D A D A I S M

DADA is an ART.

Dadaism or Dada is a post-World War I cultural movement in visual art as well as literature (mainly poetry), theatre and graphic design.

The movement was a protest against the barbarism of the War and what Dadaists believed was an oppressive intellectual rigidity in both art and everyday society; its works were characterized by a deliberate irrationality and the rejection of the prevailing standards of art.

If art is to have at least an implicit or latent message, Dada strives to have no meaning--interpretation of Dada is dependent entirely on the viewer. If art is to appeal to sensibilities, Dada offends. Perhaps it is then ironic that Dada is an influential movement in Modern art. Dada became a commentary on art and the world, thus becoming art itself.

Dada anti-art movement had a strong negative and destructive element. Dada writers and artists were concerned with shock, protest, and nonsense.

Dada art movement sought for complete artistic freedom.

They bitterly rebelled against the horrors of the world war, the decadence of European society, the shallowness of blind faith in technological progress, and the inadequacy of religion and conventional moral codes in a continent in upheaval.

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)

Artistic acts became matters of individual decision and selection.

This philosophy of absolute freedom allowed Duchamp to "create" readymade sculpture, such as a bicycle wheel mounted on a wooden stool, and exhibit "found objects" such as old urinals in galleries.

Raoul Hausmann (1886-1977) and Hannah Hoch (1889-1978)

"photo montage,“ a

technique of found

photographic images to create jarring

juxtapositions and chance associations.

T Y P O G R A P H Y

C O S T U M E S

Hugo Ball in costume for reciting

Sophie Tauber-Arp and her sister, 1916, dressed in costumes that Tauber-Arp designed for an interpretive dance to a poem by Hugo Ball.

ARCHITECTURE

M A S K S