By: Caitlin Cherry (A), Jesse Papineau (B), Zach Rocchino (C), Jake Woolf (D), and Michael Hearn (E)
The term dada is a French child’s word for horse. The movement was created in the same randomness as the word. It began in Zurich in 1916, but swiftly moved to other European cities, and into New York City. Dada was initiated by Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings with their project titled Cabaret Voltaire. This became an attraction to other artists trying to escape WWI. The theories of Dada were spread through an art and literature review titled Dada, featuring the unconventional creations of Dada artists.
Dada art is created with a sense of rejection of established rules of art. Artists were fueled with a sense of anarchy and futility. The movement was expressed in all forms of art, from traditional forms such as painting and sculpture, to newly recognized mediums like collage, sound, typography and performance. These surreal creations were viewed in private galleries in cities around the world, as well as in journals such as Dada or New York’s 3911.
Dadaists were most interested in rebelling against societal snobbery, group leadership and politics, and as such decided to present their art (or anti-art) most often in the theatre. Many Europeans were starting to experiment by making simple films, however that technology was of little interest to those involved in Dada. Some experimentalists chose to film their anti-art expressions, yet this use of technology was not too popular. Dadaists mostly felt that their art could only be understood and truly experienced live on stage where it could be critiqued and analyzed by anyone who wanted to see it2.
In Berlin, a place called ‘Club Dada’ was open from 1918 to 1923 which is where art forms including collage and photomontage were first dabbled with3. Most Dadaists chose not to take advantage of the film technology of their time, however it helped that some chose to document Dada art through photographs and literary works so that it could be easily accessed by anyone in the world. Even if one was not lucky enough to see Dada art live, Dadaists truly embraced collages as an informal and unorganized art form that helped to make their art a bit more accessible4. Dada was a strong influence for future generations in creating avant-garde, surrealist and even punk rock works.
Furthermore, technology had a massive effect on the way in which these pieces of art (or anti-art, in Dada's case) were presented to an audience. The use of reproductions of images made it possible for Dada pieces to be distributed throughout the world. Using methods of photomontage, many collages were made using reproduced images and newsprint and typeface. With the massive reproduction made possible by printing presses, Dada art could be distributed over and over again around the world with relative ease, such is the case with Hugo Ball's poem "Karawane"5. This ease of reproduction meant that many more people could be talking about and analyzing these dada works as they were readily available. Oskar Schlemmer, however, chose to use theater as his medium of expression. With the Triadisches Ballett6, Schlemmer focused on a figure moving through space. The use of the theater aesthetic as a medium meant that a mass audience could congregate to view his work. This left much room for discussion, analysis, and "buzz" to surround the work and lead to interesting new ideas about it. The whole performance aspect of the early Dada movement mixed entertainment and traditional theater aesthetics with a sense of anti-art and commentary that made it easy, socially, for people to interact and discuss the work. In a way, it brought people with similar viewpoints and artistic sensibilities together and was an important movement in new media and performance art.
The most obvious way in which Dadaism was a reflection on the art forms that preceded it were that up until that point in time, art was intended to be just that, art. Dadaism, however, cultivated an entirely new concept. It was the self-proclaimed “anti-art”. Everything art stood for up until that point (romance, love, religion) dadism sought out to counteract. For example, the Rennesaince had its roots in cultural progession, educational reform, and in regards to art, realism. It focused mainly on “a highly realistic linear perspective”7.
Dadaism, however, stood for the exact opposite. It focused on a distortion of reality, or a new reality, hence why it gave birth to the form of art surrealism. It was a reflection on the vastly pessimistic view shared by veterans of World War I, who never before saw had seen the destruction men could bestow upon another on the battlefield. In that sense, it became the “anti-war” art form (as opposed to earlier art that merely reflected the effects of war), although the members of the Dadaist movement would have been reluctant even to that title8.
Musically Dadaism had similar intentions in that all previous forms of music (and can be argued even today) focused on the careful placement of pitches and rhythms to create patterned sounds. Dadaism music, or sometimes referred to as “noise music” from such people as Henry Choplin, was usually characterized as simply several tracks of aimless noise compiled into one “song”9.
Dada was formed during a time both of war and artistic movement where European art communities were forming new and revolutionary movements of art and countries were engaged in World War I. While many of the art movements, such as cubism or expressionism, were reactionary to current situations of the time, they weren’t really critical of these issues but instead focused on interpretations or expressions from the artists.
When Dada was formed, the participants suggested that the war was aided and started by bourgeoisie capitalist society that other types of art either didn’t directly criticize or even supported by allowing the society to judge and shape their pieces of art. By deconstructing art to the degree it does, Dada suggests that the society around them has lost the respect of true artists because their political wars and lifestyle are out of touch with any aesthetic or ideological values of art. For example, Hugo Ball commonly expressed his art through phonetic poems of nonsensical words, often performed in garish and surreal costumes, and he is quoted as saying that “In these phonetic poems we totally renounce the language that journalism has abused and corrupted. We must return to the innermost alchemy of the word, we must even give up the word too, to keep for poetry its last and holiest refuge.” So while Dada can sometimes be a direct mockery of the loftier aesthetics of art and its community, it’s a decidedly self-righteous one based on the cause of returning to the unpretentious basics of art without actually being art, by being “anti-art” as Dada has been called sometimes.
Dada, in short, is a protest. Its very existence is to criticize and deconstruct the world that surrounds it and precedes it, and the way art is treated and perceived by artists, critics, and the public 10 11 12.
Further viewing:
National Gallery of Art: DADA
http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2006/dada/artwork/index-main.shtm
Hugo Ball in cubist costume performing a “phonetic poem”: http://www.uclm.es/artesonoro/hball/imagen/fotopoema.JPG
“Gadji beri bimba” - a poem by Hugo Ball: http://members.peak.org/~dadaist/English/Graphics/gadjiberi.html
1 Documents of Dada and Surrealism: Dada and Surrealist Journals in the Mary Reynolds
Collection by Irene E. Hoffman http://www.artic.edu/reynolds/essays/hofmann.php
2 http://www.theartstory.org/movement-dada.htm
3 http://www.ieeff.org/berlin.html
4 http://members.peak.org/~dadaist/English/Graphics/index.html
5 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Hugo_ball_karawane.png
6 5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMDtwC76HjA
7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance
8 http://www.huntfor.com/arthistory/C20th/dadaism.htm
9 http://www.ubu.com/sound/chopin.html
10 Ball, Hugo (1916). The Dada Movement. Zurich.
11 Dachy, Marc (2007). Dada the Revolt of Art. New York: Thames & Hudson.
12 Dachy, Marc (1990). The Dada Movement. New York: Skira Rizzoli.
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