Report on Dada
Introduction
Switzerland and America were the first two countries where this movement began during World War 1 in 1916 but at the time had no contact between each other. The main places with traces of the Dada movement are Zurich, New York, Berlin, Cologne, Hanover, Paris and Europe.
Dada united in the frustration and disappointment with the war and the disgust with the culture that allowed it, the Dadaists felt that only protest and rebellious behaviour could fully express their anger.
Dada originated from writers and artists mainly from German expressionism, Italian Futurism and French Cubism who did not want to rebel against any previous movement but against general ideas in the field of art and literature.
The movement involved visual arts, literature, art manifestoes, theatre and graphic design. Its founders considered Dada anti art not art. Most Dada pieces contained dull colours and nothing that was too bright. Although Dada did not last long the movement has given influence to other styles such as surrealism and pop art.
The most common Dada artists were Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzaea, Francis Picabia, Jean (Hans) Arp, Kurt Schwitters, Hausmann, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, George Grosz, Theodor Baargeld, marcel Janco and Man Ray. Who all effected the movement in some way or another.
Art historians were unable to find characteristics of a particular style as there were two many contradictions and complexities of Dada and described Dada as a transitional stage in the arts.
Body
Zurich Dada (1915-1920)
Hugo Ball brought together all elements into a single Dadaist core. In 1915 he propositioned the owner of a beer house (Herr Ephraim) to open a basic cabaret, saying that it would increase his sales.
Ball wanted to call it “Voltaire” and this is how the name “Cabaret Voltaire” was given to the first Dada review in 1916.
Ball meet poet Tristan Tzara and the painter Marcel Janco two Rumanian refugees, and their colleague Jean (Hans) Arp in February 1916. They came to the agreement of a presentation of a programme of soirees to be held at the “Cabaret Voltaire”.
In February 1916 Dada became an organised movement. Prior to that it had been broadly diverse.
The origin of the term Dada is vague and controversial. According to Tristan Tzara and Hugo Ball the word had been found by chance when opening the pages of a dictionary.
The first Dada books were published between 1916 and a new venue was opened in the Corray Gallery in which it became the Dada gallery in 1917.
Tzara made contact with Francis Picabia who settled in Switzerland in autumn 1917 and a connection grew between the two. Tzara launched into the editing of the manifeste Dada 1918, which remains the most important document of the Dadaist movement in Zurich and captivated the attention of young French poets and a starting point of a new wave of Dadaism. By late 1919 Dada found itself with little supporters, this is when Tzara accepted Picabia’s invitation to Paris and try his luck there.
New York Dada (1915-1920)
In the beginning of the centaury American Dadaism was all the rage. The artists revolved around the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who was the director and founder of numerous galleries and photographic reviews.
Many European emigrants had settled in the United States during the time of the declaration of war in 1914, and came into contact with many venues and artists in Harlem, Greenwich Village and Chinatown.
The atmosphere of New York communities was very different to those in Zurich during the same period. All the same their leaders were fired with same belief that nothing is worthwhile and the ideas of challenging tradition.
In March 1915 Paul Hvioand, Stieglitz and Marius de Zayas had published the first edition of “291”, which was the house number of Stieglitz gallery on Fifth Avenue.
In June 1915 Duchamp and Picabia formed the original foundation of a new Dadaist movement.
Picabia examined the severe technique of merchanomotphic painting than his previous work from 1912-1915 that was more picturesque and less severe. In March 1917 an exhibition of independent artists at the Grand Central Hotel channeled all these energies and made those remote individuals aware of their substantially single identity, prior to that various groups seemed to work with no precise aim.
At the end of the World War many artists had moved back to the provinces, and others left for Europe in order to join the expatriates of the “lost generation”(Dada, Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri S.p.A, Milan 4).
Like Man Ray, Duchamp felt his days as American promoter of the Dada movement had come to an end. After Dunchamp had gone, Dada left few visible remaining signs in the United States. Only a few artists such as Dove, Stella, Convert and Schamberg continued to work and provoke a certain interest. It was only after Second World War the impact Dada had left would be shown with what we are familiar with today.
The Berlin Dada (1918-1923)
In Berlin Richard Huelsenbeck who left Zurich in February 1917 combined his knowledge of Dadaist activities with those of a group animated by the poet Raoul Hausmann.
In 1918 an evening organised in the Sall der Nauen Sezession, during which Huelsenbeck held an extremely assertive conference on the origins and objectives of the Dada manifesto, directed against Futurism, Cubism and above all Impressionism (Dada, Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri S.p.A, Milan 5).
Due to the rapid deterioration of the social situation in Germany and also the arrival new Dadaist elements encouraged by the publicity of the Dada club, the Berlin Dadaist gradually introduced political action from the summer of 1918 onwards.
George Grosz was one of the best known Dadaist whose expressionist satires fiercely denounce the rampant militarism and capitalist of an already pre-Nazi Germany (image 1, 2).
1920 had its biggest movement such as the exhibition “Erste Internationale Dada Messe” and the publication of four essential works for the comprehension of the Berlin movement: Dada Siegt, Deutschland mub untergehen, En avant Dada and Dada Akmanach (Dada, Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri S.p.A, Milan 5).
The main discovery of Berlin Dadaism in the aesthetic field is undoubtedly photomontage, an invention claimed by both Grosz and Heartfield, who used it above all for political aims, and by Raoul Hausmann, who was more concerned with the “visual” potential of the technique (Dada, Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri S.p.A, Milan 5).
Cologne Dada
In 1918-1919 Max Ernst and Theodor Baargeld took part in radical movement and published a periodical with communist tendencies.
When Jean Arp arrived in Cologne to join his old friend Max Ernst he provided to be a decisive factor for the evolution of the Dadaist embryo in Cologne. Arp managed to convince his friends to avoid political excesses of the Berlin Dadaist and to steer their activities in another direction, less directly involved.
Arp continued to experiment with the techniques he had used in Zurich, configurations obtained through abstract forms randomly cut in cardboard and whose position on the canvas was purely random (image 3, 4), as for Baargeld, he specialised in collaged made of painted paper decorated in various ways with Indian ink (image 5).
In 1920 Dada reached its peak due to a scandalous event at the Winter Beer House, which aggravated police intervention and put an end to the public survival of Dada in the city. Arp hastily retreated to Zurich, Ernst emigrated to Paris and Baargeld died in 1927, hit by an avalanche (Dada, Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri S.p.A, Milan 5).
Hanover Dada - Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Schwitters who was once inspired by Expressionism, Fauvism and Cubism changed his direction in 1918 and abandoned traditional material and used organic material and used all sorts of rubbish, which he collected and transformed into remarkable harmonies. In 1919 he completed his first Merzbild (image 6).
This piece of work was similar to the work Dada movement but Schwitters guarded the piece copyright and never adopted the Dadaist terminology.
In 1920 he constructed a huge architectonic structure in which he dedicated six years work. He also wrote poetry, composed a sonata in 1923, edited a review entitled “merz” whose publication continued until 1923 without rejecting the influence of any movement.
Paris Dada (1919 – 1922)
With the help of prior existence of young poets gathered around Apollinaire Tristan Tzara and Francis Picabia were responsible for the movement of Dada to Paris. In late 1919 Marcel Dunchamp joined the Dada group.
The Dadaist group organised exhibitions between April and June at the book shop Au Sans Pareil belonging to Rene Hilsum, who was to become the official publisher of the movement. In 1920 was a Dada Festival, taking place on May 26th in the large and plain Salle Gaveau.
It was not long until a power struggle difference between the three men ad they were divided into two groups, Tzara and Picabia unrelenting Dadaists and that of the “Parisians” Breton, Eluard and Aragon.
The spread of Dada in Europe
From 1916 onwards most European countries had reached the Dada spirit. There were many active Dada groups in Belgium and Holland.
Italy was very productive place for Dada at the time as the public had already been prepared from the scandals of 1909.
The first Italian Dadaist exhibition took place in Rome in 1920 at the Casad’Arte Bragaglia, often occurring by the poet Giulio Evola who introduced a “Dada collection”. The most representative orgainsation of Italian Dadaism was Bleu, which Evola founded in Mantua in July 1920, together with the other two poets, Gino Cantarelli and Aldo Fiozzi, and which revived contemporary Parisian events, thanks to the collaboration of the French Dadaists (Dada, Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri S.p.A, Milan 5).
Conclusion
Where and how dada began is still a mystery but from its beginning in Zurich 1916 to its end in Paris in 1922 it has had a huge influence on the history of art and we have seen a lot of things evolve from the movement such as pop art and surrealism.
Dada was full of contradictions and often changed directions and become confusing and seemed it wanted the world to misunderstand it.
Reference List
Elger, D. (2004). Dadaism. Taschen
Richter, H. (1977). Dada art and anti-art. Thames and Hudson
Fabbri, G. (1990). Dada. Park lane
Magazine spread
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