DADAISM
http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/D/Dadaism.htm
Dadaism or Dada is a post-World War I cultural movement in visual art as
well as literature (mainly poetry), theatre and graphic design. The movement was, among other things, a protest against the barbarism
of the War and what Dadaists believed was an oppressive intellectual rigidity
in both art and everyday society; its works were characterized by a deliberate
irrationality and the rejection of the prevailing standards of art.
Dada probably began in the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in 1916 (by
some accounts on October 6), and there were active dadaists in New York such
as Marcel Duchamp and the Liberian art student, Beatrice Wood, who had left France at the onset of World War I. At
around the same time there had been a dadist movement in Berlin.
Slightly later there were also dadaist un-communities
in Hanover (Kurt Schwitters), Cologne, and Paris. In 1920, Max Ernst, Hans Arp and
social activist Alfred Grunwald set up the Cologne Dada group.
The French avant-garde kept
abreast of Dada activities in Zürich due to the regular communications
from Tristan Tzara, who exchanged letters, poems, and magazines with Guillaume Apollinaire, André Breton, Max Jacob, and other French writers, critics and artists. 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.
By the dawn of World War II, many of the European Dadaists had fled or been forced into exile in
the United States. The movement became less active as the founders died off and
post-World War II optimism led to new movements in art and literature.
The Cabaret Voltaire fell into disrepair until it was occupied by a
group claiming to be neo-dadaists in June-August of 2002.
After their eviction the Cabaret Voltaire became a museum dedicated to the
history of Dada and the Dada movement.
The origins of the name "Dada" are unclear. Some believe that
it is a nonsensical word. Some believe 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. Others believe that a group of artists assembled in Zürich in
1916, wanting to form a movement, chose a name at random by stabbing a French-German
dictionary, and picking the name that the point landed upon. "Dada"
in French is a child's word for "hobby-horse".
French also has the colloquialism "c'est mon
dada" meaning "it's my hobby".
According to its proponents, Dada was not art; it was anti-art. For
everything that art stood for, Dada was to represent the opposite. Where art
was concerned with aesthetics, Dada
ignored them. If art is to have at least an implicit or latent message, Dada
strives to have no meaning--interpretation of Dada is dependent entirely on the
viewer. If art is to appeal to sensibilities, Dada offends. Perhaps it is then
ironic that Dada is a precursor to Modern art. Dada became a commentary on art
and the world, thus becoming art itself.
The artists of the Dada movement had become disillusioned by art, art
history and history in
general. Many of them were veterans of World War I and had grown cynical of
humanity after seeing what men were capable of doing to each other on the
battlefields of Europe. Thus
they became attracted to a nihilistic view of the world and created art in which chance and randomness
formed the basis of creation.
The basis of Dada is nonsense. With the order of the world destroyed by World War I, Dada
was a way to express the confusion that was felt by many people as their world
was turned upside down. There is not an attempt to find meaning in disorder,
but rather to accept disorder as the nature of the world. Many embraced this
disorder through Dada, using it as a means to express their distaste for the
aesthetics of the previous order and carnage it reaped. Through this rejection
of traditional culture and aesthetics they hoped to reach a personal
understanding of the true nature of the world around them.
Interestingly, at the same time that the Zürich dadaists
were busy making noise and spectacle at the Cabaret Voltaire, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was writing his revolutionary plans for Russia in a nearby apartment. It is known that he was unappreciative of the
real revolutionary activity occurring next to him. Tom Stoppard used
this coincidence as a premise for his play Travesties, which includes Tzara, Lenin, and James Joyce as
characters