Dada, Dadaism and Early 20th Century European Avant-garde Art

Dadaist art, avant-garde art, art critics, art movement, dada, Dadaism, politics

Dada, Dadaism and Early 20th Century European Avant-garde Art

 

 

Dadaist art (dadaism) rose in reaction to the destruction caused by World War I. The world saw an unprecedented rise in the level of technology used in war: mass-produced semi-automatic weapons, as well as chemical and biological warfare in the trenches that claimed staggeringly high casualties. Dadaist artists reacted against the nationalist politics that stirred support for the war in the European theater. As such, Dadaism became more than simply the new avant-garde art: it was a declaration against rationalism itself. Birthed in Zurich, the Dada art movement prioritized ideology over aesthetics, meaning that the young artists at the forefront of the movement were not as concerned with what their paintings looked like as they were with what ideas they attempted to convey to others.

 

 

In the art movement’s early years, art critics lampooned Dadaism left and right, labeling it a childish objection to reason and natural order. Some art critics, however made the connection between the politics of World War I and the beginnings of the Dadaist movement. The message was hanging in the air all over Europe, and it was something to the tune of, “If your natural order and adult politics were responsible for creating the conditions of this Great War, then we want no part of your way of thinking.” In this way the avant-garde art of the time emerged to spread across Europe. The young artists of the movement as often as possible fought against predictability and rational thought in their productions.

 

 

Dadaist artistic processes were often based on chance, as artists deliberately introduced randomly-generative procedures into their work. These random factors relieved the pressure of the artist making conscious choices and also removed many of the potential subjective biases inherent in the creative act. These chance-based methods could produce pieces that were as free (or as densely populated with) political concerns as the processes themselves. Even the name “Dada” spawned stories of its creation. Rather than the name of a famous artist, some say “Dada” was taken from stabbing a knife at random into a dictionary, while others claim it was selected for its wordplay in multiple languages, being “yes, yes” in Russian and “hobbyhorse” in French. Perhaps due to the zeal of the participants, Dadaism itself lasted only roughly eight years and was contained mostly within the cities of New York, Cologne, Paris, Hannover, Berlin, and Zurich. While the eccentricities of the movement no doubt accounted for some of its lack in widespread popularity, the end of World War I in 1918 was also partly responsible for Dadaism’s gradual waning. 

 

 

 

 

Keywords: Dadaist art, avant-garde art, art critics, art movement, dada, Dadaism, politics