Dada or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early twentieth century. It began in Zurich, Switzerland in 1916, spreading to Berlin shortly thereafter.[1] To quote Dona Budd's The Language of Art Knowledge,
Dada was born out of negative reaction to the horrors of World War I. This international movement was begun by a group of artists and poets associated with the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. Dada rejected reason and logic, prizing nonsense, irrationality and intuition. The origin of the name Dada is unclear; some believe that it is a nonsensical word
In 1918 a group of artists compiled and signed what became
known as the Dada Manifesto – a short explanation of the Dada movement:
“Art, in its production and direction, depends on the
time in which it lives, and artists are creatures of their epoch. The highest
art will be one in which the thousandfold issues of the day are revealed in its
consciousness, an art which allows itself to be noticeably shattered by last
week’s explosions, which is forever trying to collect itself after the shock of
recent days. The best and most challenging artists will be those who every hour
snatch the tatters of their bodies out of the turbulent whirl of life, who,
with bleeding hands and hearts, hold fast to the intelligence of their time.
Has Expressionism fulfilled our
expectations of such an art, which should be a measure of our most vital
concerns? No! No! No!
Have the Expressionists fulfilled
our expectations of an art that burns the essence of life into our flesh? No!
No! No!
Under the pretext of turning inward,
the Expressionists in literature and painting have banded together into a
generation which even now is expecting its historical validation and is
campaigning for honorable bourgeois recognition… Expressionism, discovered
abroad and—true to style—transformed in Germany into a fat idler with hope of a
good pension, has nothing in common with the efforts of active men. The signers
of this manifesto have, under the battle cry
DADA!
What is DADAISM? The word Dada
symbolizes the most primitive relation to the surrounding reality; with Dadaism
a new reality comes into its own. Life appears as a simultaneous whirl of
noises, colors, and spiritual rhythms, which Dada takes unflinchingly into its
art, with all the spectacular screams and fevers of its feisty pragmatic
attitude and with all its brutal reality.
This is the sharp dividing line
separating Dadaism from all artistic directions up until now and particularly
from FUTURISM, which not long ago certain weak minds took to be a new version
of impressionist realization. By tearing to pieces all the platitudes of
ethics, culture, and inwardness, which are merely cloaks for weak muscles,
Dadaism has for the first time ceased to take an aesthetic position toward
life…”
