Dada

Dada

Received its enigmatic name in February 1916; was a reaction against the brutality of war, the expediency of art and literature and the dangerous inadequacy of rational thought; in fact it spat out its contempt for the spiritual and moral decadence of a whole intellectual, cultural and social system.

Born in neutral Zurich in the middle of the anarchic destruction of the Great War, it expressed its disgust with a morally culpable bourgeoisie and a spiritually nerveless art which had no objective beyond a simplistic social photography, a faith in its own function as anodyne and a reprehensible dedication to self-fulfilment.

With unabashed relish Dada declared its negative intent: it wished, apparently, to destroy art along with bourgeois society, but in truth it opposed itself to the abuse of art rather than art itself, to society rather than humanity.

Its exponents were poets and artists (Marcel Duchamp, Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Richard Huelsenbeck, Man Ray, Max Ernst) who professed to despise art and literature but who, paradoxically, expressed their contempt in terms which identified them as part of the modernist movement.

Its chief weapons – manifesto, phonetic poetry, simultaneous poem, noise music and provocative public spectacle – were all borrowed directly from the Futurists and stood as an image of the dissolution which seemed the central fact of modern existence.

Their commitment to experimental modes, and the vitality of their performances, however, seemed to indicate a more fundamental faith in the possibility of opposing historical entropy with energy and concern if not with the self-contained structure of art itself.

When Dada found itself outflanked by the more coherent and purposeful experiments of the Surrealists it was laid to rest in 1922. But, as an attitude of mind rather than a formal movement, its subversive energy could not be contained by the incantations of a mock funeral service. In the 1960s American artists, writers, actors and musicians laid claim to the excitement and commitment of Futurists, Dadaists and Surrealists alike and approximated their experiments in the technique of Pop Art, happenings and the multimedia performance.

See also SURREALISM. See C. W. E. Bigsby, Dada and Surrealism (1972); Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-art (1965); William S. Rubin, Dada, Surrealism and their Heritage (1968); S. Foster and R. Kuenzl (eds), Dada Spectrum (1979) (contains extensive bibliography); R. Sheppard (ed.), Dada: Studies of a Movement (1979), New Studies in Dada (1981); R. Short, Dada and Surrealism (1980), Modernism, Dada, Postmodernism (2000); D. Tashjian, Skyscraper Primitives (1975)

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