Artistic movement (encompassing literature, the performing and visuals arts) formed in response to World War I and the imperialist bourgeois culture that fomented and prosecuted the war. Volatile and short-lived, it flourished in Europe and America from about 1916 until roughly 1924. It paved the way to Surrealism and is often lumped together with Surrealism, but in fact its aesthetic was distinctive, as the Situationism would insist in the 1950s and 1960s. If Breton, AndrĂ© is Surrealismâs pope, then the pope of Dadaism would have to be Hugo Ball. His Cabaret Voltaire, which opened in 1916 in the Spiegelgasse in Zurich, is generally thought of as the birthplace of the movement. Its denizens included Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, Richard Huelsenbeck, and Hans Richter. Ball coined the name Dada, the title of the movementâs magazine. As Ball explained it, Dada is âyes yesâ in Romanian, ârocking horseâ in French, a sign of naivety in German, and the first words out of a babyâs mouth. It simultaneously stands for everything and nothing, which was Dadaâs aesthetic in a nutshell. Dada aimed to produce a form of art that functioned as anti-art, as art that put to the sword the decadent pretensions of pre-war art. Its anti-art was also intended to make a social statement. Its signature look is that of the âready-madeâ, an ordinary object such as a urinal, re-contextualized and transformed into art, and the âcollageâ or âcut upâ, ordinary items juxtaposed in forceful and creative ways so as to produce art. The movement was as peripatetic as its members. Just as the very word Dada has several meanings, so there are several Dadas. In New York, at almost the same time as the events in the Cabaret Voltaire, expatriate French artists Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia were making a sensation at the famous âArmory Showâ with what Duchamp called anti-retinal art, i.e. art designed to stimulate rather than please the eye. In his account of postmodern art as that which brings forth the unpresentable, Jean-François Lyotard singles out Duchamp as one of the key artistic precursors to the postmodern aesthetic. Besides New York and Zurich Dada, there are at least two other forms of Dada usually recognized: Berlin Dada and Paris Dada. Unlike New York and Zurich, Paris and Berlin were not neutral cities; the war was being fought literally on their doorsteps. Consequently Berlin and Paris Dada were bleaker than their predecessors. George Groszâs blood-soaked Homage to Oskar Panizza (1917â18) perhaps best typifies this changed outlook. Berlin Dada also invented the technique known as photomontage (the best known exponent is undoubtedly Man Ray), which influences avant-garde arts still. Paris Dada was the product of Duchamp and Picabia, who returned from New York in 1919 and connected with Tzara and a vibrant group of young intellectuals and artists like Paul Ăluard who were determined to defy convention and produce something radically new. Dada didnât really end so much as implode. The group couldnât sustain so many fractious personalities and fell apart. But the ideas and techniques it pioneered continue to exert an effect today. Further Reading: M. Gale Dada and Surrealism (1997). D. Hopkins Dada and Surrealism: A Very Short Introduction (2004). H. Richter Dada: Art and Anti-Art (1964).
http://members.peak.org/~dadaist/English/Graphics/index.html âą A site providing definitions and biographical overviews of notable Dada artists together with examples of artwork.