Dadaism Explained: The Birth of Anti-Art and Its Enduring Influence

[00:00:05]Why is a urinal considered a piece of  art? What does the word Dada represent?   What are Dada soirees? What does Dadaist  poetry sound like? And can everything and   anything become a work of art if we chose to  declare it art? In this week's story, you'll   find out the answers to these questions and learn  more about the famous art movement called Dadaism.

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[00:00:37]The art movement known as Dada was born in a cool  little nightclub named Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich,   Switzerland in February 1916. The times when this  amazing movement started its life were, however,   not so amazing. World War I was roaring and  artists from different countries were running away   from the terror. Fleeing from the ongoing war,  a group of artists moved to neutral Switzerland   and formed a new artistic group. Dada was truly an international   movement with artists coming from all over Europe. Tristan Tzara and Marcel Janco came from Romania,   Emmy Hennings and Hugo Ball from  Germany, and Jean Arp from France.   Dada united artists opposed to war, who were  looking to find new and alternative art practices   through which they could communicate their  feelings about the world around them. They wanted   to create a new universe that was completely  different from the one happening around them.   Dada, therefore, became anti-everything.  Anti-war, anti-bourgeois, anti-nationalist,   anti-establishment, anti-museums,  anti-materialism. Dada, as Andre Breton said,   was a state of mind. Dadaist truly wanted  to bid farewell to established rules,   ideals, and conventions. They aimed to  destroy what was thought of as reasonable.   Or as Jean Arp phrased it "Dada is  for the senseless which does not mean   nonsense. Dada is senseless like nature.  Dada is for nature and against art."

[00:02:16]Since Dadaists were anti-meaning too, they  chose a peculiar name for their movement.   The word DADA could represent a sound a baby  would make, or it could mean a rocking horse,   or it could mean yes-yes in Romanian. Either  way, Dada could mean everything and nothing!  So, you might be wondering, what was dadaist  art like? Well, the previously mentioned Cabaret   Voltaire became a hotspot for all things Dada. It  was the place where performances, poetry readings,   dances, exhibitions, and dada soirees were held  at. It was a center for all types of avant-garde   artistic entertainment. The Cabaret lasted for six  months only, but its legacy is surely enormous.

[00:02:59]Many dada soirees, or dada evenings, consisted  of Dadaist poetry readings. And Dadaist poetry   was certainly unconventional. Artist Tristan  Tzara even wrote an instruction on how to   create a dada poem. What you need to do  is take a newspaper, cut out the words,   put them in a bag, shake the bag, and  then you take the cutouts one by one,   and there's your poem! You could even  try and make a dadaist poem yourself!  A number of Dadaist poems,  like the ones Hugo Ball wrote,   consisted of random nonsensical words that would  just represent a seemingly meaningless sound.   You might have heard the famous Talking Heads   song called I Zimbra. The lyrics were  written by none other than the Dadaist   Hugo Ball. And the lyrics go like this:  Gadji beri bimba clandridi Lauli lonni   cadori gadjam. Yes, these are  all random words that don't mean   anything in particular, fascinating right?

[00:04:05]Other Dadaists like Jean Arp also liked to play  with the idea of spontaneity and chance in art.   When creating some of his collages, Arp  would drop paper cut-outs from the air   and glue them exactly where they fell. After the war ended, Dadaists started   moving to other places from Switzerland, so Dada  spread around too! Mainly to France, Germany,   and the USA. After Zurich, Dada had its new  centers in Paris, Berlin, and New York City.

[00:04:33]The Berlin group, led by Hannah Hoch,  Richard Hueselback, and Raoul Hausman,   was the most openly political of  all Dadaist branches. During the   1920 First International Dada Art Fair In Berlin,  even the ceiling was used for exhibiting a piece.   Artists John Heartfield and Rudolf Schlichter  created a life-sized doll of a soldier with   a pig's head made out of paper-mâché  and named it The Prussian Archangel.  The Berlin Dada group is also famous for coming  up with a new art-form known as the photomontage.   Photomontages represented a new version of collage  where media images from newspapers and magazines   were cut out to create a work of art with a  political message. Photomontages showed the media   images used in the Weimar Republic, but Dadaists  used them in subversive and even feminist ways,   especially in the case of Hannah Hoch who created  many pieces reflecting the idea of what the new   modern woman should be like. 8.  Now, let's move on to the American branch of  Dada. The New York Dada is connected to the very   famous Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp created one of  the best-known Dadaists pieces and probably one   of the most famous art pieces in the history  of art - The Fountain. The Fountain consists   of a signed piece of a regular white porcelain  urinal seen in restrooms all over the world. So,   you might be wondering, why is this considered  art? The answer is actually quite simple:   because the artist chose to make it an artwork.  Duchamp's main goal was to show that the artist   had the intellectual power to choose what  object becomes art and change its context.   What's important here is the artistic  idea and not the object itself.   And this notion became a big game-changer  in the history of modern art.

[00:06:21]Duchamp's philosophy of art was of  enormous importance for postwar art   movements like conceptual art, performance  art, and postmodern art. What we choose to   see as art can be art, it doesn't mean  that it's good or bad, it's just - art.

[00:06:40]Duchamp decided to call his chosen mass-produced  objects made into artworks his readymades. A   bicycle wheel, a shovel, a bottle rack, you  name it, Duchamp made it into an artwork!   And Dadaism made all of that possible.   Dada slowly dissolved during the early twenties  with artists going their own ways and moving   on to new art movements like surrealism  for which dada laid the foundation for.   But if you're wondering if Dadaist artworks are  still relevant today. The answer is - absolutely   yes! Without Dadaism, we wouldn't have Marina  Abramovic's performance art, or any conceptual   art piece. Maurizio Catalan’s infamous banana  wouldn’t ever be considered art without Dadaism,   and Banksy’s pieces probably wouldn’t have been  sold in the art market. So, Dadaism's legacy is   huge and ever-present, both in the history of  20th-century art and the contemporary art world.

[00:07:39]What did you find the most curious about Dadaism?   Would you like to learn more about  the history of other art movements?   Share your opinion in the comments. If you’d like  to see more stories like this one, don’t forget to   hit the Subscribe button. And find us on Instagram  for your daily dose of culture from Curious Muse!