How to Appreciate Dada Art

Perhaps contemporary art cannot be fully understood without appreciating Dadaism, an art and cultural movement that sprang up during World War 1, beginning in Zurich, Switzerland. It peaked from 1916 up to 1922, but its influence on contemporary art and culture remains and can still be felt in the art of today. Dada, in the most basic sense, is anti-art. It rebels against everything that traditional art holds in high regard—harmony, beauty, aesthetics, skill, technique—and revels in chaos, irrationality, and even ugliness.

Scope

Dada began as a reaction against World War I and as an informal international event that had participants across Europe and North America. The movement included exhibitions of canvas art paintings, public art, gatherings, demonstrations, and art publications. Besides visual arts, the dada movement also seeped into literature, poetry, art theory, theater, performance art, and graphic design.

Protest

Primarily, dada was a protest against the interest of the bourgeois nationalists and the colonialists as well as against intellectual and cultural conformity, which many Dadaists believed to be the root cause of the war. During that time, many of the Dadaists believed that it was the rationality and logic of bourgeois capitalist society that led people into war, and thus in their art and performances, expressed their rejection of logic and reason, embracing irrationality and chaos instead. George Grosz, one of the forerunners of the dada movement said that his dada art was a protest against the world of mutual destruction.

Anti-art

To its proponents, dada is not art but “anti-art.” Whatever art stood for, Dada celebrated the opposite: it ignored aesthetics, intending to offend the viewer rather than appeal to the viewer’s sensibilities and intellect, and aimed to destroy traditional culture and the traditional sense of beauty and what was right. For the dada artist Hugo Ball, art was not an end in itself but an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times that the artist lives in.

Influence

Dadaism also included the coverage of politics, culture, and art; topics that were often discussed in various media forms. Dadaism had a big impact in modern and contemporary society and had a large influence on the avant-garde, surrealism, Nouveau realism, Fluxus, pop art, and rock music. According to art writer Marc Lowenthal, dada is also the groundwork for abstract art and sound poetry, as well as a starting point for performance art and a prelude to postmodernism. Lowenthal also writes that dada is an influence on pop art.

Criticism

Because of its irreverent nature, not all people appreciate dada art. Naturally, a lot of people find it offensive and maybe even irrelevant or a waste of time, which is exactly the reaction that the Dadaists are aiming for—to offend bourgeois sensibilities. During the peak of Dadaism, it was highly criticized by art writers and the society at large. A reviewer for the American Art News wrote that the dada philosophy was the sickest, most paralyzing and destructive thing that ever originated from the mind of man.

All text copyright Shanel. Photo from Flikr - "clocks/spiders/tires - on board" courtesy of jenlight.