Overview

World War I (1914-1918) was a shock. Millions of young men were slaughtered by machine guns and poison gas. The artists of Dada asked: “If this is what ‘reason’ and ’logic’ and ‘civilization’ lead to, then we want nothing to do with them.” They embraced irrationality, chaos, and nonsense. Dada was not an art movement; it was a “state of mind.”

Core Idea

The core idea is Anti-Art. Traditional art valued beauty, skill, and meaning. Dada valued ugliness, chance, and absurdity. By destroying the rules of art, they hoped to destroy the bourgeois culture that had caused the war.

Formal Definition

An avant-garde movement that rejected the logic, reason, and aestheticism of modern capitalist society, instead expressing nonsense, irrationality, and anti-bourgeois protest.

Intuition

Imagine a museum. It is quiet and respectful. A Dadaist runs in, smashes a statue, glues the pieces back together randomly, and titles it “God.” Or they recite a poem made of random sounds (“Karawane”). They are trolling the establishment. They are the original punks.

Examples

  • Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917): The most famous Dada work. He took a standard porcelain urinal, signed it “R. Mutt,” and submitted it to an art exhibition. He declared that art is not about making the object, but choosing it. This invented “Conceptual Art.”
  • Hannah Höch: Used “photomontage” (cutting up magazines) to create chaotic, satirical images of German politicians and gender roles.
  • Cabaret Voltaire: The nightclub in Zurich where Dada started. Hugo Ball would dress in a cardboard suit and chant nonsense verse while people screamed and banged drums.

Common Misconceptions

  • “Dada” means something: The word was chosen randomly from a dictionary (it means “hobbyhorse” in French), or maybe it’s just baby talk. The point is that it means nothing.
  • It was just a joke: It was a very serious joke. It was a scream of rage against a dying civilization.
  • Readymade: An ordinary manufactured object designated by the artist as a work of art (like the urinal or a bicycle wheel).
  • Surrealism: Dada dissolved in the early 1920s, and many of its members (like Max Ernst) went on to found Surrealism. Surrealism kept the irrationality but tried to map the unconscious mind (Freud) rather than just being anarchic.
  • Chance Operations: Making art by rolling dice or dropping paper. This removes the artist’s “ego” and control.

Applications

  • Punk Rock: The Sex Pistols were pure Dada—chaos, noise, and provocation.
  • Memes: Modern internet humor (surreal memes, shitposting) is very Dada. It responds to a chaotic world with absurdity.

Criticism / Limitations

  • Nihilism: Because it was purely negative (anti-everything), it couldn’t last. You can’t build a culture on destruction alone.
  • Institutionalization: The ultimate irony: Dada works (like the urinal) are now in museums, protected by guards, and worth millions. The “anti-art” became “high art.”

Further Reading

  • Richter, Hans. Dada: Art and Anti-Art. 1965.
  • Motherwell, Robert. The Dada Painters and Poets. 1951.
  • Tomkins, Calvin. Duchamp: A Biography. 1996.