DADA

(French: hobby-horse), nihilistic movement in the arts that flourished primarily in Zrich, New York City, Berlin, Cologne, Paris, and Hannover, Ger. in the early 20th century. Several explanations have been given by various members of the movement as to how it received its name. According to the most widely accepted account, the name was adopted at Hugo Ball's Cabaret (Caf) Voltaire, in Zrich, during one of the meetings held in 1916 by a group of young artists and war resisters that included Jean Arp, Richard Hlsenbeck, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco, and Emmy Hennings; when a paper knife inserted into a FrenchGerman dictionary pointed to the word dada, this word was seized upon by the group as appropriate for their anti-aesthetic creations and protest activities, which were engendered by disgust for bourgeois values and despair over World War I. A precursor of what was to be called the Dada movement, and ultimately its leading member, was Marcel Duchamp, who in 1913 created his first ready-made (now lost), the Bicycle Wheel, consisting of a wheel mounted on the seat of a stool. The movement in the United States was centred at 291, the New York City gallery of Alfred Stieglitz, and the studio of the Walter Arensbergs, both wealthy patrons of the arts. There Dada-like activities, arising independently but paralleling those in Zrich, were engaged in by such artists as Man Ray, Morton Schamberg, and Francis Picabia. Both through their art and through such publications as The Blind Man, Rongwrong, and New York Dada the artists attempted to demolish current aesthetic standards. Travelling between the United States and Europe, Picabia became a link between the Dada groups in New York City, Zrich, and Paris; his Dada periodical, 291, was published in Barcelona, New York City, Zrich, and Paris from 1917 through 1924. In 1917 Hlsenbeck, one of the founders of the Zrich group, transmitted the Dada movement to Berlin, where it took on a more political character. Among the German artists involved were Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Hch, George Grosz, Johannes Baader, Hlsenbeck, Otto Schmalhausen, and Wieland Herzfelde and his brother John Heartfield (formerly Helmut Herzfelde, but Anglicized as a protest against German patriotism). One of the chief means of expression used by these artists was the photomontage, which consists of fragments of pasted photographs combined with printed messages; the technique was most effectively employed by Heartfield, particularly in his later, anti-Nazi works (e.g., Kaiser Adolph). Like the groups in New York City and Zrich, the Berlin artists staged public meetings, shocking and enraging the audience with their antics. They, too, issued Dada publications: Club Dada, Der Dada, Jedermann sein eigner Fussball (Everyman His Own Football), and Dada Almanach. The First International Dada Fair was held in Berlin in June 1920. Dada activities were also carried on in other German cities. In Cologne in 1919 and 1920, the chief participants were Max Ernst and Johannes Baargeld. Also affiliated with Dada was Kurt Schwitters of Hannover, who gave the name Merz to his collages, constructions, and literary productions. Although Schwitters used Dadaistic materialbits of rubbishto create his works, he achieved a refined, aesthetic effect that was uncharacteristic of Dada antiart. In Paris Dada took on a literary emphasis under one of its founders, the poet Tristan Tzara. Most notable among the numerous Dada pamphlets and reviews was Littrature (published 191924), which contained writings by Andr Breton, Louis Aragon, Philippe Soupault, Paul luard, and Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes. After 1922, however, Dada began to lose its force, and the energies of its participants turned toward Surrealism (q.v.). Dada had far-reaching effects on the art of the 20th century. Its nihilistic, antirationalistic critiques of society and its unrestrained attacks on all formal artistic conventions found no immediate inheritors, but its preoccupation with the bizarre, the irrational, and the fantastic bore fruit in the Surrealist movement. Dada artists' techniques of creation involving accident and chance were later employed by the Surrealists and Abstract Expressionists. Conceptual art also is rooted in Dada, for it was Duchamp who first asserted that the mental activity (intellectual expression) of the artist was of greater significance than the object created.