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World of Art
Dada: Art and Anti-Art
‘Where and how Dada began is almost as difficult to determine as Homer’s birthplace’, writes Hans Richter, the artist and film-maker closely associated with this radical and transforming movement from its earliest days. Here he records and traces Dada’s history, from its inception in about 1916 in wartime Zurich, to its collapse in Paris in 1922 when many of its members were to join the Surrealist movement, down to the present day when its spirit re-emerged first in the 1960s with, for example, Pop Art.This absorbing eye witness narrative is greatly enlivened by extensive use of Dada documents, illustrations and a variety of texts by fellow Dadaists. It is a unique document of the movement, whether in Zurich, Berlin, Hanover, Paris or New York. The complex relationships and contributions of, among others, Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Picabia, Arp, Schwitters, Hausmann, Duchamp, Ernst and Man Ray, are vividly brought to life.
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First published January 1, 1964
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About the author
Hans Richter
81 books6 followersHans Richter was a German Dada painter, graphic artist, avant-garde film producer, and art historian. In 1965 he authored the book Dadaism about the history of the Dada movement. He was born in Berlin into a well-to-do family and died in Minusio, near Locarno, Switzerland.
From Expressionism through Dadaism, Constructivism and Neoplasticism, he was one of the major figures of avant-garde art in the 1910s and 1920s and a catalyst for intellectuals and artists in many disciplines. Richter helped organise exhibitions which revived interest in Dada, both in the United States and Europe. In 1956 he made Dadascope, a film dedicated to Dada poetry.
From Expressionism through Dadaism, Constructivism and Neoplasticism, he was one of the major figures of avant-garde art in the 1910s and 1920s and a catalyst for intellectuals and artists in many disciplines. Richter helped organise exhibitions which revived interest in Dada, both in the United States and Europe. In 1956 he made Dadascope, a film dedicated to Dada poetry.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
August 21, 2022
Dada was, according to this book: "a unique mixture of insatiable curiosity, playfulness and pure contradiction."
dADA was not though: ground-breaking, utterly original. Its cabaret style, its insulting of audiences, its clowning and provocations, manifestos, photo-montages and random poetry, were all lifted directly from the Futurists who preceded it.
DAdA: employed randomness, spontaneity and nonsense, not in place of order, premeditation and sense, but in combination, head-on - the collision was the thing.
dADa: was not saying via that infamous urinal, or the bicycle wheel nailed to a coffee table, "anything can be art" or "everything is art"; it was saying "these are not art - there's no such thing as art."
dada's aim was: to destroy art, in the sense of demonstrating that art does not exist, that it is an illusion.
daDA failed in this aim: it discovered that you can't destroy anything without simultaneously creating something else - anti-art was itself just more art and its creators, ironically, have become iconic figures.
DADA also realised that: to produce even Hans Arp's torn fragments of paper fluttering down randomly and simply glued into position where they fell, there was still the initial intent, the idea of doing this in the first place - and that that's where the art lies. Art is not the finished object, it's a state of mind.
DaDA was of course, above all: wonderful fun while it lasted.
Dada: Art and Anti-Art is: the most un-Dadalike book on Dada I've read. It is lucid, meticulous, measured, thoughtful and was written by one of those who were actually there at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich during those heady days during the First World War when a handful of twenty-somethings tried, and gloriously failed, to change the world.
dADA was not though: ground-breaking, utterly original. Its cabaret style, its insulting of audiences, its clowning and provocations, manifestos, photo-montages and random poetry, were all lifted directly from the Futurists who preceded it.
DAdA: employed randomness, spontaneity and nonsense, not in place of order, premeditation and sense, but in combination, head-on - the collision was the thing.
dADa: was not saying via that infamous urinal, or the bicycle wheel nailed to a coffee table, "anything can be art" or "everything is art"; it was saying "these are not art - there's no such thing as art."
dada's aim was: to destroy art, in the sense of demonstrating that art does not exist, that it is an illusion.
daDA failed in this aim: it discovered that you can't destroy anything without simultaneously creating something else - anti-art was itself just more art and its creators, ironically, have become iconic figures.
DADA also realised that: to produce even Hans Arp's torn fragments of paper fluttering down randomly and simply glued into position where they fell, there was still the initial intent, the idea of doing this in the first place - and that that's where the art lies. Art is not the finished object, it's a state of mind.
DaDA was of course, above all: wonderful fun while it lasted.
Dada: Art and Anti-Art is: the most un-Dadalike book on Dada I've read. It is lucid, meticulous, measured, thoughtful and was written by one of those who were actually there at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich during those heady days during the First World War when a handful of twenty-somethings tried, and gloriously failed, to change the world.
March 5, 2024
Richter provides a great first person narrative of the Dadaist movement as it flourished and died over the course of around six years, giving colourful and vivid accounts of all of the main figures from Tzara to Breton. In a sense it only took Dada and The Great War to break apart the Fin de siècle bourgeois society of the 1910's and 20's at its seams, with Duchamp's ready-mades (in my estimation at least) acting as a sardonic and searing critique of the artistic pretensions and ideals many effete fuddy-duddys held at that time - taking aim at just the sort of rationalist humanism Max Nordau would attempt to prop up in his book Degeneration. Funnily enough I don't want to focus on the Cabaret Voltaire and all that fun stuff here, but instead Richter's criticism (a very sympathetic criticism mind you, Richter cuts an incredibly personable and charming figure in the way he talks about others throughout this work) of the Neo-Dadaist New Realism/Pop Art movement of the sixties.
His discussions of this period seemed to have strange affinities with Frederic Jameson's analysis of Van Gogh and Warhol from the start of his book Postmodernism, as Richter sees the move toward disposable, kitschy art as being on the whole a rather sad affair, as he writes at one point (after just listing off some memorable exploits performed by this new group),
“All these provocations (they are nothing of the kind) would easily outdo Dada - if Dada had not already exhausted the field. It seems as if people needed the material object as something they could grasp and hold on to, something that would confirm their own existence to themselves. As if Man could never be sure of his own existence except through some contact achieved through his five senses, since within him everything is nebulous and uncertain. A void that drives him outwards, the need to obtain a proof of his own existence, through the medium of the object, because the subject, man himself, is lost.
The passion, the joyous enthusiasm with which all this is done is no more than a proof of the urgency of the need for this 'last hope'. And isn't this sad? - however funny it looks.“
Really quite melancholy isn't it? And Richter's insistent proclamations that anti-art, taken up within art itself, is an inevitable failure, almost logically so, seems to me to be correct. Dadaist art, as an ode to individual freedom (automatic writing, the value placed on chance, the important contributions that the unconscious can provide etc.) that riles up the masses (to almost orgiastic and ritualistic fits of rage at the Le cœur à barbe and a plethora of other such similar events, the audiences becoming an instrument in the wider work) failed to maintain itself. Not only did its own energies tear itself apart and become reterritorialised in the authoritarian Napoleonic figure of Breton and Surrealism, but as Neo-Dadaism it failed in that the bourgeois co-opted its power to shock. The bourgeois shocked the avant-garde in their inability to be moved by their works, by their complacent gaze, by their sheer indifference. Yet still these collectors managed to garner a pleasure from their insouciance all the same, lording over these catalogues and art galleries like so many horrors conquered and dominated, merely becoming another feather in their cap, just something to have under their belt.
To continue this theme of melancholy, and to round out this brief conversation of Dada's influence after its own implosion (even if it still remains as an impulse and direction we can still draw upon, almost like some pathological symptom or reaction formation, in my opinion its energies certainly haven't yet been entirely squandered), I leave you with Tzara's funeral oration to Dada in May 1923.
“Dada marches on, destroying more and more, not in extension but in itself. From all these feelings of disgust it draws no conclusion, no pride and no profit. It no longer even fights, for it knows that this serves no purpose, that all this has no importance. What interests a Dadaist is the way he himself lives. Here we come to the great secret.
"Dada is a state of mind. This is why it transforms itself according to the races and the events it encounters. Dada applies itself to everything, and yet it is nothing; it is the point at which Yes and No, and all opposites, meet; not solemnly, in the palaces of human philosophy, but quite simply, at street-corners, like dogs and grasshoppers.
"Dada is useless, like everything else in life.
"Dada has no pretensions, just as life should have none.
"Perhaps you will understand better when I tell you that Dada is a virgin reason has failed to fill with words and conventions."
RIP.
Required listening :-
Topography of the Lungs - Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Han Bennink
Who Can I Turn To Stereo - Nurse with Wound
Satie: Avant-dernières pensées - Erik Satie
His discussions of this period seemed to have strange affinities with Frederic Jameson's analysis of Van Gogh and Warhol from the start of his book Postmodernism, as Richter sees the move toward disposable, kitschy art as being on the whole a rather sad affair, as he writes at one point (after just listing off some memorable exploits performed by this new group),
“All these provocations (they are nothing of the kind) would easily outdo Dada - if Dada had not already exhausted the field. It seems as if people needed the material object as something they could grasp and hold on to, something that would confirm their own existence to themselves. As if Man could never be sure of his own existence except through some contact achieved through his five senses, since within him everything is nebulous and uncertain. A void that drives him outwards, the need to obtain a proof of his own existence, through the medium of the object, because the subject, man himself, is lost.
The passion, the joyous enthusiasm with which all this is done is no more than a proof of the urgency of the need for this 'last hope'. And isn't this sad? - however funny it looks.“
Really quite melancholy isn't it? And Richter's insistent proclamations that anti-art, taken up within art itself, is an inevitable failure, almost logically so, seems to me to be correct. Dadaist art, as an ode to individual freedom (automatic writing, the value placed on chance, the important contributions that the unconscious can provide etc.) that riles up the masses (to almost orgiastic and ritualistic fits of rage at the Le cœur à barbe and a plethora of other such similar events, the audiences becoming an instrument in the wider work) failed to maintain itself. Not only did its own energies tear itself apart and become reterritorialised in the authoritarian Napoleonic figure of Breton and Surrealism, but as Neo-Dadaism it failed in that the bourgeois co-opted its power to shock. The bourgeois shocked the avant-garde in their inability to be moved by their works, by their complacent gaze, by their sheer indifference. Yet still these collectors managed to garner a pleasure from their insouciance all the same, lording over these catalogues and art galleries like so many horrors conquered and dominated, merely becoming another feather in their cap, just something to have under their belt.
To continue this theme of melancholy, and to round out this brief conversation of Dada's influence after its own implosion (even if it still remains as an impulse and direction we can still draw upon, almost like some pathological symptom or reaction formation, in my opinion its energies certainly haven't yet been entirely squandered), I leave you with Tzara's funeral oration to Dada in May 1923.
“Dada marches on, destroying more and more, not in extension but in itself. From all these feelings of disgust it draws no conclusion, no pride and no profit. It no longer even fights, for it knows that this serves no purpose, that all this has no importance. What interests a Dadaist is the way he himself lives. Here we come to the great secret.
"Dada is a state of mind. This is why it transforms itself according to the races and the events it encounters. Dada applies itself to everything, and yet it is nothing; it is the point at which Yes and No, and all opposites, meet; not solemnly, in the palaces of human philosophy, but quite simply, at street-corners, like dogs and grasshoppers.
"Dada is useless, like everything else in life.
"Dada has no pretensions, just as life should have none.
"Perhaps you will understand better when I tell you that Dada is a virgin reason has failed to fill with words and conventions."
RIP.
Required listening :-
Topography of the Lungs - Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Han Bennink
Who Can I Turn To Stereo - Nurse with Wound
Satie: Avant-dernières pensées - Erik Satie
December 15, 2012
Hans Richter's first-person narrative, describing in adamant detail the Dada movement-- a storm that broke over the world of art as the war did over the nations-- is luxuriously rich in summarizing Dada on all accounts, unraveling the misunderstandings that currently constitute the image of Dada. 'Dada: Art and Anti-Art' is the Dada Bible. In 1909 the Italian Futurists were publishing manifestoes which were as like Dada as two peas in a pod. From the Futurists came the Swiss Dada movement, beginning in Zurich at the Cabaret Voltaire led by Hugo Ball, at the beginning of 1916. The Futurists had already introduced the idea of provocation into art and practiced it in their own performances. As an art, it was called Bruitism, and was later given musical status by Edgar Varèse, who followed up Russolo's discoveries in the field of noise-music, which was a basic contribution made by Futurism in modern music. These musical experimentations eventually became to be what is known as musique concrète. Richter acknowledges The Futurists as precursors to Dada, impregnating Dada with an artistic revolution free of all aesthetic and social constraints. Dada's philosophies are discussed at full-length by Richter, as well as personal accounts given, describing each individual involved in the Dada social circuit, and to the various movements that swept over Europe between 1916 and 1922.
"Dada was not a school of artists, but an alarm signal against declining values, routine, and speculation, a desperate appeal, on behalf of all forms of art, for a creative basis on which to build a new and universal consciousness of art." The Dadaists were all in their twenties, full of spontaneous energy and nonconformist ideologies, and ready to defy all the fathers of the world. Dada in Berlin had a very different tone from Dada in Zurich and New York. The situations and the cities were very different for each of the various Dadaist groups. In Berlin they had a real revolution, the ideas reflected in New York were known to only a small group but still became an intermediary link between European and American artists, Hanover and Cologne possessed independent Dadaisms of their own, which were less noisy, but no less important than Berlin Dada, and Paris Dada went off like a Roman candle, raising sparks in the shape of names, ideas and events.
Each movement successfully contributed to the anarchy of Dadaist revolution, though it was in Paris that Dada achieved its maximum volume (and here that it met its dramatic end). It had started with riots, poems, speeches, and manifestoes in Zurich in 1916, and with riots, poems, speeches, and manifestoes it came to its end in Paris. The young writer and poet Jacques Vaché acquired special importance through his influence on André Breton, who, along with Tzara, were the dominating figures of Dada and Surrealism. Eventually these two strong personalities fought over leadership, and Breton eventually took over Dada and embraced his theory of Surrealism which became more of a popular product than Dada could have ever attained.
Neither Dada nor Surrealism are isolated phenomenons, as they are a single coherent experience. The significance of both movements lies in their mobilization of the subconscious in the service of a new conception of art. Surrealism gave Dada significance and sense, and Dada gave Surrealism its first breath of life.
As for Dada, it got what it wanted: the fury of the bourgeois. "Dada was the effective expression of a mighty surge of freedom in which all the values of human existence-- were turned on their head, mocked and misplaced, as an experiment, in order to see what there was behind it, beneath it, against it, mixed up in it." Despite common belief, Dada was never a 'school', a 'current', or a 'style'. Dada's points of departure had been established before the war through Expressionism, Cubism, and Futurism, however Dada was more aggressive and uncompromising, with more interest in asserting the artist's state of mind than in the finished product as such, becoming in the true sense, Nothing. The Dadaists claimed Genius, committing only to the present, freeing one's self from all bonds of history and convention, confronting reality face to face and forming it after one's own image. Dada led to a new image of the artist, producing this new state of mind, and thus bringing a new self-awareness into modern art.
Hans Richter contributes on account of his own Dada experiences, making for a critical and historically compelling narrative. 'Dada: Art and Anti-Art' is not only the history of Dada and its players in this secret society, but a first-hand account of Dadaism and everything that it stood for (and didn't stand for). Incredibly informative, this book reads like a manual for the most serious student of Dada. "Art must first be totally despised, it must first be thought totally pointless, before it can once more come into its own." Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada...
"Dada was not a school of artists, but an alarm signal against declining values, routine, and speculation, a desperate appeal, on behalf of all forms of art, for a creative basis on which to build a new and universal consciousness of art." The Dadaists were all in their twenties, full of spontaneous energy and nonconformist ideologies, and ready to defy all the fathers of the world. Dada in Berlin had a very different tone from Dada in Zurich and New York. The situations and the cities were very different for each of the various Dadaist groups. In Berlin they had a real revolution, the ideas reflected in New York were known to only a small group but still became an intermediary link between European and American artists, Hanover and Cologne possessed independent Dadaisms of their own, which were less noisy, but no less important than Berlin Dada, and Paris Dada went off like a Roman candle, raising sparks in the shape of names, ideas and events.
Each movement successfully contributed to the anarchy of Dadaist revolution, though it was in Paris that Dada achieved its maximum volume (and here that it met its dramatic end). It had started with riots, poems, speeches, and manifestoes in Zurich in 1916, and with riots, poems, speeches, and manifestoes it came to its end in Paris. The young writer and poet Jacques Vaché acquired special importance through his influence on André Breton, who, along with Tzara, were the dominating figures of Dada and Surrealism. Eventually these two strong personalities fought over leadership, and Breton eventually took over Dada and embraced his theory of Surrealism which became more of a popular product than Dada could have ever attained.
Neither Dada nor Surrealism are isolated phenomenons, as they are a single coherent experience. The significance of both movements lies in their mobilization of the subconscious in the service of a new conception of art. Surrealism gave Dada significance and sense, and Dada gave Surrealism its first breath of life.
As for Dada, it got what it wanted: the fury of the bourgeois. "Dada was the effective expression of a mighty surge of freedom in which all the values of human existence-- were turned on their head, mocked and misplaced, as an experiment, in order to see what there was behind it, beneath it, against it, mixed up in it." Despite common belief, Dada was never a 'school', a 'current', or a 'style'. Dada's points of departure had been established before the war through Expressionism, Cubism, and Futurism, however Dada was more aggressive and uncompromising, with more interest in asserting the artist's state of mind than in the finished product as such, becoming in the true sense, Nothing. The Dadaists claimed Genius, committing only to the present, freeing one's self from all bonds of history and convention, confronting reality face to face and forming it after one's own image. Dada led to a new image of the artist, producing this new state of mind, and thus bringing a new self-awareness into modern art.
Hans Richter contributes on account of his own Dada experiences, making for a critical and historically compelling narrative. 'Dada: Art and Anti-Art' is not only the history of Dada and its players in this secret society, but a first-hand account of Dadaism and everything that it stood for (and didn't stand for). Incredibly informative, this book reads like a manual for the most serious student of Dada. "Art must first be totally despised, it must first be thought totally pointless, before it can once more come into its own." Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada...
February 6, 2017
Essential reading for anyone interested in Dada, its roots, or where it matters today.
Read
October 9, 2025"After Dada had proclaimed for six years that everything must be, ought to be, and was being put an end to, turned upside down and left there — it put an end to itself."
August 4, 2021
indispensable reference material. Best book on Dada I've found so far.
March 25, 2011
An enlightening and entertaining first-hand account of Dada's beginnings and its proponents. Hans Richter is charming, funny and humble as he unwinds personal recollections and accounts of the various personalities and how they left their marks on Dada, and, in turn, the 20th century. The original spirit of the anti-art movement comes through clearly as he speaks of these restless souls. If their intention was to destroy art, they failed; all were too creative not to have left art behind them as they went along. Richter speaks of the people he knew and their personalities so that you see that they all contributed to Dada in a unique way, bringing something of themselves into the movement. This is an inspiring book that allows you to be a fly on the wall as much as is possible for such things, with a really sweet tour guide to introduce you to all his weird friends.
If I only had a time machine...
Oh yeah, an aside; David Bowie copped a line from Richter from this book in his song "Up The Hill Backwards" from the lp Scary Monsters:
"Vacuum created by the arrival of freedom, and the possibilites it seemed to offer".
Nice one.
If I only had a time machine...
Oh yeah, an aside; David Bowie copped a line from Richter from this book in his song "Up The Hill Backwards" from the lp Scary Monsters:
"Vacuum created by the arrival of freedom, and the possibilites it seemed to offer".
Nice one.
February 2, 2011
From the beginning, Dada was thus replaced by a thoroughly blurred mirror image of itself. Since then, even the mirror has broken. Anyone who finds a fragment of it can now read into it his own image of Dada, coditioned by his own aesthetic, national, historical, or personal beliefs and preferences. Thus Dada has become a myth.
Dada fascinates me because it is so much more than the sum of its parts. Here Richter gives a good account of all of those parts and the greater sums they built towards, part academic research, part eye-witness. This was written 30 or more years after the fact, so there's some remove from subject (it's not nearly as breathless as I might expect from someone who was there (Zurich, 1917!) but he includes many primary and contemporary accounts when those serve better than his recollections, and, as a friend of many key players, he was able to base much of this on primary accounts. And he's actually a pretty good historian, careful to note his sources and even the places where his sources contradict eachother. But I think I like his subjective opinions and observations the best, still. A pretty good survey of the subject.
March 5, 2014
Dada has been often scorned. Wedged between expressionism and surrealism, it was underestimated. This is undoubtedly because there were very strong personalities and several places Zurich, Berlin and Paris.
Richter is a singular personality. Artistically, he was a poête and painter. When he has flees from Germany, he's gone in New York where he directed the cinémathec. He made several surrealist films with his friends (Calder, Cocteau….
Several artists dADA will wrote the history of their movement. The best is undoubtedly "Courrier Dada" of Raoul Haussmann. But this is undoubtedly the most rigorous. I bought a small collage at the auction after his death. It was a great artist.
Richter is a singular personality. Artistically, he was a poête and painter. When he has flees from Germany, he's gone in New York where he directed the cinémathec. He made several surrealist films with his friends (Calder, Cocteau….
Several artists dADA will wrote the history of their movement. The best is undoubtedly "Courrier Dada" of Raoul Haussmann. But this is undoubtedly the most rigorous. I bought a small collage at the auction after his death. It was a great artist.
October 11, 2013
Story of inspiration of modern and free art.
March 27, 2025
I will always love Zurich Dada, the original Dada, because it was above all a scene: a tiny group of art weirdos, huddled in the Alps in the midst of World War I like kids in a treehouse while their suburban neighborhood below is ravaged by a zombie apocalypse. Putting on shows for each other in the Cabaret Voltaire, variety shows of pop culture and new wacky ideas, songs and poems and masks and costumes, exhibiting art on the walls, writing manifestoes, and everywhere trying to say simultaneously NO to everything that led to the war and YES WE ARE ALIVE like young people always say. My guy, with whom I can identify except for his talent for leadership and organization of this chaos, has always been Hugo Ball, tall and cadaverous, dressed in eerie vestments in which he cannot move, declaiming in literal nonsense syllables: "gadji beri bimba glandridi laula lonni cadori" etc., and in his diary of the event explaining his uncertainty and the difficulty he had: "I very soon realized that my powers of expression were not going to be adequate to match the pomp of my staging -- if I wanted to remain serious, and this I wanted above all things." I know this feeling very well. After Zurich, unlike the others, Ball disappeared to the countryside and lived a simple, religious life.
The other Dadas that followed, brought by much more stridently anti-art cynics like Picabia and Duchamp, showy provocateurs like Tzara, and sternly political unpleasant jerks like George Grosz, appeal to me much less, but it's here that Hans Richter saves the day, and becomes as the back jacket says "the ideal chronicler". Because he is such a gentle and generous soul (his art, were he not one of the original Zurich participants, would seem to have no possible connection to Dada, which in the art-historical mind is entirely the Duchamp/Picabia variant) he is able to see the virtues as well as genially to deflate the pretenses of all these people. Dada is often represented as a sort of hate, if an exuberant hate, but Richter hates nothing and captures all these men (he is terrible about all the women, which is a shame because Dada is the first Art History 101 movement I am aware of to prominently feature women) in their humanity, even the utterly inhuman Duchamp. (John Cage loved his contemptuous father figures, who he worshipped and who gave him nothing but utter disdain in return, didn't he?) In particular, he is the only writer on Dada I have ever seen who, as an actual member of the group, has the freedom to call out the bullshit of "anti-art" that is, in fact, art, and make the resulting anti-dualist tension make sense and seem appealing rather than depressing, like every art history book. He even, in his final chapter on so-called "Neo Dada" of the 60s, ends up (after a sort of fake-out of criticism) seeming to extend his understanding and irrepressible cheerfulness to the young generation.
The other Dadas that followed, brought by much more stridently anti-art cynics like Picabia and Duchamp, showy provocateurs like Tzara, and sternly political unpleasant jerks like George Grosz, appeal to me much less, but it's here that Hans Richter saves the day, and becomes as the back jacket says "the ideal chronicler". Because he is such a gentle and generous soul (his art, were he not one of the original Zurich participants, would seem to have no possible connection to Dada, which in the art-historical mind is entirely the Duchamp/Picabia variant) he is able to see the virtues as well as genially to deflate the pretenses of all these people. Dada is often represented as a sort of hate, if an exuberant hate, but Richter hates nothing and captures all these men (he is terrible about all the women, which is a shame because Dada is the first Art History 101 movement I am aware of to prominently feature women) in their humanity, even the utterly inhuman Duchamp. (John Cage loved his contemptuous father figures, who he worshipped and who gave him nothing but utter disdain in return, didn't he?) In particular, he is the only writer on Dada I have ever seen who, as an actual member of the group, has the freedom to call out the bullshit of "anti-art" that is, in fact, art, and make the resulting anti-dualist tension make sense and seem appealing rather than depressing, like every art history book. He even, in his final chapter on so-called "Neo Dada" of the 60s, ends up (after a sort of fake-out of criticism) seeming to extend his understanding and irrepressible cheerfulness to the young generation.
July 25, 2019
"Art in its execution and direction is dependent on the time in which it lives, and artists are creatures of their epoch. The highest art will be that which in its conscious content presents the thousandfold problems of the day, the art which has been visibly shattered by the explosions of last week, which is forever trying to collect its limbs after yesterday's crash. The best and most extraordinary artists will be those who every hour snatch the tatters of their bodies out of the frenzied cataract of life, who, with bleeding hands and hearts, hold fast to the intelligence of their time."
I cannot believe how long it took me to pick up this incredible book. I have always been a huge Dadaism enthusiast and getting to read this history from the mouth of someone so entrenched it in was fascinating. It gives wonderful context to the soil in which Dadaism planted roots, bloomed, and ultimately died. If you have any interest at all in art history, I recommend this book. If you look at modern art and think "the fuck?", I recommend this book!
My only complaint is the way Hannah Höch is treated by Richter in the text. I don't know that it can be solely attributed to misogyny, as he talks positively of other Dadaist women (especially Sophie Taeuber), but he comes across incredibly demeaning when he talks about Höch. At one point he refers to her as a "good girl", brushing her artistic accomplishments under the rug whilst complimenting the sandwiches and coffee she served. Gross.
I also think his analysis of Pop Art should likely be regarded with a grain of salt, as few visionaries find subsequent developments as worthy of merit as their own.
All in all, a strong recommendation.
I cannot believe how long it took me to pick up this incredible book. I have always been a huge Dadaism enthusiast and getting to read this history from the mouth of someone so entrenched it in was fascinating. It gives wonderful context to the soil in which Dadaism planted roots, bloomed, and ultimately died. If you have any interest at all in art history, I recommend this book. If you look at modern art and think "the fuck?", I recommend this book!
My only complaint is the way Hannah Höch is treated by Richter in the text. I don't know that it can be solely attributed to misogyny, as he talks positively of other Dadaist women (especially Sophie Taeuber), but he comes across incredibly demeaning when he talks about Höch. At one point he refers to her as a "good girl", brushing her artistic accomplishments under the rug whilst complimenting the sandwiches and coffee she served. Gross.
I also think his analysis of Pop Art should likely be regarded with a grain of salt, as few visionaries find subsequent developments as worthy of merit as their own.
All in all, a strong recommendation.
July 12, 2025
Dada is almost comical because it is a complete contradiction. So much so that the book has a section called ‘Anti Anti’.
“Dada was the effective expression of a mighty surge of freedom in which all the values of human existence were brought into play, and every object, every thought, turned on its head, mocked and misplaced, as an experiment, in order to see what there was behind it, beneath it, against, it mixed up in it: and in order to find out whether our well-known and familiar ‘Here’ was not perhaps complemented by an unknown and wonderful ‘There’ (Da), the discovery of which would transform our established ‘Here-world’, with its easily comprehensible three dimensions, into a multi-dimensional ‘There-world’. Dada was a state of mind feverishly exalted by the freedom virus, a unique mixture of insatiable curiosity, playfulness and pure contradiction.”
The rebellion of art becomes anti-art. The anti-art becomes art. The art becomes a movement. The movement is a group of artists. The group of artists don’t want to be a group of artists. So then you have individual anti-artists making anti-art but it’s all just ultimately art that was born of artists and art before them and spawned/evolved into other forms of art (surrealism). I’m pretty certain there is a sentence that says the only way for Dada to continue is to die.
This book does an excellent job tracking and explaining what Dada is from beginning to end but it’s hilariously depicted in a way that seems ridiculous. I enjoyed it, learned a lot but maybe not for me. Definitely some wisdom to behold though.
“Dada was the effective expression of a mighty surge of freedom in which all the values of human existence were brought into play, and every object, every thought, turned on its head, mocked and misplaced, as an experiment, in order to see what there was behind it, beneath it, against, it mixed up in it: and in order to find out whether our well-known and familiar ‘Here’ was not perhaps complemented by an unknown and wonderful ‘There’ (Da), the discovery of which would transform our established ‘Here-world’, with its easily comprehensible three dimensions, into a multi-dimensional ‘There-world’. Dada was a state of mind feverishly exalted by the freedom virus, a unique mixture of insatiable curiosity, playfulness and pure contradiction.”
The rebellion of art becomes anti-art. The anti-art becomes art. The art becomes a movement. The movement is a group of artists. The group of artists don’t want to be a group of artists. So then you have individual anti-artists making anti-art but it’s all just ultimately art that was born of artists and art before them and spawned/evolved into other forms of art (surrealism). I’m pretty certain there is a sentence that says the only way for Dada to continue is to die.
This book does an excellent job tracking and explaining what Dada is from beginning to end but it’s hilariously depicted in a way that seems ridiculous. I enjoyed it, learned a lot but maybe not for me. Definitely some wisdom to behold though.
February 9, 2023
"We destroyed, we insulted, we despised - and we laughed. We laughed at everything. We laughed at ourselves just as we laughed at Emperor, King and Country, fat bellies and baby-pacifiers. We took our laughter seriously ; laughter was the only guarantee of the seriousness with which, on our voyage of self-discovery, we practised anti-art."
December 1, 2021
Juicy gossip, hilarious antics. Like a lot of the books in the "World of Art" series, the text is showing its age. Some artists or personalities mentioned only in passing would likely get a bit more attention in a newer work.
December 22, 2017
A primary resource written by a Zurich Dadaist.
I read the book because I need to do some dramaturgical work for Tom Stoppard's play, TRAVESTIES.
I read the book because I need to do some dramaturgical work for Tom Stoppard's play, TRAVESTIES.
March 20, 2018
Hans Richter gives us all the juicy gossip of the distinct, yet commonly-threaded, narratives of Dada throughout Europe.
April 28, 2020
For Art Lovers and those who wanna know the ORIGIN of Dadaism and its Evolution to Surrealism. Its worthwhile read!!!
May 14, 2021
I can't believe I forgot to put this on here!! I love this one so much. Tzara is my hero.
October 21, 2022
A fucking wonderful book. Everyone must read it instantly.
July 30, 2024
Excellent introduction and reference work.
June 7, 2025
Bardzo dobrze przybliża nurt i epokę, polecam
November 26, 2025
zeer goed geschreven verslag van de dada periode door een insider, maar met voldoende afstand in tijd om er een heel brede doordachte kijk op te hebben. zeer interessant!
January 19, 2020
Focuses mainly on the lives and personalities of the characters of the Dada movement, most of whom Hans Richter knew personally (he was a Dadaist himself). I am more interested in learning about the philosophies behind the art, and the stories here are more about the antics (events, live performances, gatherings) of the Dadaists as well as its history. Dada was not so much an art form as it was an artistic and personalized expression of a philosophy. Its philosophy reflected reactions to the social upheavals of the period surrounding WWI as well as the shifting perspectives in all fields of knowledge and politics.
Gatherings, staged performance art, and public "scandals" were an integral part of the Dada movement, but the descriptions seemed repetitive to me (and even, after a while, to the Dadaists themselves). As Richter describes in the chapter on Paris Dada, "Paris was - in this way - captured, and there was nothing left for Dada to do. The demolition of bourgeois attitudes had been set in train. Everyone was discussing Dada and reacting, whether positively or negatively, to its programme, which consisted of anti-authority, anti-conduct, anti-church, anti-art, anti-order, deamonic humor." The chapter on Paris Dada also described how some artists ultimately fought for artistic control over a movement that was based on anti-authority. So ironic, but that's human nature. Its significance for me is as a precursor to Surrealism and a response to the new world disorder.
I saw an exhibit of the Societe Anonyme several years ago at the Hammer museum here in L.A. and loved it. So many prominent artists came of of the Dada movement and the Societe, and I was hoping this book would provide more information about their beginnings. If they weren't involved in the public performances, they were merely given mention in this book. It does make sense, though, of a lot of the "found art" and "ready mades," such as the reasons behind Marcel Duchamp's submission to an art exhibition by the Salon de Independents of a urinal as a work of art entitled, "Fountain."
It does contain historical elements and provides context for the movement as a reflection of the times, including its start in Zurich a movement of people who were avoiding involvement in the war. Covers some musicians, but no mention of the birth of modern dance, which took place at the same time and scant mention of the artistic movements taking place in Russia. I just saw the performance of "Isadora," based on the life of Isadora Duncan, and it added an interesting perspective.
My favorite part is about Max Ernst; this chapter does get into some of the influences ideas behind his work.
Gatherings, staged performance art, and public "scandals" were an integral part of the Dada movement, but the descriptions seemed repetitive to me (and even, after a while, to the Dadaists themselves). As Richter describes in the chapter on Paris Dada, "Paris was - in this way - captured, and there was nothing left for Dada to do. The demolition of bourgeois attitudes had been set in train. Everyone was discussing Dada and reacting, whether positively or negatively, to its programme, which consisted of anti-authority, anti-conduct, anti-church, anti-art, anti-order, deamonic humor." The chapter on Paris Dada also described how some artists ultimately fought for artistic control over a movement that was based on anti-authority. So ironic, but that's human nature. Its significance for me is as a precursor to Surrealism and a response to the new world disorder.
I saw an exhibit of the Societe Anonyme several years ago at the Hammer museum here in L.A. and loved it. So many prominent artists came of of the Dada movement and the Societe, and I was hoping this book would provide more information about their beginnings. If they weren't involved in the public performances, they were merely given mention in this book. It does make sense, though, of a lot of the "found art" and "ready mades," such as the reasons behind Marcel Duchamp's submission to an art exhibition by the Salon de Independents of a urinal as a work of art entitled, "Fountain."
It does contain historical elements and provides context for the movement as a reflection of the times, including its start in Zurich a movement of people who were avoiding involvement in the war. Covers some musicians, but no mention of the birth of modern dance, which took place at the same time and scant mention of the artistic movements taking place in Russia. I just saw the performance of "Isadora," based on the life of Isadora Duncan, and it added an interesting perspective.
My favorite part is about Max Ernst; this chapter does get into some of the influences ideas behind his work.
February 4, 2015
Hans Richter was an early if not prominent member of the Zurich Dada movement, who was involved in much of what he describes here; contrary to what I expected from the polemical tone of the quotations in the introduction by Dacha that I read previously, he does not try to present himself as a more central figure than he was or attack other figures in the movement. In fact I was impressed that he deals sympathetically with all the people involved from Ball and Tzara to Heulsenbeck and Hausmann and even Breton -- all of whom ended up as hostile to each other.
The book deals with the movement in a geographical-chronological fashion, and discusses its relations to its precursors, Futurism, Cubism and Expressionism, as well as to the later surrealist movement of Breton. It gave me a much better idea of what it was all about than Dacha's book. It also made it clear why it splintered and dissolved when it did, and how that was inevitable and not a result of egoism and betrayal, but of the very nature of the movement itself. He discusses the influences of Dada on later art in two short ending chapters. The book is well illustrated although not as heavily as the shorter book.
The book deals with the movement in a geographical-chronological fashion, and discusses its relations to its precursors, Futurism, Cubism and Expressionism, as well as to the later surrealist movement of Breton. It gave me a much better idea of what it was all about than Dacha's book. It also made it clear why it splintered and dissolved when it did, and how that was inevitable and not a result of egoism and betrayal, but of the very nature of the movement itself. He discusses the influences of Dada on later art in two short ending chapters. The book is well illustrated although not as heavily as the shorter book.
January 27, 2008
As usual, not the same edition I have, not the same cover art.. but, whatever.. I wonder how many bks had "Anti-Art" in their titles before this one? Not many I imagine. This bk was written in the early 1960s when Richter, a major dadaist, was an old man - probably in his 60s. In chapter 8: "Neo-Dada", he writes about pop art by commenting: "The anti-aesthetic gesture of the 'ready-made', and the blasphemies of Picabia, now reappear in the guise of folk-art - as comic strips or as crushed automobile bodies. They are neither non-art or anti-art but objects to be enjoyed. The feelings they evoke in the beholder's mind belong on the artistic level of a garden dwarf. The pleasure offered to the public is plain infantilism [..] Uncompromising revolt has been replaced by unconditional adjustment." HAHA! Good onya mate! As the projectionist at the Andy Warhol Museum, I can only agree! & let's not forget art as good business for the museum directors, eh?! Where else can you make SO MUCH MONEY by PRETENDING to care!
January 25, 2013
Excellent first-hand (for the most part) account of the genesis, rise, and dissolution of Dada. Richter breaks the history of this international movement into chapters on each of the key groups -- Zurich Dada, Berlin, New York, Paris, etc. This volume is invaluable not only for Richter's insights (down-to-earth and filled with humor), but for the treasure trove of original documents he includes. The chapter on Kurt Schwitters, and the inclusion of Max Ernst's "auto-biography" are worth the price of admission alone.
Richter concludes with a then-contemporary look at the new modes of Dada-influenced art cropping up in the sixties, especially pop, of which he's highly critical, but ultimately sees signs of value in.
Anyone interested in Dada, or the history of 20th Century art in general, will find this book fascinating.
Richter concludes with a then-contemporary look at the new modes of Dada-influenced art cropping up in the sixties, especially pop, of which he's highly critical, but ultimately sees signs of value in.
Anyone interested in Dada, or the history of 20th Century art in general, will find this book fascinating.
October 31, 2009
Absolutely positively one of the very best intros to Dada history, from one of the original prime movers in Zurich and later (I think) Berlin. Much more comprehensive of non-central Dada locations (like Spain and France) than other similar histories. Like all histories written by people who were there, though, it is pretty subjective at times (Richter doesn't have much nice to say about Tristan Tzara, though he's considerably more generous than Richard Hulsenbeck in his "Memories of a Dada Drummer"), but I think that's kind of the way to go at first. Dada's most interesting feature is that there wasn't one universally-accepted way to do it. The infighting and vigorous discussion about what it's actually about (to say nothing of what it's FOR) is all part of the program. Enjoy it, folks.
February 26, 2013
This book offers a history of the art movement told from the inside. An artist who was there from the start writes about the Dada 'scene'. It certainly doesn't lack enthusiasm. But even at the best of times, writing about art tends to be hard to penetrate, verbose and likely to drift onto the pompous; there's often little direct and clear explanation. Critics and artists both tend to adopt this style, as if it's something they were sworn to do at art school. If you want an academic book about Dada, with names, dates, the why and in what order, the art teacher's view of Dada, then this probably should be the book you read right after you find that one. I was after a soft-ish, hand-holding introduction to this movement and this isn't it.
February 11, 2012
I had to write a term paper on Dada and Tristan Tzara for one of my obligatory courses and could not find any reliable and extensive literature in Croatian, my native language, and was supposed to find some sources in English or some other language. I came across this book and it served me more than enough, while allowing me to delve deeper into the matter and understand the whole concept of Dada as art and anti-art. I truly recommend this book to all those who would like to gain some more knowledge about its founder(s) and if it could still be applied on some instances of art today. A fascinating discovery!
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