Dada catalog - alternate cover

DADA

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The beginnings of Dada were not the beginnings of art, but of disgust.

– Tristan Tzara

It was the end of the Great War. Whole cities and country sides destroyed by the intense fighting and entire empires were either weakened or wiped completely off the map. From these ashes would rise the Dadaist avant-garde movement.

Dadaism was a movement that started in Zurich, Switzerland but would find adherents in other countries like Germany, France, and even the United States. It was believed to have been started spontaneously by a poet named Hugo Ball in the Café Voltaire but it wasn’t until a man named Tristan Tzara began editing the publication “Dada” that it develop its visual and literary aesthetics.

The anarchist nature of the movement’s founding also made its way into the method the groups were run.

There was no hierarchy or any sort of leadership within or between any of the groups. They differed widely in methodology and aesthetic interests but were unified within the same ideology, values, and manifesto towards contemporary mass society and media.

Like most avant-garde movements of the age, Dada was a form of protest against the values of the pre-war Europe. They believed that it was the bourgeoisie’s elitism and over-emphasis on rationality that poisoned European society and begat the war that destroyed their homes and killed their friends and countrymen.

However, the Dadaists never considered their movement to be an artistic one. For them, traditional art was a reminder of the separation of the classes as due to the patronage system, only the wealthy could afford to own art. The aesthetic form was only secondary to the ideas that it represented, a vehicle of sorts.

The visual aesthetic of Dada was intense shock, and visual pandemonium. Mechanical parts such as gear, wheels, and clockwork were common imagery as a mockery of the over-excitement over technology that contemporary society was placing on technology and the advancements taking place in industry and science.

Contrast this to Futurism, an Italian movement that praised speed, technology, and violence.

They rarely depicted the human form and when they did it was often defaced, dehumanized, and intercut with mechanical images to showcase the reduction of man to a button in the machine, either the mechanical or the political kind.

As World War I drew to a close, Dada was becoming increasingly unstable. Many groups had disbanded as their members were moving into other modern movements such as surrealism. There had been some attempts to keep it going but by the 1930s many of the Germany and Austria-based Dadaists had either emigrated to United States or were killed in death camps under the same orders that had closed the Bauhaus when Hitler came into power. cover by Hannah Hoch

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One of the most distinctive characteristics of Dadaist typography is the lack of a grid. The prevalent method of type printing at the time was metalpress which always used an implied grid to maintain a sense of order, balance, and readability.   Dadaist typographers such as Tristan Tzara eschewed this methodology by printing words, sentences, and even entire paragraphs at different angles. Sometimes, letters were printed separately and then put together to form whatever word they wanted.   They frequently mixed fonts, even within the same word although most of them would primarily use sans serif fonts. Some members, such as Francis Picabia, would use handwritten type that would be copied over and over, probably by some sort of stone lithographic printing process. They also made use of overprinting text on top of imagery and other text, further enhancing the effect of visual overload upon the viewer.   They would also extend the adsurbity into the content of their publications. Oftentimes, the poetry and articles that would be printed in these magazines would not mean anything thus further negating the need for any form of legibility.

Dame! (cover illustration for Dadaphone magazine), Francis Picabia, 1920

Dada 3, Tristan Tzara, 1918

photomontage Collage in fine art was originally pioneered by the Synthetic Cubists but while the Dadaists imitated most of the Cubists’ collage techniques, they made of use of objects that could be found in everyday life (e.g. train tickets, food wrappers, etc.) to create abstract compositions, instead of only paper items.

One of the big things that would come out of this was the photomontage. Best described as a demented collage, artists or “monteurs” like Raoul Hausmann and Hannah Hoch would manipulate photos and magazine clippings to create compositions that shocked, unnerved, and awed.

The monteurs would select specific imagery to convey their intended messages. Hannah Hoch would often use magazine cut outs of women to make statements about her bizexuality, her being one of the few active female members of the avant-garde, and the difference in the media treatment of men and women.

ABCD (self-portrait), Raoul Hasmann 1923—4

Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, Hannah Hoch 1919-20

ARCEL DUCHAM

Marcel Duchamp was born on July 28, 1887 in the Normandy region of France. His family was heavily involved in many cultural and artistic endeavors as three of his siblings would also go on to become successful artists.

He had learned drawing and painting first, starting as a Post-Impressionst. After undergoing mandatory military service, he learned printing and typography which he would utilize in his later works. He would then move onto three dimensional work with his kinetic sculptures and plastic arts.

Often associated with Cubism, Dadaism, and Surrealism. He decried his the work of many of his contemporaries (e.g. Matisse), claiming that they only created art for the eye, and not the mind.

While he was interested in the anti-art of Dadaism, he rarely used the term and never directly associated with any of the groups.

Left: Dada 1916-1923, Sidney Janis, April 5 to May 9, 1953, Marcel Duchamp & Sidney Janis, 1953 Right: Portrait no. 29 (Double Exposure: Full Face and Profile), Victor Obsatz, 1953

An unintended subdivision of Dada, Merz was started

by Kurt Schwitters, a painter and draftsman from Hanover. He would also be Merz’ sole member.

Schwitters had originally applied for the Berlin Dada branch but was rejected for the apolitical nature of him and his work. He rejected the word Dada and coined Merz which he had taken from the word Kommerz after cutting it out of a flyer for one of his collages. He would create numerous collages throughout his career, even exhibitioning alongside Raoul Hausmann at some point.

His work would culminate into the Merzbau, or the Cathedral of Erotic Misery. A free-form sculptural structure that started from a few separate three-dimensional collages that combined into a massive complex that enveloped his entire house. He would flee Germany when the Nazi rose to power, thus abandoning the work. It was eventually destroyed during an Allied bombing.

MERZ

Der Harz (Mz 272), Kurt Schwitters, 1921

Untitled, Kurt Schwitters, 1920

foreign schools In 1918, most of the Dadaists left Zurich and returned to their home countries where they spread the ideas and tenets of their new movement. Most of the key figures were of German and Romanian origin which is why Dada is mostly considered a German movements, instead of a Swiss one.

The most prominent group was in Berlin. It placed more emphasis on the social and political aspects of the movements by producing countless manifestos, magazines, and propaganda. It was also the Berlin group that pioneered the photomontage.

The New York Dada was started by Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, and Man Ray. They were not as political as their german counterparts as New York, and/or America as a whole, was too far removed from the issues plaguing war-torn Europe.

Their output was more three-dimensional with Man Ray’s Fountain and Duchamp’s kinetic sculptures.

The Paris group was started through a series of letters and communications between Tristan Tzara and other French artists and writers. They had some publications but focused more on plays, ballet, and other types of performance art.

There were also smaller groups in Italy, Tokyo, The Netherlands, and Russia.

Da-da (New York Dada Group), Richard Boix, 1921

Neo dada Movements such as Pop Art, and Surrealism are built on the core ideas of Dada. They also use and innovate upon the techniques that the Dadaists invented or popularized such as performance art and assemblage.

Since then, groups such as the Fluxus have tried to recreate Dada, Even today, artists such as Jasper Johns use the term “Neo-Dada” to describe their works.

Even if it only lasted for a few years, the impact that they had on the art world gives credence to Dadaism being the first post-modern art movement.

Diver, Jasper Johns, 1962

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