ROLLON SANTOS SUMALBAG SUNGA TEODOSIO

A17 GED108
Dada was an artistic and literary movement that began in Zürich, Switzerland. It arose as
a reaction to World War I and the nationalism that many thought had led to the war.
Influenced by other avant-garde movements - Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, and
Expressionism - its output was wildly diverse, ranging from performance art to poetry,
photography, sculpture, painting, and collage. Dada's aesthetic, marked by its mockery
of materialistic and nationalistic attitudes, proved a powerful influence on artists in many
cities, including Berlin, Hanover, Paris, New York, and Cologne, all of which generated
their own groups. The movement dissipated with the establishment of Surrealism, but the
ideas it gave rise to have become the cornerstones of various categories of modern and
contemporary art.

Dada was the first conceptual art

movement where the focus of
the artists was not on
crafting aesthetically
pleasing objects but on
making works that often
upended bourgeois
sensibilities and that
generated difficult
questions about
society, the role of the artist,
and the purpose of art.

Switzerland was neutral during WWI with limited

censorship and it was in Zürich that Hugo Ball and
Emmy Hennings founded the Cabaret Voltaire on
February 5, 1916 in the backroom of a tavern on
Spiegelgasse in a seedy section of the city. In order to
attract other artists and intellectuals, Ball put out a press
release that read, "Cabaret Voltaire. Under this name a
group of young artists and writers has formed with the object of becoming a center for
artistic entertainment. In principle, the Cabaret will be run by artists, guests artists will
come and give musical performances and readings at the daily meetings. Young artists
of Zürich, whatever their tendencies, are invited to come along with suggestions and
contributions of all kinds." Those who were present from the beginning in addition to Ball
and Hennings were Hans Arp, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco, and Richard Huelsenbeck.
In July of that year, the first Dada evening was held at which Ball read the first manifesto.
There is little agreement on how the word Dada was invented, but one of the most
common origin stories is that Richard Huelsenbeck found the name by plunging a knife
at random into a dictionary. The term "dada" is a colloquial French term for a hobbyhorse,
yet it also echoes the first words of a child, and these suggestions of childishness and
absurdity appealed to the group, who were keen to put a distance between themselves
and the sobriety of conventional society. They also appreciated that the word might mean
the same (or nothing) in all languages - as the group was avowedly internationalist.
The aim of Dada art and activities was both to help to stop the war and to vent frustration
with the nationalist and bourgeois conventions that had led to it. Their anti-authoritarian
stance made for a protean movement as they opposed any form of group leadership or
guiding ideology.

The artists in Zürich published a Dada magazine and held art exhibits that helped spread
their anti-war, anti-art message. In 1917, after Ball left for Bern to pursue journalism,
Tzara founded Galerie Dada on Bahnhofstrasse where further Dada evenings were held
along with art exhibits. Tzara became the leader of the movement and began an
unrelenting campaign to spread Dada ideas, showering French and Italian writers and
artists with letters. The group published an art and literature review entitled Dada starting
in July 1917 with five editions
from Zürich and two final ones
from Paris. Their art was
focused on performance and
printed matter.
Once the war ended in 1918,
many of the artists returned to
their home countries, helping to
further spread the movement.
The end of Dada in Zürich
followed the Dada 4-5 event in
April 1919 that by design
turned into a riot, something
that Tzara thought furthered
the aims of Dada by undermining conventional art practices through audience
involvement in art production. The riot, which began as a Dada event, was one of the
most significant. It attracted over 1000 people and began with a conservative speech
about the value of abstract art that was meant to anger the crowd. This was followed by
discordant music and then several readings that encouraged crowd participation until the
crowd lost control and began to destroy several of the props. Tzara described it thus: "the
tumult is unchained hurricane frenzy siren whistles bombardment song the battle starts
out sharply, half the audience applaud the protestors hold the hall . . . chairs pulled out
projectiles crash bang expected effect atrocious and instinctive . . . Dada has succeeded
in establishing the circuit of absolute unconsciousness in the audience which forgot the
frontiers of education of prejudices, experienced the commotion of the New. Final victory
of Dada." For Tzara the key to the success of a riot was audience involvement so that
attendees were not just onlookers of art but became involved in its production. This was
a total negation of traditional art.
Soon after this, Tzara traveled to Paris, where he met André Breton and began
formulating the theories that Breton would eventually call Surrealism. Dadaists did not
self-consciously declare micro-regional movements; the spread of Dada throughout
various European cities and into New York can be attributed to a few key artists, and each
city in turn influenced the aesthetics of their respective Dada groups.

Artist: Marcel Duchamp

Urinal - Philadelphia Museum of Art
Duchamp was the first artist to use a readymade and
his choice of a urinal was guaranteed to challenge and
offend even his fellow artists. There is little
manipulation of the urinal by the artist other than to turn
it upside-down and to sign it with a fictitious name. By
removing the urinal from its everyday environment and
placing it in an art context, Duchamp was questioning
basic definitions of art as well as the role of the artist in
creating it. With the title, Fountain, Duchamp made a
tongue in cheek reference to both the purpose of the urinal as well to famous fountains designed
by Renaissance and Baroque artists. In its path-breaking boldness the work has become iconic
of the irreverence of the Dada movement towards both traditional artistic values and production
techniques. Its influence on later 20th-century artists such as Jeff Koons, Robert Rauschenberg,
Damien Hirst, and others are incalculable.
Artist: Marcel Duchamp
Collotype - Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen,
Rotterdam
This work is a classic example of Dada irreverence
towards traditional art. Duchamp transformed a cheap
postcard of the Mona Lisa (1517) painting, which had
only recently been returned to the Louvre after it was
stolen in 1911. While it was already a well-known work of
art, the publicity from the theft ensured that it became one
of the most revered and famous works of art: art with a
capital A. On the postcard, Duchamp drew a mustache
and a goatee onto Mona Lisa's face and labeled it
L.H.O.O.Q. If the letters are pronounced as they would
be by a native French speaker, it would sound as if one
were saying "Elle a chaud au cul," which loosely
translates as "She has a hot ass." Again, Duchamp
managed to offend everyone while also posing questions
that challenged artistic values, artistic creativity, and the
overall canon.

Artist: Raoul Hausmann

This assemblage represents Hausmann's
disillusion with the German government and their
inability to make the changes needed to create a
better nation. It is an ironic sculptural illustration of
Hausmann's belief that the average member of
(corrupt) society "has no more capabilities than
those which chance has glued to the outside of his
skull; his brain remains empty". Thus Hausmann's
use of a hat maker's dummy to represent a
blockhead who can only experience that which
can be measured with the mechanical tools
attached to its head - a ruler, a tape measure, a
pocket watch, a jewelry box containing a
typewriter wheel, brass knobs from a camera, a
leaky telescopic beaker of the sort used by
soldiers during the war, and an old purse. Thus,
there is no ability for critical thinking or subtlety.
With its blank eyes, the dummy is a narrow-
minded, blind automaton.
Dada artworks present intriguing overlaps and paradoxes in that they seek to demystify
artwork in the populist sense but nevertheless remain cryptic enough to allow the viewer
to interpret works in a variety of ways. Some Dadaists portrayed people and scenes
representationally in order to analyze form and movement. Others, like Kurt Schwitters
and Man Ray, practiced abstraction to express the metaphysical essence of their subject
matter. Both modes sought to deconstruct daily experience in challenging and rebellious
ways. The key to understanding Dada works lies in reconciling the seemingly silly,
slapdash styles with the profound anti-bourgeois message. Tzara especially fought the
assumption that Dada was a statement; yet Tzara and his fellow artists became
increasingly agitated by politics and sought to incite a similar fury in Dada audiences.

Irreverence was a crucial component of Dada art, whether it was a lack of respect for
bourgeois convention, government authorities, conventional production methods, or the
artistic canon. Each group varied slightly in their focus, with the Berlin group being the
most anti-government and the New York group being the most anti-art. Of all the groups,
the Hannover group was likely the most conservative.

A readymade was simply an object that already existed and was commandeered by Dada
artists as a work of art, often in the process combined with another readymade, as in
Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel, thus creating an assemblage. The pieces were often chosen
and assembled by chance or accident to challenge bourgeois notions about art and
artistic creativity. Indeed, it is difficult to separate conceptually the Dada interest in chance
with their focus on ready-mades and assemblage. Several of the ready-mades and
assemblages were bizarre, a quality that made it easy for the group to merge eventually
with Surrealism. Other artists who worked with ready-mades and assemblages include
Ernst, Man Ray, and Hausmann.

Chance was a key concept underpinning most of Dada art from the abstract and beautiful
compositions of Schwitters to the large assemblages of Duchamp. Chance was used to
embrace the random and the accidental as a way to release creativity from rational control,
with Arp being one of the earliest and best-known practitioners. Schwitters, for example,
gathered random bits of detritus from a variety of locales, while Duchamp welcomed
accidents such as the crack that occurred while he was making The Large Glass. In
addition to loss of rational control, Dada lack of concern with preparatory work and the
embrace of artworks that were marred fit well with the Dada irreverence for traditional art
methods.
Tied closely to Dada irreverence was their interest in humor, typically in the form of irony.
In fact, the embrace of the readymade is key to Dada's use of irony as it shows an
awareness that nothing has intrinsic value. Irony also gave the artists flexibility and
expressed their embrace of the craziness of the world thus preventing them from taking
their work too seriously or from getting caught up in excessive enthusiasm or dreams of
utopia. Their humor is an unequivocal YES to everything as art.