalaika orchestra playing delightful folk-songs." African music and jazz was common at Dada gatherings, signaling a return to nature and naive primitivism.
Legacy
, in
Ein Hod,
IsraelWhile broad, the movement was unstable. By 1924 in Paris, Dada was melding into
surrealism, and artists had gone on to other ideas and movements, including surrealism,
social realism and other forms of
modernism. Some theorists argue that Dada was actually the beginning of
postmodern art.
By the dawn of
World War II, many of the European Dadaists had fled or emigrated to the United States. Some died in death camps under Hitler, who persecuted the kind of "Degenerate art" that Dada represented. The movement became less active as post-World War II optimism led to new movements in art and literature.
Dada is a named influence and reference of various
anti-art and political and
cultural movements including the Situationist International and culture jamming groups like the Cacophony Society.
At the same time that the Zürich Dadaists made noise and spectacle at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zürich), Vladimir Lenin wrote his revolutionary plans for
Russia in a nearby apartment. He was unappreciative of the artistic revolutionary activity near him.
Tom Stoppard used this coincidence as a premise for his play
Travesties (1974), which includes Tzara, Lenin, and James Joyce as characters.
The Cabaret Voltaire fell into disrepair until it was occupied from January to March, 2002, by a group proclaiming themselves
neo-Dadaists, led by
Mark Divo. 2002 occupation by neo-Dadaists
Prague Post The group included Leumund Cult,
Ingo Giezendanner, Aiana Calugar, Lennie Lee and
Dan Jones. After their eviction the space became a museum dedicated to the history of Dada. The work of Lennie Lee and Dan Jones remained on the walls of the museum.
Several notable
retrospectives have examined the influence of Dada upon art and society. In 1967, a large Dada retrospective was held in Paris, France. In 2006, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City held a Dada exhibition in collaboration with the
National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and the
Centre Pompidou in Paris.
In 1996, WNEP Theater in Chicago began performing Soiree DADA, created by Joe Janes and Joel Jeske. The show, which included new Dada sound poetry, short plays and manifestos, continues to be performed in Chicago with occasional events in Los Angeles and New York.
Modern usage of the word
Dada
The satirical
Church of the SubGenius pays homage to Dada in its use of the term "wikt:Bulldada", which has passed into common usage as a description for concepts and items that are unintentionally ironic.
The
Brotherhood of Dada is a fictional gang in DC comics. They are devoted to all things absurd and bizarre.
The word Dada Core used to describe an underground music movement that originated in south western New York, as a reaction to the "sterile and stagnating" local music scene and overwrought ego of so called Indie rock bands. The genre's definitive act Japanese Lady Boy Massacre is well known for a wide range of musical styles.
Early practitioners
For a more complete list of Dadaists, see List of Dadaists.
See also
References
- The Dada Almanac, ed Richard Huelsenbeck , re-edited and translated by Malcolm Green et al, Atlas Press, with texts by Hans Arp, Johannes Baader, Hugo Ball, Paul Citröen, Paul Dermée, Daimonides, Max Goth, John Heartfield, Raoul Hausmann, Richard Huelsenbeck, Vincente Huidobro, Mario D’Arezzo, Adon Lacroix, Walter Mehring, Francis Picabia, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, Alexander Sesqui, Philippe Soupault, Tristan Tzara. ISBN 0 947757 62 7
- Blago Bung, Blago Bung, Hugo Ball's Tenderenda, Richard Huelsenbeck's Fantastic Prayers, & Walter Serner's Last Loosening - three key texts of Zurich ur-Dada. Translater and introduced by Malcolm Green. Atlas Press, ISBN 0 947757 86 4
- National Gallery of Art, Dada
- Richard Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, (University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1991) (paperback)
- Irene Hoffman, Documents of Dada and Surrealism: Dada and Surrealist Journals in the Mary Reynolds Collection, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, The Art Institute of Chicago.
- Richard Ball, Flight Out Of Time (University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1996)
- Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 1965)
- Uwe M. Schneede, George Grosz, His life and work (New York: Universe Books, 1979)
Footnotes
External links
- Dada art (Dada Online) includes images showing the characteristics of Dada.
- The International Dada Archive includes scans of many Dada publications.
- The Essential DADA
- Dada: The destruction of Art History of Art in MundoArte
- SamizDADA: Samizdat meets Dadaism
Manifestos
.
Zürich, 1917.
Dada or
Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in neutral
Zürich, Switzerland, during
World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1920. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature (
poetry, art manifestoes, aesthetics),
theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its
anti war politic through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works. Dada activities included public gatherings, demonstrations, and publication of art/literary journals. Passionate coverage of art, politics, and culture filled their publications. The movement influenced later styles, movements, and groups including Surrealism,
Pop Art, and
Fluxus.
Overview
,
Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919, collage of pasted papers, 90x144 cm,
Staatliche Museum,
Berlin.
Dada was an informal international movement, with participants in Europe and North America. The beginnings of Dada correspond to the outbreak of World War I. For many participants, the movement was a protest against the
barbarism of that War, against the
bourgeoisie nationalist and colonialist interests which many Dadaists believed were the root cause of the war, and against the cultural and intellectual conformity — in art and more broadly in society — that corresponded to the war. {{Citation|last=Richter|first=Hans|date=1965. They expressed their rejection of that ideology in artistic expression that appeared to reject logic and embrace [chaos and irrationality. For example, George Grosz later recalled that his Dadaist art was intended as a protest "against this world of mutual destruction".{{Citation]|title=George Grosz, His life and work|city = New York|publisher = Universe Books-->
According to its proponents, Dada was not art — it was "anti-art". It was anti-art in the sense that Dadaists protested against the contemporary academic and cultured values of art. For everything that art stood for, Dada was to represent the opposite. Where art was concerned with traditional aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. If art was to appeal to sensibilities, Dada was intended to offend. Through their rejection of traditional culture and aesthetics the Dadaists hoped to destroy traditional culture and aesthetics. Dada became an influential movement in modern art, a commentary on bourgeois order and the carnage Dadaists believed it wreaked.
A reviewer from the
ARTnews stated at the time that "The Dada philosophy is the sickest, most paralyzing and most destructive thing that has ever originated from the brain of man." Art historians have described Dada as being, in large part, "in reaction to what many of these artists saw as nothing more than an insane spectacle of collective homicide."{{cite book| author = Fred S. Kleiner| coauthors = Christin J. Mamiya| title = Gardner's Art Through the Ages| edition = 12th edition| year = 2005| publisher = Wadsworth Publishing| pages = page 980-->
Years later, Dada artists described the movement as "a phenomenon bursting forth in the midst of the postwar economic and Lost Generation, a savior, a monster, which would lay waste to everything in its path. was a systematic work of destruction and demoralization...In the end it became nothing but an act of sacrilege."
History
Origin of the word
Dada
The origin of the name
Dada is unclear; some believe that it is a nonsensical word. Others maintain that it originates from the Romanian artists
Tristan Tzara and Marcel Janco's frequent use of the words
da, da, meaning
yes, yes in the
Romanian language (Engl. equivalent:
yeah, yeah, as in a sarcastic or facetious
yeah, right). Still others believe that a group of artists assembled in
Zürich in 1916, wanting a name for their new movement, chose it at random by stabbing a French language-German language dictionary with a paper knife, and picking the name that the point landed upon.
Dada in French is a child's word for
hobby-horse. In French the colloquialism,
c'est mon dada, means
it's my hobby.
It has also been suggested that the word "dada" was chosen randomly from the
Petit Larousse.
According to the Dada ideal, the movement would not be called
Dadaism, much less designated an
art-movement.
Zürich
In 1916, Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Tristan Tzara, Jean/Hans Arp,
Marcel Janco,
Richard Huelsenbeck, Sophie Täuber; along with others discussed art and put on performances in the
Cabaret Voltaire (Zürich) expressing their disgust with the war and the interests that inspired it. By some accounts Dada coalesced on October 6 at the cabaret.
At the first public soiree at the cabaret on July 14,
1916, Ball recited the first manifesto (see
wikisource:Dada Manifesto (1916, Hugo Ball)). Tzara, in 1918, wrote a
wikisource:Dada Manifesto considered one of the most important of the Dada writings. Other manifestos followed.
Marcel Janco recalled,
We had lost confidence in our culture. Everything had to be demolished. We would begin again after the "tabula rasa". At the Cabaret Voltaire we began by shocking common sense, public opinion, education, institutions, museums, good taste, in short, the whole prevailing order.
A single issue of
Cabaret Voltaire was the first publication to come out of the movement.
After the cabaret closed down, activities moved to a new gallery, and Ball left Europe. Tzara began a relentless campaign to spread Dada ideas. He bombarded French and Italian artists and writers with letters, and soon emerged as the Dada leader and master strategist. The
Cabaret Voltaire (Zürich) has by now re-opened, and is still in the same place at the Spiegelgasse 1 in the Niederdorf.
Zürich Dada, with Tzara at the helm, published the art and literature review
Dada beginning in July 1917, with five editions from Zürich and the final two from Paris.
When World War I ended in 1918, most of the Zürich Dadaists returned to their home countries, and some began Dada activities in other cities.
Berlin
The groups in Germany were not as strongly
anti-art as other groups. Their activity and art was more politics and social, with corrosive
art manifesto and
propaganda, biting
satire, large public demonstration (people) and overt political activities. It has been suggested that this is at least partially due to Berlin's proximity to the front, and that for an opposite effect, New York's geographic distance from the war spawned its more theoretically-driven, less political nature.
In February 1918, Richard Huelsenbeck gave his first Dada speech in Berlin, and produced a Dada manifesto later in the year. Hannah Höch and George Grosz used Dada to express post-World War I
Communism sympathies. Grosz, together with
John Heartfield, developed the wikt:technique of
photomontage during this period. The artists published a series of short-lived political journals, and held the
International Dada Fair in 1920.
The Berlin group saw much in-fighting; Kurt Schwitters and others were excluded from the group. Schwitters moved to
Hanover where he developed his individual type of Dada, which he dubbed
Kurt Schwitters.
The Berlin group published periodicals such as
Club Dada,
Der Dada,
Everyman His Own Football (
Jedermann sein eigner Fussball), and
Dada Almanach.
Cologne
In
Cologne (Köln),
Max Ernst, Johannes Theodor Baargeld and
Jean Arp launched a controversial Dada exhibition in 1920 which focused on nonsense and anti-bourgeois sentiments. Cologne's Early Spring Exhibition was set up in a pub, and required that participants walk past urinals while being read lewd poetry by a woman in a communion dress. The police closed the exhibition on grounds of obscenity, but it was re-opened when the charges were dropped.{{Citation|last=Schaefer|first=Robert A.|date=September 7, 2006|title=Das Ist Dada–An Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC|periodical=Double Exposure|url=http://www.doubleexposure.com/DadaExhibit.shtml-->
New York
by
Marcel Duchamp, 1917, photograph by
Alfred Stieglitz.
Like Zürich,
New York was a refuge for writers and artists from
World War I. Soon after arriving from France in 1915, Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia met American artist Man Ray. By 1916 the three of them became the center of radical anti-art activities in the United States. American Beatrice Wood, who had been studying in France, soon joined them. Much of their activity centered in
Alfred Stieglitz's gallery, 291, and the home of
Walter Conrad Arensberg.
The New Yorkers, though not particularly organized, called their activities
Dada, but they did not issue manifestos. They issued challenges to art and culture through publications such as
The Blind Man,
Rongwrong, and
New York Dada in which they criticized the traditionalist basis for
museum art. New York Dada lacked the disillusionment of European Dada and was instead driven by a sense of irony and humor. In his book
Adventures in the arts: informal chapters on painters, vaudeville and poets Marsden Hartley included an essay on "
s:The Importance of Being Dada".
During this time Duchamp began exhibiting "
Readymades of Marcel Duchamp" (found objects) such as a bottle rack, and got involved with the Society of Independent Artists. In 1917 he submitted the now famous
Fountain (Duchamp), a urinal signed R. Mutt, to the Society of Independent Artists show only to have the piece rejected. First an object of scorn within the arts community, the
Fountain (Duchamp) has since become almost canonized by some. The committee presiding over Britain's prestigious Turner Prize in 2004, for example, called it "the most influential work of modern art." "Duchamp's urinal tops art survey", BBC News December 1, 2004. In an attempt to "pay homage to the spirit of Dada" a performance artist named Pierre Pinoncelli made a crack in The Fountain with a hammer in January of 2006; he also urinated on it in 1993.
Picabia's travels tied New York, Zürich and Paris groups together during the Dadaist period. For seven years he also published the Dada periodical
391 (magazine) in
Barcelona, Spain, New York City, Zürich, and Paris from 1917 through 1924.
By 1921, most of the original players moved to Paris where Dada experienced its last major incarnation (see
Neo-Dada for later activity).
Paris
The French avant-garde kept abreast of Dada activities in Zürich with regular communications from Tristan Tzara (whose pseudonym means "sad in country," a name chosen to protest the treatment of Jews in his native Romania), who exchanged letters, poems, and magazines with Guillaume Apollinaire, André Breton,
Max Jacob, and other French writers, critics and artists.
Dada in Paris surged in 1920 when many of the originators converged there. Inspired by Tzara, Paris Dada soon issued manifestos, organized demonstrations, staged performances and produced a number of journals (the final two editions of
Dada,
Le Cannibale, and
Littérature featured Dada in several editions.)
The first introduction of Dada artwork to the Parisian public was at the Salon des Indépendants in 1921.
Jean Crotti exhibited works associated with Dada including a work entitled,
Explicatif bearing the word
Tabu.
The Netherlands
In The Netherlands the Dada movement centered mainly around Theo van Doesburg, most well known for establishing the
De Stijl movement and magazine of the same name. Van Doesburg mainly focused on poetry, and included poems from many well-known Dada writers in
De Stijl such as
Hugo Ball,
Hans Arp and Kurt Schwitters. Van Doesburg became a friend of Schwitters, and together they organized the so-called
Dutch Dada campaign in 1923, where Van Doesburg promoted a leaflet about Dada (entitled
What is Dada?), Schwitters read his poems, Vilmos Huszàr demonstrated a mechanical dancing doll and Van Doesburg's wife, Nelly, played
avant-garde compositions on piano.
Van Doesburg wrote Dada poetry himself in
De Stijl, although under a pseudonym, I.K. Bonset, which was only revealed after his tragic death in 1931. 'Together' with I.K. Bonset, he also published a short-lived Dutch Dada magazine called
Mécano.
Georgia
Although Dada itself was unknown in
Georgia (country) until at least 1920, from 1917-1921 a group of poets called themselves "41st Degree" (referring both to the latitude of Tbilisi, Georgia and to the temperature of a high fever) organized along Dadaist lines. The most important figure in this group was
Iliazd, whose radical typographical designs visually echo the publications of the Dadaists. After his flight to
Paris in 1921, he collaborated with Dadaists on publications and events.
Poetry; music and sound
Dada was not confined to the visual and literary arts; its influence reached into sound and music. Kurt Schwitters developed what he called
sound poems and composers such as
Erwin Schulhoff, Hans Heusser and Albert Savinio wrote
Dada music, while members of
Les Six collaborated with members of the Dada movement and had their works performed at Dada gatherings.
In the very first Dada publication, Hugo Ball describes a "balalaika orchestra playing delightful folk-songs." African music and jazz was common at Dada gatherings, signaling a return to nature and naive
primitivism.
Legacy
, in
Ein Hod, IsraelWhile broad, the movement was unstable. By 1924 in Paris, Dada was melding into
surrealism, and artists had gone on to other ideas and movements, including surrealism, social realism and other forms of modernism. Some theorists argue that Dada was actually the beginning of postmodern art.
By the dawn of World War II, many of the European Dadaists had fled or emigrated to the
United States. Some died in death camps under Hitler, who persecuted the kind of "Degenerate art" that Dada represented. The movement became less active as post-World War II optimism led to new movements in art and literature.
Dada is a named influence and reference of various
anti-art and
political and cultural movements including the
Situationist International and
culture jamming groups like the
Cacophony Society.
At the same time that the Zürich Dadaists made noise and spectacle at the
Cabaret Voltaire (Zürich), Vladimir Lenin wrote his revolutionary plans for Russia in a nearby apartment. He was unappreciative of the artistic revolutionary activity near him. Tom Stoppard used this coincidence as a premise for his play
Travesties (1974), which includes Tzara, Lenin, and
James Joyce as characters.
The Cabaret Voltaire fell into disrepair until it was occupied from January to March, 2002, by a group proclaiming themselves neo-Dadaists, led by
Mark Divo. 2002 occupation by neo-Dadaists
Prague Post The group included
Leumund Cult,
Ingo Giezendanner, Aiana Calugar,
Lennie Lee and
Dan Jones. After their eviction the space became a museum dedicated to the history of Dada. The work of Lennie Lee and Dan Jones remained on the walls of the museum.
Several notable
retrospectives have examined the influence of Dada upon art and society. In 1967, a large Dada retrospective was held in Paris, France. In 2006, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City held a Dada exhibition in collaboration with the
National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and the
Centre Pompidou in Paris.
In 1996, WNEP Theater in Chicago began performing Soiree DADA, created by Joe Janes and Joel Jeske. The show, which included new Dada sound poetry, short plays and manifestos, continues to be performed in Chicago with occasional events in Los Angeles and New York.
Modern usage of the word
Dada
The satirical Church of the SubGenius pays homage to Dada in its use of the term "
wikt:Bulldada", which has passed into common usage as a description for concepts and items that are unintentionally ironic.
The
Brotherhood of Dada is a fictional gang in DC comics. They are devoted to all things absurd and bizarre.
The word Dada Core used to describe an underground music movement that originated in south western New York, as a reaction to the "sterile and stagnating" local music scene and overwrought ego of so called Indie rock bands. The genre's definitive act Japanese Lady Boy Massacre is well known for a wide range of musical styles.
Early practitioners
For a more complete list of Dadaists, see
List of Dadaists.
- Guillaume Apollinaire — France
- Hans Arp — Switzerland, France and Germany
- Hugo Ball — Switzerland
- Johannes Baader — Germany
- John Heartfield — Germany
- Arthur Cravan — United States
- Jean Crotti — France
- Theo van Doesburg — The Netherlands
- Marcel Duchamp — France and United States
- George Grosz — Germany
- Max Ernst — Germany
- Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven — United States, Germany
- Hannah Höch — Germany
- Marsden Hartley — United States
- Raoul Hausmann — Germany
- Emmy Hennings — Switzerland
- Richard Huelsenbeck — Switzerland and Germany
- Marcel Iancu — Switzerland (born in Romania)
- Clément Pansaers — Belgium
- Francis Picabia — Switzerland, United States and France
- Man Ray — United States and France
- Hans Richter (artist) — Germany, Switzerland and United States
- Kurt Schwitters — Germany
- Sophie Taeuber-Arp — Switzerland
- Tristan Tzara — Switzerland and France (born in Romania)
- Beatrice Wood — United States and France
- Ilia Zdanevich (Iliazd) — Georgia and France
See also
References
- The Dada Almanac, ed Richard Huelsenbeck , re-edited and translated by Malcolm Green et al, Atlas Press, with texts by Hans Arp, Johannes Baader, Hugo Ball, Paul Citröen, Paul Dermée, Daimonides, Max Goth, John Heartfield, Raoul Hausmann, Richard Huelsenbeck, Vincente Huidobro, Mario D’Arezzo, Adon Lacroix, Walter Mehring, Francis Picabia, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, Alexander Sesqui, Philippe Soupault, Tristan Tzara. ISBN 0 947757 62 7
- Blago Bung, Blago Bung, Hugo Ball's Tenderenda, Richard Huelsenbeck's Fantastic Prayers, & Walter Serner's Last Loosening - three key texts of Zurich ur-Dada. Translater and introduced by Malcolm Green. Atlas Press, ISBN 0 947757 86 4
- National Gallery of Art, Dada
- Richard Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, (University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1991) (paperback)
- Irene Hoffman, Documents of Dada and Surrealism: Dada and Surrealist Journals in the Mary Reynolds Collection, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, The Art Institute of Chicago.
- Richard Ball, Flight Out Of Time (University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1996)
- Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 1965)
- Uwe M. Schneede, George Grosz, His life and work (New York: Universe Books, 1979)
Footnotes
External links
- Dada art (Dada Online) includes images showing the characteristics of Dada.
- The International Dada Archive includes scans of many Dada publications.
- The Essential DADA
- Dada: The destruction of Art History of Art in MundoArte
- SamizDADA: Samizdat meets Dadaism
Manifestos
Dada - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in neutral Zürich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1920. The movement primarily involved visual arts ...
Tate | Glossary | Dada
The Dada movement began in Zurich, in neutral Switzerland, during the First World War. It can be seen as a reaction by artists to what they saw as the unprecedented horror and ...
Dadaism
Dadaism. Nude Descending a Staricase (1913) by Marcel Duchamp "Dada is a state of mind... Dada is artistic free thinking... Dada gives itself to nothing... ." So is Dada defined by ...
Dadaism - definition of Dadaism by the Free Online Dictionary ...
A European artistic and literary movement (1916-1923) that flouted conventional aesthetic and cultural values by producing works marked by nonsense, travesty, and incongruity.
Information on Dadaism
Information on Dadaism: What Was Dadaism? The First World War may have excited the Futurist movement; however, a new art movement was gathering stride in Paris, Barcelona, Cologne ...
dadaism - Hutchinson encyclopedia article about dadaism
Dada. Artistic and literary movement founded in 1915 in a spirit of rebellion and disillusionment during World War I and lasting until about 1922.
dadaism definition of dadaism in the Free Online Encyclopedia.
Dada (dä`dä) or Dadaism (dä`däĭzəm), international nihilistic movement among European artists and writers that lasted from 1916 to 1922. Born of the widespread ...
Tzara, "Dadaism"
Excerpts from "Dada Manifesto" [1918] and "Lecture on Dada" [1922].
Breaking the Rules: Dadaism
Curator's blog about the exhibition Breaking the Rules: the Printed Face of the European Avant Garde ... Breaking the Rules Curator Stephen Bury's blog about the Avant Garde and ...
Dadaism - Dadaism painting|dadaism
surrealism. United states Terrified lend you head-to-head how I came to externalize in actinomycosiss dadaism cute knight.The dadaism, as plaguily as Cabaret Voltaire knew, was in ...