Dada Essay Research Paper Welcome to the

Dada Essay, Research Paper

Welcome to the wonderful world of DADA!. Although at first glance, Dada can appear to be a rather difficult and confusing movement to understand. If one takes the time look at it in some depth, Im sure that you will discover a movement of not only great significance in the context of Art history. But a movement whose theories and principles are still applicable in the world in which we live today.

Having said this. It must be made clear that this website is by no means meant to be exhaustive, and is only really intended to give a brief overview of the movement as whole. None the less I hope you find it interesting.

Dada was an art movement that sprang up in Zurich

Switzerland roughly around 1916. It emerged largely

in response to the atrocities and insanity of World

War 1, and sought to find and experiment with new

forms of expression in an attempt to rejuvenate the

creative act.

After the end of the war in 1918, Dada spread to

Germany (Berlin, Cologne, Hanover), where it

was to rebel against the increasingly militaristic and

nationalistic policies of the emerging far right as

typified by the eventual rise to power of Hitler’s Nazi party.

Dada was important in an Art historical context in that it paved the way and laid the foundations for surrealism which was to follow. Many of the artists active in dada later becoming influential and active within surrealism.

Although Dada groups existed in several forms for longer and

shorter periods in other areas such in Paris, Italy, the Netherlands

and New York. It’s spiritual and historical home has always been

in Zurich (Switzerland), with a special mention going to post world war 1 Germany.

It is for this reason that this website will largely concentrate on these two areas of the Dada movement.

Swiss Dada

Switzerland in 1914, as it was to be later in

in 1945 with World war 2, was a neutral

country during World war 1. As a result it

found itself becoming a refuge for many

different people trying to escape the war in

their homelands. A lot of these people were

conscientious objectors to the war, some

being artists. Whilst others still, were just

normal people trying to escape the

prospect of mandatory conscription

within their own country.

As a result Zurich (in Switzerland) became

a very active place to be during this time,

as many of these people began to convalesce and get together

within the clubs and cafe’s of Zurich’s streets and alleys. In many

ways it was inevitable given the dynamics and volatility of the

place and time that something would happen, particularly given

the way that Zurich had become a melting pot for dissent and

ideas about the War. Not surprisingly therefore in 1916, something did.

Speaking in the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in 1916. Hugo Ball said;

“Everyword that is sung here or spoken at the very least proclaims that this humiliating period has not succeeded in gaining our respect!”. In saying this Hugo Ball was referring specifically to the events of World war 1. In so doing however, he was also giving an insight into what from that day would become known as Dada,

(the name being chosen by accident in a German-French dictionary meaning hobbyhorse. Therefore implying a childlike quality expressing a primitiveness and a beginning at zero in terms of a new art). It was a lack of respect for the war and for a society capable of spawning such a war that became the motivating force behind the Dada movement.

For the dadaist’s the war was an outward manifestation of societies inherent rottenness, as well as a sure sign of a world on the brink of collapse. A world that in 1916 was exhibiting it’s final death throes. The Dadaist’s decided to welcome this collapse and the way that they saw it, anything that would precipitate it’s further decline was to be encouraged. “Disintegration right in the innermost process of creation”, (Hugo Ball).

As a result, the Dadaist’s went on the offensive against anything

associated with society at the time. It’s bourgeois Victorian values which stood idle whilst the war raged. It’s language which had been used in a logical and sensible manner by statesmen of the day to try and justify the insanity, and sell the essentially illogical politics of the War to the people. And finally it’s Art and by association it’s artist’s . Particularly artists who knowingly

professed ‘art for art’s sake’. Who, regardless of circumstances,

wanted to go on producing what had been ‘noble and beautiful’

in the past, and who were creating spurious and mendacious art,

serving to gloss over the crimes of the present, thereby aiding

and abetting the brutalization of mankind.

How the dadaists did this is by essentially embracing the opposite of what society embraced as a social value. Where society valued rational the Dadaist embraced the irrational. Where society valued the beautiful the dadaists embraced the ugly. Where society favored order the Dadaists favored chaos. It was the Dadaists intention tha

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