dadaism

Art

2022

We explain what Dadaism is, what is the historical context and the characteristics of this movement. Authors, representatives and works.

The Dada movement was considered an "anti-art" or an anti-aesthetic movement.

What is Dadaism?

Dadaism is understood as a dada movement or simply dada to an artistic-cultural movement that emerged in Switzerland at the beginning of the 20th century with the express intention of rebelling against the literary and artistic conventions that it considered bourgeois, and the philosophy positivist who accompanied them and his idea of ​​reason. This movement then spread to the fields of the sculpture, the painting and even the music, becoming called its manifestations as Dada art.

The term dadaism comes from the word “dada”, invented by its founders, in which they summed up the philosophy of the movement: the commitment to the absurd, to nonsense and to opposition to everything that would refer to a rationalist perspective of the life. In this sense, the Dada movement was considered as an “anti-art” or an anti-aesthetic movement, for which gestures and acts were very frequent, as well as the works themselves. That is to say, it was a movement with a spirit of denial, of opposing it and provoking the established order.

Historical context of Dadaism

Hugo Ball is considered the founder of Dadaism.

Dada arose in Europe, but it had many adherents in the United States and other parts of the globe. Its origin is assumed in Switzerland in 1916, at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, and as its founder Hugo Ball, although the most iconic writer of the movement was the Romanian Tristán Tzara, who later joined it. Perhaps that is why it was initially presented as more than an aesthetic movement: as a way of living, and a constant questioning of the existence of art and of the poetrySo deep down he even questions himself.

This movement embodied the disenchantment and desire for change of the Europe of the First World War, and indeed its founders became known as refugees from the conflict. To this should be added the passivity and social apathy of the society between the wars, attacked by Dada artists through a combative and renovating spirit.

Characteristics of Dadaism

Dadaism defended chaos and imperfection.

Dadaism opposes the idea of ​​eternal beauty, the laws of logic and the immobility of the thought, and sowed the seeds of the constant questioning of modern art regarding what art, poetry or beauty is or is not.

Dadaism was provocative, scandalous, and defended chaos and imperfection against its contrary values. His early writings consisted of chains of letters and words for which it was difficult to find an obvious logic, or in which the fanciful, the doubtful, the death, and the mixture, which would later take shape under the technique of collage or the use of unusual materials in the plastic arts.

This spirit was summed up in his name and in the word "dada", whose meaning is not at all clear but which, in principle, would have occurred to Tristán Tzara in 1916, who would have been enthusiastic about its resemblance to the babbling of children who are just beginning to speak, or it is even suggested that he would have opened a dictionary to a random page and chosen the strangest term, which turned out to be "dada", a term used in French for a certain type of workhorse. If anything, this was irrelevant to the Dadaists, as will be understood, given their appreciation for nonsense and provocation.

Authors and representatives of Dadaism

The movement was founded by the German Hugo Ball (1886-1927), but its most iconic representative was the Romanian Tristán Tzara (1896-1963). Other renowned exponents from various disciplines artistic artists were the French Jean Arp (1887-1966) and Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), and they collaborated with their publications Guillaume Apollinaire (French, 1880-1918), Fillippo Tommaso Marinetti (Italian, 1876-1944), Pablo Picasso (Spanish , 1881-1973), Amedeo Modigliani (Italian, 1884-1920) and Vasili Kandinski (Russian, 1866-1944). The movement also had the sympathies of the poets André Bretón (French, 1896-1966) and Giaccomo Ungaretti (Italian, 1888-1970).

Dada works and poems

The Dada movement ventured more than anything into poetry and plastic arts, being of these disciplines his most famous works. Some of them are:

  • "Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp. It is the famous urinal that the French artist presented in an exhibition under the pseudonym “R. Mutt ”.
  • "LHOOQ" by Marcel Duchamp. A parody of Davinci's famous Gioconda, to which the artist painted mustaches and the acronym LHOOQ underneath, which when spelled in French sounds like “she has heat in her butt”.
  • "Collage with squares ordered according to the laws of chance" by Jean Arp. Literally what is advertised in the title, on a gray background.

And here are some Dada poems:

  • "To Make a Dadaist Poem" by Tristan Tzara

Get a newspaper. Get a pair of scissors.

Pick an article from the newspaper length that you intend to give to your poem.

Cut out the article.

Then carefully cut out each of the words that make up that article and put them in a bag.

Shake it gently.

Then take out each cutout one after the other.

Thoroughly copy the poem in the order in which they came out of the bag.

The poem will resemble you.

And you are "an infinitely original writer and a bewitching sensibility, although misunderstood by the common people."

  • "Air is a root" by Jean Arp

The stones are full of entrails. Bravo. Bravo.
the stones are full of air.
The stones are branches of water, in the stone that occupies the place of the mouth sprouts
a thorny leaf. Bravo.
a voice of stone is hand in hand and foot by foot
with a look of stone.

the stones are tormented like the flesh.
stones are clouds because their second nature
dances them on their third nose. Bravo. Bravo.

when the stones are scratched, nails grow at the roots.
Bravo. Bravo.
the stones have ears to eat the exact time.

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