Dada emerged from a period of artistic and literary movements like
Futurism,
Cubism and
Expressionism; centered mainly in Italy, France and Germany respectively, in those years. However, unlike the earlier movements Dada was able to establish a broad base of support, giving rise to a movement that was international in scope. Its adherents were based in cities all over the world including New York, Zürich, Berlin, Paris and others. There were regional differences like an emphasis on literature in Zürich and political protest in Berlin. Some sources propose a Romanian origin, arguing that Dada was an offshoot of a vibrant artistic tradition that transposed to Switzerland when a group of Jewish
modernist artists, including
Tristan Tzara,
Marcel Janco, and
Arthur Segal settled in Zürich. Before World War I, similar art had already existed in Bucharest and other Eastern European cities; it is likely that Dada's catalyst was the arrival in Zürich of artists like Tzara and Janco. Prominent Dadaists published manifestos, but the movement was loosely organized and there was no central hierarchy. On 14 July 1916, Ball originated the seminal
Dada Manifesto.
Tzara wrote a second Dada manifesto, considered important Dada reading, which was published in 1918. Tzara's manifesto articulated the concept of "Dadaist disgust"—the contradiction implicit in avant-garde works between the criticism and affirmation of modernist reality. In the Dadaist perspective modern art and culture are considered a type of
fetishization where the objects of consumption (including organized systems of thought like philosophy and morality) are chosen, much like a preference for cake or cherries, to fill a void. The shock and scandal the movement inflamed was deliberate; Dadaist magazines were banned and their exhibits closed. Some of the artists even faced imprisonment. These provocations were part of the entertainment but, over time, audiences' expectations eventually outpaced the movement's capacity to deliver. As the artists' well-known "sarcastic laugh" started to come from the audience, the provocations of Dadaists began to lose their impact. Dada was an active movement during years of political turmoil from 1916 when European countries were actively engaged in World War I, the conclusion of which, in 1918, set the stage for a new political order.
Zürich ,
Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Epoch of Weimar Beer-Belly Culture in Germany, 1919, collage of pasted papers, 90×144 cm,
Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin The origins of the Dada movement is commonly accepted by most art historians and those who lived during this period to have identified with the
Cabaret Voltaire (housed inside the
Holländische Meierei bar in Zürich) co-founded by poet and
cabaret singer
Emmy Hennings and
Hugo Ball. The name
Cabaret Voltaire was a reference to the French philosopher
Voltaire, whose novel
Candide mocked the religious and philosophical
dogmas of the day. Ball and Hennings invited artists "whatever their orientation" and contributions "of all kinds," setting the stage for a wildly diverse output. Opening night was attended by Ball,
Hennings, Tzara,
Jean Arp, and Janco. These artists along with others like
Sophie Taeuber,
Richard Huelsenbeck and
Hans Richter started putting on performances at the Cabaret Voltaire and using art to express their disgust with the war and the interests that inspired it. Having left Germany and Romania during
World War I, the artists arrived in politically neutral Switzerland. They used abstraction to fight against the social, political, and cultural ideas of that time. They used
shock art, provocation, and "
vaudevillian excess" to subvert the conventions they believed had caused the Great War. The Dadaists believed those ideas to be a byproduct of bourgeois society that was so apathetic it would wage war against itself rather than challenge the
status quo: Ball said that Janco's mask and costume designs, inspired by Romanian folk art, made "the horror of our time, the paralyzing background of events" visible. After the cabaret closed down, Dada activities moved on to a new gallery, and
Hugo Ball left for Bern. Tzara began a relentless campaign to spread Dada ideas. He bombarded French and Italian artists and writers with letters, and soon emerged as the Dada leader and master strategist. The Cabaret Voltaire re-opened, and is still in the same place at the Spiegelgasse 1 in the Niederdorf. Zürich Dada, with Tzara at the helm, published the art and literature review
Dada beginning in July 1917, with five editions from Zürich and the final two from Paris. Other artists, such as
André Breton and
Philippe Soupault, created "literature groups to help extend the influence of Dada". After the fighting of the First World War had ended in the armistice of November 1918, most of the Zürich Dadaists returned to their home countries, and some began Dada activities in other cities. Others, such as the Swiss native
Sophie Taeuber, would remain in Zürich into the 1920s.
Berlin "Berlin was a city of tightened stomachers, of mounting, thundering hunger, where hidden rage was transformed into a boundless money lust, and men's minds were concentrating more and more on questions of naked existence... Fear was in everybody's bones" – Richard Hülsenbeck
Raoul Hausmann, who helped establish Dada in Berlin, published his
manifesto Synthethic Cino of Painting in 1918 where he attacked Expressionism and the art critics who promoted it. Dada is envisioned in contrast to art forms, such as Expressionism, that appeal to viewers' emotional states: "the exploitation of so-called echoes of the soul". In Hausmann's conception of Dada, new techniques of creating art would open doors to explore new artistic impulses. Fragmented use of real world stimuli allowed an expression of reality that was radically different from other forms of art: The groups in Germany were not as strongly
anti-art as other groups. Their activity and art were more political and social, with corrosive
manifestos and propaganda, satire, public demonstrations and overt political activities. The intensely political and war-torn environment of Berlin had a dramatic impact on the ideas of Berlin Dadaists. Conversely, New York's geographic distance from the war spawned its more theoretically driven, less political nature. According to
Hans Richter, a Dadaist who was in Berlin yet "aloof from active participation in Berlin Dada", several distinguishing characteristics of the Dada movement there included: "its political element and its technical discoveries in painting and literature"; "inexhaustible energy"; "mental freedom which included the abolition of everything"; and "members intoxicated with their own power in a way that had no relation to the real world", who would "turn their rebelliousness even against each other". In February 1918, while the Great War was approaching its climax, Huelsenbeck gave his first Dada speech in Berlin, and he produced a Dada manifesto later in the year. Following the
October Revolution in
Russia, by then out of the war,
Hannah Höch and
George Grosz used Dada to express communist sympathies. Grosz, together with
John Heartfield, Höch and Hausmann developed the
technique of
photomontage during this period.
Johannes Baader, the uninhibited Oberdada, was the "crowbar" of the Berlin movement's
direct action according to
Hans Richter and is credited with creating the first giant collages, according to
Raoul Hausmann. After the war, the artists published a series of short-lived political magazines and held the
First International Dada Fair, 'the greatest project yet conceived by the Berlin Dadaists', in the summer of 1920. As well as work by the main members of Berlin Dada (Grosz,
Raoul Hausmann,
Hannah Höch,
Johannes Baader, Huelsenbeck and Heartfield), the exhibition also included the work of
Otto Dix,
Francis Picabia, Jean Arp,
Max Ernst,
Rudolf Schlichter,
Johannes Baargeld and others. The Berlin group published periodicals such as
Club Dada,
Der Dada,
Everyman His Own Football, and
Dada Almanach. They also established a political party, the
Central Council of Dada for the World Revolution.
Cologne In
Cologne, Ernst, Baargeld, and Arp launched a controversial Dada exhibition in 1920 which focused on nonsense and anti-bourgeois sentiments. Cologne's Early Spring Exhibition was set up in a pub, and required that participants walk past urinals while being read lewd poetry by a woman in a
communion dress. The police closed the exhibition on grounds of obscenity, but it was re-opened when the charges were dropped. as one of the most recognizable modernist works of sculpture. Art world experts polled by the sponsors of the 2004
Turner Prize, Gordon's gin, voted it "the most influential work of modern art". As recent scholarship documents, the work is still controversial. Duchamp indicated in a 1917 letter to his sister that a female friend was centrally involved in the conception of this work: "One of my female friends who had adopted the pseudonym Richard Mutt sent me a porcelain urinal as a sculpture." The piece is in line with the scatological aesthetics of Duchamp's neighbour, the
Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. In an attempt to "pay homage to the spirit of Dada" a performance artist named
Pierre Pinoncelli made a crack in a replica of
The Fountain with a hammer in January 2006; he also urinated on it in 1993. Picabia's travels tied New York, Zürich and Paris groups together during the Dadaist period. For seven years he also published the Dada periodical
391 in Barcelona, New York City, Zürich, and Paris from 1917 through 1924. By 1921, most of the original players moved to Paris where Dada had experienced its last major incarnation.
Paris , c. 1921–22,
Rencontre dans la porte tournante, published on the cover of
Der Sturm, Volume 13, Number 3, 5 March 1922 The French
avant-garde kept abreast of Dada activities in Zürich with regular communications from
Tristan Tzara (whose pseudonym means "sad in country", a name chosen to protest the treatment of Jews in his native Romania), who exchanged letters, poems, and magazines with
Guillaume Apollinaire,
André Breton,
Max Jacob,
Clément Pansaers, and other French writers, critics and artists. Paris had arguably been the classical music capital of the world since the advent of musical Impressionism in the late 19th century. One of its practitioners,
Erik Satie, collaborated with
Picasso and
Cocteau in a mad, scandalous ballet called
Parade. First performed by the
Ballets Russes in 1917, it succeeded in creating a scandal but in a different way than Stravinsky's
Le Sacre du printemps had done almost five years earlier. This was a ballet that was clearly parodying itself, something traditional ballet patrons would obviously have serious issues with. Dada in Paris surged in 1920 when many of the originators converged there. Inspired by Tzara, Paris Dada soon issued manifestos, organized demonstrations, staged performances and produced a number of journals (the final two editions of
Dada,
Le Cannibale, and
Littérature featured Dada in several editions.) The first introduction of Dada artwork to the Parisian public was at the
Salon des Indépendants in 1921.
Jean Crotti exhibited works associated with Dada including a work entitled,
Explicatif bearing the word
Tabu. In the same year Tzara staged his Dadaist play
The Gas Heart to howls of derision from the audience. When it was re-staged in 1923 in a more professional production, the play provoked a theatre riot (initiated by
André Breton) that heralded the split within the movement that was to produce
Surrealism. Tzara's last attempt at a Dadaist drama was his "
ironic tragedy"
Handkerchief of Clouds in 1924.
Netherlands In the Netherlands, the Dada movement centered mainly around
Theo van Doesburg, best known for establishing the
De Stijl movement and magazine of the same name. Van Doesburg mainly focused on poetry, and included poems from many well-known Dada writers in
De Stijl such as
Hugo Ball,
Hans Arp and
Kurt Schwitters. Van Doesburg and (a
cordwainer and artist in
Drachten) became friends of Schwitters, and together they organized the so-called
Dutch Dada campaign in 1923, where van Doesburg promoted a leaflet about Dada (entitled
What is Dada?), Schwitters read his poems,
Vilmos Huszár demonstrated a mechanical dancing doll and Nelly van Doesburg (Theo's wife), played
avant-garde compositions on piano. Van Doesburg wrote Dada poetry himself in
De Stijl, although under a pseudonym, I.K. Bonset, which was only revealed after his death in 1931. 'Together' with I.K. Bonset, he also published a short-lived
Dutch Dada magazine called
Mécano (1922–23). Another Dutchman identified by
K. Schippers in his study of the movement in the Netherlands was the
Groningen typographer
H. N. Werkman, who was in touch with van Doesburg and Schwitters while editing his own magazine,
The Next Call (1923–6). Two more artists mentioned by Schippers were German-born and eventually settled in the Netherlands. These were Otto van Rees, who had taken part in the liminal exhibitions at the Café Voltaire in Zürich, and
Paul Citroen.
Georgia Though Dada itself was unknown in
Georgia until at least 1920, from 1917 until 1921, a group of poets called themselves Le Degré 41", or "Le Degré Quarante et Un" (English, "The 41st Degree") (referring both to the latitude of
Tbilisi, Georgia and to the Celsius temperature of a high fever [equal to 105.8 Fahrenheit]) organized along Dadaist lines. The most important figure in this group was
Iliazd (Ilia Zdanevich), whose radical typographical designs visually echo the publications of the Dadaists. After his flight to Paris in 1921, he collaborated with Dadaists on publications and events. For example, when
Tristan Tzara was banned from holding seminars in Théâtre Michel in 1923,
Iliazd booked the venue on his behalf for the performance, "
The Bearded Heart Soirée", and designed the flyer.
Yugoslavia In
Yugoslavia, alongside the new art movement
Zenitism, there was significant Dada activity between 1920 and 1922, run mainly by
Dragan Aleksić and including work by Mihailo S. Petrov, Ljubomir Micić and Branko Ve Poljanski. Aleksić used the term "Yougo-Dada" and is known to have been in contact with
Raoul Hausmann,
Kurt Schwitters, and
Tristan Tzara.
Italy The Dada movement in Italy, based in
Mantua, was met with distaste and failed to make a significant impact in the world of art. It published a magazine for a short time and held an exhibition in Rome, featuring paintings, quotations from Tristan Tzara, and original epigrams such as "True Dada is against Dada". One member of this group was
Julius Evola, who went on to become an eminent scholar of
occultism, as well as a right-wing philosopher.
Japan A prominent Dada group in Japan was
Mavo. The group was founded in July 1923 by
Tomoyoshi Murayama and
Yanase Masamu; they were later joined by
Tatsuo Okada. Other prominent artists were
Jun Tsuji,
Eisuke Yoshiyuki,
Shinkichi Takahashi and
Katué Kitasono. In
Tsuburaya Productions's
Ultra Series, an alien named Dada was inspired by the Dadaism movement, with said character first appearing in episode 28 of the 1966
tokusatsu series,
Ultraman, its design by character artist
Toru Narita. Dada's design is primarily monochromatic, and features numerous sharp lines and alternating black and white stripes, in reference to the movement and, in particular, to
chessboard and
Go patterns. On May 19, 2016, in celebration to the 100 year anniversary of Dadaism in Tokyo, the Ultra Monster was invited to meet the Swiss Ambassador Urs Bucher.
Butoh, the Japanese dance-form originating in 1959, can be considered to have direct connections to the spirit of the Dada movement, as
Tatsumi Hijikata, one of Butoh's founders, "was influenced early in his career by Dadaism".
Russia Dada in itself was relatively unknown in Russia; however, avant-garde art was widespread due to the
Bolsheviks' revolutionary agenda. The , a literary group sharing Dadaist ideals For more information on Dadaism's influence upon
Russian avant-garde art, see the book
Russian Dada 1914–1924. ==Poetry==