Dadaism

Taschen Basic Genre

by Dietmar Elger, Uta Grosenick (Editor)

Detailed introduction to Dadaism with 30 photographs plus timeline of most important political, cultural, scientific and sporting events. Body of book contains 35 of most important works of epoch with interpretationand artist biography.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Art History, History, German Literature

96 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2004

Reviews

[Elena Fard · Rating 4 out of 5]

"What this means is that they were generally in opposition to everything art stood for. They ignored aesthetics. They affronted sensibilities. In all, their thoughts concerning traditional culture were also thoughts of destruction."


A good overview by Tome Wilson in DIESELPUNKS.

Dada: The irreverent, rowdy revolution set the trajectory of 20th-century art

Dada was an artistic and literary movement that started in Europe when World War I was going on. Because of the war, many artists, intellectuals and writers, especially those from France and Germany, moved to Switzerland, which was a neutral country. Instead of being relieved that they had escaped, the artists, intellectuals and writers were furious with the modern society. So, they decided to show their protest through artistic medium. They decided to create non-art since art in the society anyway had no meaning.

The so-called non-artists turned to creating art that had soft obscenities, scattered humor, visible puns and everyday objects. The most outrageous painting was created by Marcel Duchamp, when he painted a mustache on a copy of Mona Lisa and scribbled obscenities under it. He also created his sculpture called Fountain, which was actually a urinal without the plumbing and it had a fake signature.

The public were repulsed by the Dada movement. However, the Dadaists found this attitude encouraging. And, slowly the movement spread from Zurich to other parts of Europe and New York City. Just as many mainstream artists were thinking about this movement seriously, the Dada movement dissolved around the early 1920s.

This art movement was a protest, but at the same time it managed to be enjoyable and amusing. It was sarcastic, colorful, quirky and silly. If a person at that time had not been aware of the logic behind the movement, he or she would have been wondering what the artist was up to creating pieces like the ones that were created. However, the artist who created the Dada art was very serious about his work. The movement did not favor one medium over another. It used everything from glass to plaster to geometric tapestries to wooden reliefs. In addition, the movement was also responsible for influencing many trends in the field of visual art, the most well-known being Surrealism.

About the author:

Pauline Go is an online leading expert in the education industry.

A Frothy Nothing - What is Dadaism

"In those days we were all Dadaists. If the word meant anything at all, it meant seething discontent, dissatisfaction and cynicism. Defeat and political ferment always give rise to that sort of movement.

We held Dadaist meetings, charged a few marks admission and did nothing but tell people the truth, that is, abuse them. The news spread quickly and soon our meetings were sold out, crammed with people wanting to be scandalized or just after fun.

Between insults we performed 'art,' but the performances were as a rule interrupted. Thus hardly would Walter Mehring begin to rattle away at his typewriter while reciting some piece or other of his own composition, when Heartfield or Hausmann would come out from behind the stage and yell: 'Stop! You're not trying to bamboozle that feeble-minded lot down there, are you?' "

--George Grosz, The Autobiography of George Grosz [1955]
'What we call Dada is a piece of tomfoolery from the void, in which all the lofty questions have become involved . . .'

--Hugo Ball
'Dada means nothing. We want to change the world with nothing.'

--Richard Huelsenbeck

'Art is dead. Long live Dada.'

--Walter Serner

'Freedom: Dada, Dada, Dada, crying open the constricted pains, swallowing the contrasts and all the contradictions, the grotesqueries and the illogicalities of life.'

--Tristan Tzara

'We do not wish to imitate nature, we do not wish to reproduce. We want to produce. We want to produce the way a plant produces its fruit, not depict. We want to produce directly, not indirectly. Since there is not a trace of abstraction in this art we call it concrete art.'

--Hans Arp

'Dada . . . wants over and over again movement: it sees peace only in dynamism.'

--Raoul Hausmann

'I wish to blur the firm boundaries which we self-certain people tend to delineate around all we can achieve.'

--Hannah Hoch

"We should burn all libraries and allow to remain only that which everyone knows by heart. A beautiful age of the legend would then begin."

--Hugo Ball, journal entry, Jan. 9, 1917, Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary [1927]
'Invest your money in Dada! Dada is the only savings bank that pays interest in the hereafter!'
--Kurt Schwitters

'Art has nothing to do with taste. Art is not there to be tasted.'

--Max Ernst

'I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.:

--Marcel Duchamp

'Dada talks with you, it is everything, it includes everything, it belongs to all religions, can be neither victory nor defeat, it lives in space and not in time.'

--Francis Picabia

'It's not Dada that is nonsense--but the essence of our age that is nonsense.'

--The Dadaists

'What is generally termed reality is, to be precise, a frothy nothing.'

--Hugo Ball

'No more painters, no more scribblers, no more musicians, no more sculptors, no more religions, no more royalists, no more radicals, no more imperialists, no more anarchists, no more socialists, no more communists, no more proletariat, no more democrats, no more republicans, no more bourgeois, no more aristocrats, no more arms, no more police, no more nations, an end at last to all this stupidity, nothing left, nothing at all, nothing, nothing.'

--Louis Aragon, 'Manifesto of the Dada Movement,' 1920

'Dada is like your hopes: nothing
like your paradise: nothing
like your idols: nothing
like your heroes: nothing
like your artists: nothing
like your religions: nothing'

--Francis Picabia

'By July 1916, Dada was a Zurich sensation, this while the Battle of the Somme accrued its grisly statistics: roughly 500,000 German casualties, 200,000 French and 420,000 British. The military incompetence and arrogance of those in power escalated to an unfathomable scale. Hans Arp wrote, "We had a dim premonition that power-mad gangsters would one day use art itself as a way of deadening men's minds."

--'Gaga for Dada,' The New York Times Style Magazine, Fall 2005

'Those postpunk years from 1978 to 1984 saw the systematic ransacking of twentieth-century modernist art and literature. The entire postpunk period looks like an attempt to replay virtually every major modernist theme and technique via the medium of pop music. Cabaret Voltaire borrowed their name from Dada. Pere Ubu took theirs from Alfred Jarry. Talking Heads turned a Hugo Ball sound poem into a tribal-disco dance track. Gang of Four, inspired by Brecht and Godard's alienation effects, tried to deconstruct rock even as they rocked hard. Lyricists absorbed the radical science fiction of William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, and Philip K. Dick, and techniques of collage and cut-up were transplanted into the music.'

--Simon Reynolds, Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984, 2005

'Cabaret Voltaire. Under this name a group of young artists and writers has been formed whose aim is to create a centre for artistic entertainment. The idea of the cabaret will be that guest artists will come and give musical performances and readings at the daily meetings. The young artists of Zurich, whatever their orientation, are invited to come along with suggestions and contributions of all kinds.'

--Press Notice, Zurich, February 2, 1916

SOURCES FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
The Autobiography of George Grosz, George Grosz (1955)
Dadaism by Dietmar Elger (2004)
Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary, Hugo Ball (1927)

[Lola · Rating 3 out of 5]

me before reading this book: I like how quircky dadaism is lol I wanna find out more about it
me after reading this book: thanks! i hate it!

I don't know much about art history or theory but this movement seems particularly difficult to comprehend, with its own members' different definitions and conflicts. The people described in the book come off mostly very conceited with their art and their opinion of art in general. Elger himself did a good job in describing important pieces, and the book was enjoyable enough to read, but I feel only a little less confused about the movement than before.

[A]

A solid brief look into Dadaism, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to others interested in the matter.

However, it is depressing to realize that the dadaists, even with their revolutionary mindset, where just as chauvinistic as the art history before them. At least this book includes Hannah Höch, who apparently was welcomed in to the circles as long as she was baking rolls and handing out beers instead of attempting to do art. Even acknowledging this, Elger's description of her seems somewhat belittling compared to all the male heros.

[Nicolette Caldwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dada means nothing. We want to change the world with nothing.

[Renis Hyka · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Dada non vuol dire niente. Vogliamo cambiare il mondo con il niente..."

[W.B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really love making collages, whether paper or digital. Some great inspiration in here as the Dadaists really had a great collage game. Schwitters is so damn delicious. I look at his collages and they always make my day better. But I pretty much love everything in here. Yes, I knew these artists from the time I was young, but there are some pieces in here I hadn't seen before set down beside the recognized masterpieces that end up in virtually every anthology. And the text is pretty good too. Speaking of collage, did you check out that great "Make Your Own Brainard" collage site established by Rona Cran (whose book on collage I really want to pick up). You can make endless collages with scanned digital versions of paper cut-outs done by Joe Brainard which were found in a shed on Kenward Elmslie's homestead in Vermont (where Joe sometimes lived). I think the Padgetts found those and made that happen with Rona. Speaking of Padgetts, I just reread Padgett's memoir of his friend and loved it even more the second time. Joe Brainard makes everything better.

[Eric Aguirre · Rating 5 out of 5]

"El arte no tiene nada que ver con el gusto. El arte no está ahí para gustarle a nadie." Max Ernst.
Esta es una de mis frases favoritas de este libro. La cual tiene que ver con lo que es el arte en general.

El dadaísmo desde sus inicios siempre fue muy ambiguo. Evidentemente es una reacción a la Alemania de la primera guerra mundial. Es un movimiento que buscaba empezar de nuevo en todo el sentido de la palabra.

Proponía lo absurdo, lo irracional, los sueños, el azar y el sinsentido. Se burlaba de la burguesía y del nacionalismo. El tiempo les dio la razón a todos esos locos dadaístas; ya que fue la combinación letal del pensamiento positivista y nacionalista, el que llevaría a toda Europa a la segunda Guerra Mundial.

Los artistas pueden tener la capacidad de ser profetas. Sienten e intuyen lo que está sucediendo en su tiempo. En dadaístas como Picabia, Apollinaire, Max Ernst y Duchamp se encuentra la semilla de la mayoría de los movimientos artísticos del siglo XX.

[Solarita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Отличный гайд для введения в дадаизм: все авторы структурированы по местам их основной деятельности, дана самая важная информация по истории и взаимоотношениям участников, и, самое главное, по две-три репродукции произведений на каждого. Пролистав буклет, соображаешь, что общее, а что различное между ними всеми.

[Patrick Quinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

If your looking for more of a history on the dadaist movement like I was, you might want to look elsewhere. Your provided with a brief history on the movement and then some essays on the important artists and their works. Not really what I was looking for but interesting none the less.

[Bach Le · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Dada means nothing. We want to change the world with nothing.' - Hugo Ball

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful

[Andoni Mv · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ningún libro puede realmente "contener" el dada. Pero este lo intenta y se aprecia el esfuerzo.

[Bert Huisman]

13 t3

[Holger · Rating 3 out of 5]

i love this art movement. look up hannah hoch!

[Momo García · Rating 4 out of 5]

Primero creí que un libro de 96 páginas no podía ser muy bueno para hablar del dadaísmo, sobre todo cuando los volúmenes de esta colección de Taschen tienen 200 páginas en promedio. Después agradecí que así fuera: los dadaístas son unos embusteros y no vale la pena reproducir toda su producción. Su grandeza está en las ideas y sus anécdotas; mi libro anhelado sobre el dadaísmo debe ser como una novela y no como un museo o catálogo de exposición.

[Skyler · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good little overview on Dada and the artists involved. However, I still don't think that I have a firm grasp on what Dada is from this book. I feel like I have a hunch and a notion as to what the movement encompasses, and this was great book to learn about some of the influential artists behind it, but still. I feel like I'm going to have to read a more comprehensive book on the movement.

[Martin Simonsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is an interesting guide to the world of the dadaists. Dadaism was a kind of a forerunner of the surrealists and it existed in a few years around the first world war. They were anti art, anti establishment and they had a humourous aproach to their works. It was an inspiring book. It made me want to make dadaist art!

[Melzanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

more dada rad and randomness.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arta este tot ceea ce scuipa artistul. Schwitters

[Skallagrimsen]

Dousing a book on Dadaism in kerosene and setting it on fire—right there in art section of your local bookstore—would be far more in the spirit of Dada than buying and reading it.