Chapter 45; Dadaism; The meeting point of all contradictions

Poster for Salon Dada Exposition Internationale, Galerie Montaigne, 1921.

Dada's Visual Communication: After All Everyone Dances to His Own Personal Boomboom

The Typographical Revolution

Dada's innovative approach to typography, photomontage, negative white space, layout, letter spacing, and line spacing played a significant role in the development of communication design. Many aspects of their style, technique, and aesthetics were borrowed from the Futurists, particularly their art of typography. The Dada publications—including manifestos, magazines, and posters—reveal that graphic design was indispensable for establishing the movement's visual identity and its strong design signature.

Given the rebellious nature of Dada, the Futurists' typographical experiments proved more conducive to Dadaism's subversive spirit than to Futurism's own enthusiasm for depicting the energetic pace of machines. This is perhaps why Dada's contributions became more prominent. As Tristan Tzara wrote in the Dadaist manifesto:

"Every page should explode, either because of its deep seriousness, or because of its vortex, vertigo, newness, timelessness, crushing humor, enthusiasm of its principles, or the way it is printed."

This sentiment reflected exactly what Filippo Marinetti, founder of Futurism, had expressed:

"I undertake a typographical revolution directed especially against the idiotic and nauseous conception of old-fashioned books of verses... Better still: my revolution is directed against what is called typographical harmony of the page... I intend to redouble the expressive force of words."

Tristan Tzara

Raoul Hausmann, Poster for the Soirée du Coeur à Barbe at the Théâtre Michel, 1923

Breaking Typographical Conventions

Marinetti's typographical revolution targeted the traditional concept of meaning, which depends on radical typographical simplification—conventional texts with no pictures, no color, strict left-to-right ordering, no type changes, no interaction, and no revision. Marinetti called such texts "stale" and "oppressive," symbols of the old guard that the Futurists opposed. The Dadaists agreed wholeheartedly, further emphasizing spontaneity, automatic writing, and chance operations.

Marinetti experimented with proactive typography, writing poems that were simultaneously textual and visual. As Enrico Prampolini declared in his letter of August 4, 1917 to Tzara: "we, with Marinetti and my poor dear friend Boccioni and the others, have said and done what you are saying and doing now." The Dadaist Hans Richter confirmed this assessment, writing:

"The free use of typography in which the compositor moves over the page vertically, horizontally and diagonally, jumbles his typefaces and makes liberal use of his stock of pictorial blocks—all of this can be found in Futurism years before Dada."

 

Form as Independent Meaning

Like the Futurists before them, Dada's typographical revolution was founded on typography itself, where the typeface became a medium for creating meaning. Dada isolated the graphic work from the transmitted textual message; the visual communication stood independently through its aesthetically induced meaning. Dada did not want readers to look "through" words to decipher textual meaning—it wanted to compel readers to look "at" the shape of typefaces in their explosive layouts.

In contrast to Futurist typography, which superficially aimed at expressing desires for speed and war technology, Dada's typography was inherently multifarious, suggesting a new paradigm for deciphering meaning—one that was eruptive, craggy, nonlinear, and most importantly, independent of textual content. Dada attached typographical weight to words not according to their morphological significance in a statement, but according to their most uncanny characteristics, where wordplay and double meaning often received more weight and prominence.

Not all Dadaists adhered strictly to this partition between form and content. The graphic designs of Kurt Schwitters, Hannah Höch, and Raoul Hausmann used expressive typography whereby visual modulation correlated highly with the sonority structure of language.

Experimental Layouts

Functionality was not a concern in Dada layouts. Artists composed on the same page, and sometimes within the same word, using different typefaces of different sizes. They explored disharmonious assemblages, disproportionate white space, and multi-directional typesetting, rendering layouts polycentric and polysemic. Theo van Doesburg and Kurt Schwitters, in their design for a Dada evening in The Hague in 1923, created an explosive composition spawning an avalanche of incongruous signs.

However, neither Futurists nor Dadaists altered the traditional form of letters or the overall integrity of layout. The main innovation in the poem "Karawane," for instance, resided in its headline, which appeared to be in motion, and the use of different types of writing in its seventeen lines—not in unconventional layout or illegibility of letters. Unquestionably, Dada pushed typography to the limits of legibility and perhaps violated the canons of classical aesthetics in calligraphy, but it remained faithful to graphic design's cardinal rule: conveying its inconsistent message using logic and language through its subversive style to establish the case for the emptiness of language and logic.

A typeface salad of Dada typography

Tristan Tzara, Une Nuit d'Echecs Gras, 391, Paris 1920

Hugo Ball, Karawane, 1917.

Theo van Doesburg and Kurt Schwitters, Kleine Dada Soirée --Small Dada Evening, 1922.

Dada Hannover was basically a one-man show by Kurt Schwitters. Accused of not being "political enough," Berlin's Club Dada denied him membership, hence he formed Merz his own Dada movement. The name was a cut from the word "Kommerz," and was taken from a bank's newspaper advertisement.

Francis Picabia, L'Oeil cacodylate, The Cacodylic Eye, 1921.

Dada layout, Two Poems, by Tristan Tzara, Page 14 of Der Dada 3.

Raoul Hausmann, Grün, 1918.

Dada's Cultivated Visual Communication

Dada's graphic design and typography were among the rare cases where Dada adhered to a cultivated manner. As Walter Benjamin observed, "barbarisms were abundant in Dadaism," particularly in art performances. He wrote:

"The Dadaists attached much less importance to the sales value of their work than to its usefulness for contemplative immersion. The studied degradation of their material was not the least of their means to achieve this uselessness. Their poems are 'word salad' containing obscenities and every imaginable waste product of language. The same is true of their paintings, on which they mounted buttons and tickets. What they intended and achieved was a relentless destruction of the aura of their creations, which they branded as reproductions with the very means of production."

Yet Dada's graphic design caused no scandal and, by today's standards, was not far from conservative practices. In studies for new aesthetics, Dada employed collage, photomontage, and expressive typography, which played key roles in linking visual art and poetical inspiration. Visual poems such as "Karawane" by Hugo Ball (1917), "Une nuit d'échecs gras" by Tzara (1920), and "Soirée du Coeur à Barbe" by Zdanevich (1923) adhered to strict optical composition balances.

Dada's sophisticated graphics dispelled the myth that anyone can make art. The aesthetics of their balanced visual compositions differed from traditional layouts but were not displeasing. As Willy Verkauf wrote:

"The Dadaists, unfettered by any tradition, tried to break up the rigid set, the regular rhyme of typography by using types and blocks of the most widely different grades. The layout of the sets was enriched by a lively rhythm of black and white, and a new effect, rather like a picture, was achieved. The joy of experimenting and creative imagination took the place of orthodox typographical tradition."

Schwitters' Artistic Discipline

This is particularly evident in Kurt Schwitters' faith in the project of art and the necessity of communication through visual and literal means. He admitted that "Typography, under certain conditions, can be an art," and those conditions were determined by "strict artistic discipline." He wrote:

"With regard to typography one can establish innumerable laws. The principal one would be: never do what someone else before you has done."

This implicitly suggested a materially and thematically dynamic methodology of exploration that would ultimately result in art. Nevertheless, many Dadaists still asserted that the normative means by which art and literature operate were no longer adequate to represent the true nature of human experience, thus resorting to art performances—bizarre mixtures of disharmonious noise, chaotic performances, and plain absurdity.

Design for Communication

In contrast to public performances where deliberate attempts were made to annoy and repel audiences, Dada's claim of total disregard for aesthetics in visual communication is not supported by evidence from their published materials. Their periodicals and various tracts were designed to attract potential interest, albeit largely among those interested in anarchic protests.

Dada borrowed from the technical and visual vocabulary of advertising, and their interest in posters demonstrated a real desire to occupy the forefront of the scene while simultaneously mocking commercial codes and mechanisms—using them to excess, to the point of absurdity. This process appeared in tracts such as "Dada soulève tout," dated January 12, 1921, where advertising's solicitation and use of slogans were diverted: "The ministry is overturned. By who? By Dada. The Blessed Virgin was already a Dadaist." The Dadaists even proposed premiums: "50 francs reward to whoever finds the means of explaining DADA to us."

Shortly after, Dada's radical approach to typography was repudiated by the Constructivists, who formed the Ring neuer Werbegestalter (Circle of New Advertising Graphic Designers), advocating a return to sharpness and exhorting lucidity, exactitude, crispness, and efficiency. After the radicalism of Dada, a new conservative discipline dominated the typographic world of the 1930s.

Dada Photocollage and Montage Techniques

Dada artists—including Hannah Höch, John Heartfield, Raoul Hausmann, Kurt Schwitters, Georg Grosz, and Max Ernst—developed a unique method of reinterpreting and recontextualizing photographs to powerful socio-political effect. Photomontage allowed Dadaists to create uncompromising criticism of socio-political issues. To create such images, they chose familiar press photographs and reorganized them to radically alter their meanings.

These works comprised clipped cuts from the press, posters, catalogs, tickets, letters, and other printed materials. Technical advances and development of halftone photogravure and offset printing technology had created a tidal wave in the application of photographic images. By 1919, photomontage was widespread and commonly used in both advertising and commercial photography. Dada artists deliberately used this technique to disrupt the cultural influence of mass media on the socio-political structure of reality.

By mirroring in their photomontages the structural breakdown of society and the displacement and alienation of individuals, Dadaists aimed at disturbing viewers' sentience and causing consternation emanating from facing the harsh reality of modern life. The mischievous and perplexing facets of Dada photomontages were created from a mixture of absurdity and conviction, uneasiness and defiance, and were intrinsically inconclusive. They were not textual and hence not subject to analytical hermeneutics. Thus, any interpretation would have been subjective and subject to the exigencies of modern life under various socio-political parameters.

Nevertheless, Dada's photomontage always encouraged viewers to react and interpret. As Hausmann wrote in 1931:

"The idea of photomontage was as revolutionary as its content, its form as subversive as the application of the photograph and printed texts which, together, are transformed into a static film... The Dadaists applied the same principles to pictorial representation. They were the first to use photography as material to create, with the aid of structures that were very different, often anomalous and with antagonistic significance, a new entity which tore from the chaos of war and revolution an entirely new image."

The bold, imaginative, and at times unsettling experiments of Dadaist graphic design—such as Hannah Höch's photomontage and collage with watercolor entitled "Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser durch die letzte Weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands" (Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919-20), Heartfield's cover for Der Dada No. 3 (1920), and Hausmann's design for Dada Cino (1920)—opened new vistas in graphic design far beyond the narrow concerns of the movement. Dada's experimental typography together with photomontage as visual forms of written language served as theoretical statements comparable to their manifestos, critical tracts, and technical treatises.

Hannah Höch, Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919

Raoul Hausmann, Elasticum, 1920

Photomontage and collage with gouache on the cover of Erste Internationale Dada-Messe

Kurt Schwitters, Merzgurnfleck, 1920

Hannah Höch, Da Dandy, 191

A Brief History of Dadaism

Dadaism was a rebellious movement against the carnage of World War I (1914-18), aimed at challenging the socio-economic principles of capitalist interests behind the war efforts. It quickly developed into an anarchist, cynical, and nihilist movement that resorted to a barrage of scandalous exhibitions, outrageous demonstrations, and absurd manifestos deliberately designed to provoke and irritate both rampant militaristic Europe and her conservative bourgeoisie.

Dada founders were typically angry young artists who had "opted out," avoiding conscription, and claimed they could discover true reality by abolishing traditional culture and accepted aesthetic forms. As Tristan Tzara wrote in his Lecture on Dada in 1922:

"The beginnings of Dada were not the beginnings of an art, but of a disgust. Disgust with the magnificence of philosophers who for 3000 years have been explaining everything to us (what for?), disgust with the pretensions of these artists-God's-representatives-on-earth, disgust with passion and with real pathological wickedness where it was not worth the bother; disgust with a false form of domination and restriction en masse, that accentuates rather than appeases man's instinct of domination."

They resorted to militant tactics attacking established art traditions. Their public statements focused on form rather than substance, but their political leitmotif consisted of anti-war, anti-establishment, and anti-convention issues. As Tzara wrote:

"Dada is the abolition of those incapable of creation. Dada is the belief in the god of spontaneity. Dada is the roar of controlled pain. Dada is life, Dada is freedom, Dada is the meeting point of all contradictions... Dada is a virgin microbe that will get into your brain only in the places where the conventional is not present!"

Dadaists were also self-deprecating in their work and mocked their own views on the absurdity of modern life. Prominent Dadaists included Hans Arp, Richard Huelsenbeck, Tristan Tzara, Paul Éluard, Emmy Hennings, Johannes Baader, and Johannes Theodor Baargeld (pseudonym for Alfred Grünwald). Others included Romanian sculptor Marcel Janco and German painter and filmmaker Hans Richter.

Perhaps ironically, Dadaists' contributions to visual communication design were positive and significant. They introduced a new and bold aesthetic, creative liberation, and an artistic vision that enriched the field of graphic design.

Cabaret Voltaire

In early 1916, Hugo Ball, a German poet and playwright, and his wife Emmy Hennings, a poet and vocalist, decided to open their own cabaret and chose the intriguing name Cabaret Voltaire. In founding this venue at the back room of the Holländische Meierei, a popular tavern located in a seedy section of Zürich, they were influenced by the emergence of political theater and cabaret in Germany.

Ball had known the work of Austrian Frank Wedekind, whose play "Frühlings Erwachen" (Spring Awakening) was banned in Vienna because of its critical look at children's lack of sexual education. Wedekind, whom no German theater would hire, went to Munich to work at Simplicissimus cabaret, and Hugo Ball attended all his performances, actually meeting his wife Emmy at one of them. Ball and their Zürich friends—Richard Huelsenbeck and Tristan Tzara—were also great admirers of Italian Futurist poet Filippo Marinetti.

"We want to glorify war—the world's only hygiene," proclaimed the Futurist manifesto written by Marinetti, published on the front page of the French newspaper Le Figaro in 1909. Marinetti exalted the dynamism of the modern world, especially its science and technology. His aim was to detach completely from the past and look to the future, thus he called for the destruction of all museums and libraries. Futurists also staged raucous performance evenings and art exhibitions around Europe.

Many German artists and writers, including Ball, were fascinated by the nationalistic militarism of Futurists. Ball attempted to enlist in the early days of the War and, when refused on medical grounds, went to the Front for two months as a civilian volunteer. Those who weren't killed in WWI received searing lessons on the madness and depravity that European civilization was capable of. Ball's shocking experiences fueled Nietzschean ideals dating from his work for Die Revolution. His Dada activities may be read as an acting-out of Nietzsche's invocation that "he who wants to be a creator must first be an annihilator and destroy values."

Ball asked Hans Arp, Marcel Janco, and Tristan Tzara to collaborate on his cabaret project. Cabaret Voltaire was a dark place incorporating the functions of an artists' club, exhibition room, pub, and theater. It offered the most bizarre performances incorporating rampageous poetry and boisterous music, in which amidst scurrilous music a half dozen people simultaneously recited poems in different languages or nonsense syllables from different corners of the room, often accompanied by deranged dances in outlandish Dada masks and inane costumes.

They performed silly and absurd plays, accompanied by solemn incantations of texts by mystic Jacob Böhme and Lao-Tse. On the walls hung pictures by artists whose names had been unknown until then: Arp, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, and others. The cabaret was abandoned after World War II but in 2002 a group of artists claiming to be neo-Dadaists began to occupy it, eventually being evicted before the building reopened as a proper cabaret.

In the pamphlet "Cabaret Voltaire," published by Hugo Ball on May 15, 1916, an impressive collection of visual works by artists including Guillaume Apollinaire, Arp, Ball, Blaise Cendrars, Hennings, Huelsenbeck, Janco, Kandinsky, Marinetti, Amedeo Modigliani, Picasso, and Tzara were included. Ball wrote in his introductory remarks:

"When I founded the Cabaret Voltaire, I was of the opinion that there ought to be a few young people in Switzerland who not only laid stress, as I did, on enjoying their independence, but also wished to proclaim it... So, on February 5th, we had our cabaret. Mrs. Hennings and Mrs. Leconte sang French and Danish songs. Mr. Tristan Tzara recited Romanian verses. A balalaika band played some charming Russian folk-songs and dances."

Hugo Ball

Hugo Ball, Cabaret Voltaire, Catalog

Pablo Picasso, Dessin,  published in page10 of Cabaret Voltaire, 1916

L. Modegliani, Portrait of Hans Arp, Page 13 of Cabaret Voltaire, 1916

Dada Design: Miscellany of Art and Literature

Tzara launched "Dada," a review of art and literature in Zürich. The first issue appeared in July 1917 with the subtitle "Miscellany of Art and Literature." It contained contributions from avant-garde groups throughout Europe, including Giorgio de Chirico, Robert Delaunay, and Wassily Kandinsky. Tzara wrote in the Zurich Chronicle: "Mysterious creation! Magic Revolver! The Dada Movement is Launched."

The first two issues adopted the structured layout of Cabaret Voltaire and had no official editor. Marcel Janco assembled issue 1, and François Arp, Hans's brother, produced Dada 2. This was by design, as it was planned that Dada members would take turns editing under the direction of an editorial board. However, no one but Tzara had the talent for the job, and after the first two issues, Tzara assumed the role of editor.

Dada 3 was published in December 1918. The radical change of format and bold typographical sans serif with nihilistic and ironic tone may have related to the influence of Francis Picabia, who returned to Europe and in February of that year contacted Tzara. Picabia published the eighth issue of his periodical "391" in Zürich, incorporating works by Julius Heuberger, a Dada graphic designer, in February 1919. Tzara, whose Dada Manifesto of 1918 was published in this issue, decided jointly with Picabia to collaborate on the next issues of their respective reviews—Dada Numbers 4-5 and 391 Number 8.

Dada 3, printed in newspaper format in both French and German editions, was the issue that violated all conventional rules of typography and layout, with typeset in randomly ordered lettering. True to Dada's manifesto, it was a celebration of absurdity and pure silliness reflected in its poetry and declarations. Dada 3 included contributions from Francis Picabia and Paris-based writers Philippe Soupault and André Breton.

Picabia and Tzara developed a kindred relationship, as the two men's artistic sensitivities were complementary. In February 1919, on Tzara's request, Picabia moved for three months to Zürich. A great deal of artistic creativity resulted from their daily discussions and brainstorms. During the preparation of Dada 4-5, its printer Julius Heuberger was sent to prison for his anarchist activities.

Dada 4-5 was published in two versions: an international edition that included some contributions in German, and a French edition that replaced German material with French materials to avoid French government censorship. The cover showed a Dada alarm clock by Picabia, whose boisterous sound was supposed to wake modern art from its long slumber.

391: Picabia's Avant-garde Journal

Picabia's art and literature review "391" first appeared in Barcelona in 1917. It was modeled after the New York avant-garde journal "291," published by photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz, and survived until 1924—the longest life among Dada publications. He announced its inception in a letter to Stieglitz from Barcelona: "It's better than nothing, because really, here, there's nothing."

Picabia published the first four issues in Barcelona and the next three in New York, where it became a lonely endeavor, as issues 6 and 7 contained almost exclusively his own texts and drawings. In these issues, he exhibited his panache for controversy, absurdity, and nihilistic pizzazz. According to his wife Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia, a young avant-garde musician, everything started as a joke but "quickly degenerated in subsequent issues into a highly aggressive system of assault, defining the militant attitude which became characteristic of 391."

Francis Picabia 

 

Francis Picabia, Réveil matin I --Alarm Clock I, illustration on the title page of the journal Dada, no. 4-5: Anthologie Dada --Dada Anthology, 1919

 

Francis Picabia, Réveil matin I --Alarm Clock I, illustration inside cover of the journal Dada, no. 4-5.

As John Elderfield, has explained:

To the left we see a battery in cross section, with the electrical current moving in waves between the positive and negative poles, properly represented: the former in black, the latter in white (and with the ladderlike pattern that conventionally associates the- negative with neutral or ground). French modernism is attracted to the stable, negative pole (and therefore to tradition), and rises historically until it reaches (with the help of Walter Arensberg, patron to French artists in New York) the rectangular transformer that bears the Dada name. Around the top of the active, positive (and therefore antitraditional) pole is an international cluster of innovative early twentieth–century artists, headed (of course) by Picabia himself. 

This positive pole directly connects with the Dada clock. The negative pole of French modernism, however, has to pass through the Dada transformer before it can be wired up to that inner circle. (Even then the wiring job looks amateur and not entirely convincing, but apparently it works.) When thus connected, the circuit is completed; the clock can start ticking, and the bell that was made in Paris and New York can begin to sound.

 Dada Art, Assorted Pages of Dada 4-5,

 

Covers of "391" a Dada periodical, (top-left and clockwise) issues 3, 7, 8 and 15, Editor Francis Picabia, 1917-20

Picabia has stated that I "invented nothing, I copy... If someone else's work translates my dream, his work is mine. The above work, M'AMENEZ-Y, is based on the design of a new type of rudder, which was published in the French periodical La Science de la vie in the fall of 1919. Picabia liked it and reproduced it as a Dada work.

Picabia's 1922 stylized Fuel pump, depicts Dada's unflattering attitude towards machine.

Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q. in 391-12

In 1917, Marcel Duchamp, who five years earlier had created significant publicity with his controversial "Nu descendant l'escalier n° 2" (Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2), continued to create scandal with his L.H.O.O.Q. Among Duchamp's provocations were his "ready-mades" like the ordinary urinal that he titled "Fountain," signed "R. Mutt," and submitted to the 1917 exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists.

He then purchased cheap reproductions of da Vinci's Mona Lisa onto which he drew a mustache and goatee in pencil and added the title L.H.O.O.Q., which was a play on French words—when pronounced in French, the letters sound out "Elle a chaud au cul," which can be translated as "She has a hot ass."

Duchamp made many different versions of L.H.O.O.Q. of differing sizes and in different media throughout his career. In December 1919, Picabia decided to include a version in issue 12 of "391," an issue devoted to Manifestos of Dada. He contacted Duchamp in New York and asked for permission to reproduce it. Duchamp obliged and sent one by mail. As he explained later: "My original did not arrive in time and in order not to delay further the printing of 391, Picabia himself drew the mustache on the Mona Lisa but forgot the beard."

After creating his version, Picabia wrote at the bottom in capital letters: "TABLEAU DADA PAR MARCEL DUCHAMP," and circled the portion of the image to be printed. Duchamp was always amused that Picabia had forgotten the beard. In the early 1940s, Hans Arp found Picabia's version while browsing in a bookstore. He brought it to Duchamp's attention, who decided to "rectify" it by adding the missing goatee in black ink. He inscribed in the lower corner in blue ink: "moustache par Picabia / barbiche par Marcel Duchamp"—mustache by Picabia, beard by Marcel Duchamp.

Left; Marcel Duchamp, L.H. O.O.Q, 1917. Right; Francis Picabia, L.H.O.O.Q, reproduction for 391, 1920

Der Dada and Club Dada in Berlin

Berlin Dada published two main periodicals: "Der Dada" and "Club Dada," both incorporating a coarse style of explosive typography and photo collage. Berlin Dada was founded by Huelsenbeck, and its members included prominent graphic designers like Johannes Baader, George Grosz, Raoul Hausmann, Helmut Herzfelde, and Hannah Höch, noted for their stunning photomontages, which became very influential.

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Der Dada, Issues 1 to 3, Covers and assorted pages.-

Various Dada Periodicals

Max Ernst, Von minimax dadamax selbst konstruiertes maschinchen - Little Machine Constructed by Minimax Dadamax in Person , 1919-1920.

The Dada Manifesto

The name "Dada," according to poet Richard Huelsenbeck, had been selected at random by himself and Hugo Ball during one of the Dada meetings held in 1916 when a paper knife inserted into a French-German dictionary pointed to the word Dada. This word, which in French means a hobbyhorse, was seized upon by the group as an appropriate meaningless expression for their movement's vision.

In contrast to Futurists who were rabidly hawkish, Dadaists were anti-war, except for some later Parisian Dadaists who nationalistically supported France's militarism and spurned contact with Germans. Dada activities generally took place in small and intimate venues: Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, the Club Dada in Berlin, and Alfred Stieglitz's Photo-Secession Gallery, the Arensbergs' apartment, and Marius de Zayas's Modern Gallery in New York.

In 1918, Tzara wrote the Dada manifesto, which included:

"There is a literature that does not reach the voracious mass. It is the work of creators, issued from a real necessity in the author, produced for himself... Every page must explode, either by profound heavy seriousness, the whirlwind, poetic frenzy, the new, the eternal, the crushing joke, enthusiasm for principles, or by the way in which it is printed...

I say unto you: there is no beginning and we do not tremble, we are not sentimental. We are a furious Wind, tearing the dirty linen of clouds and prayers, preparing the great spectacle of disaster, fire, decomposition...

Philosophy is the question: from which side shall we look at life, God, the idea or other phenomena. Everything one looks at is false. I do not consider the relative result more important than the choice between cake and cherries after dinner...

If I cry out: Ideal, Ideal, Ideal, Knowledge, knowledge, knowledge, Boomboom, boomboom, boomboom,

I have given a pretty faithful version of progress, law, morality and all other fine qualities that various highly intelligent men have discussed in so many books, only to conclude that after all everyone dances to his own personal boomboom..."

 

Tristan Tzara's Dada Manifesto, 1918.

A Dadaist Happening: The Greatest-Ever-DADA-Show

After Futurists, Dada pioneered the creation of Happenings—the term coined by American artist Allan Kaprow in the mid-20th century, referring to events combining elements of painting, poetry, music, dance, and theater staged as live action.

The 8th Dada-Soirée, the so-called Greatest-Ever-DADA-Show, held at the Saal zur Kaufleuten on April 9, 1919, was truly a Happening during which the audience participated with their interjections and finally some attacked the stage. By the end of that Happening, the whole auditorium was in commotion, and Dada-Zurich ended in tumult and chaos as it began.

Hans Arp and Hans Richter designed the most ridiculous, primitive set. Marcel Janco created facetious masks, Hans Heusser composed bizarre music, and Laban dancer Suzanne Perrottet and Sophie Taeuber, Arp's wife, performed grotesque dances. Walter Serner directed the program, which consisted of three segments.

In the first segment, Viking Eggeling delivered a serious discourse about elementary "Gestaltung" and abstract art. Hans Richter read a piece called "Gegen, Ohne, Für Dada." The audience was somewhat disappointed, having expected perhaps a more outlandish program. Then Susanne Perrottet, wearing an African mask by Janco, danced to compositions by Schoenberg, Satie, and others, followed by Käthe Wulff reciting dreadful poems by Huelsenbeck and Kandinsky, which were received with giggles as the audience began to hoot the performers. The first segment ended with a chaotic simulcast recital of "Poème simultané" by Tristan Tzara, performed by twenty people, which triggered a near riot. The audience went wild with yelling, screaming, whistling, and raucousness.

According to Tzara's preplanned brochure, there was an intermission allowing for reestablishing some semblance of order. In the second half, Richter recited his "Manifest radikaler Künstler," which called for an all-encompassing program for radical art reform and reevaluation of all art values in society, during which he mocked and irritated the audience. Then followed noise-music by Hans Heusser, more dances from Perrottet, and a piece by Arp called "Cloud Pump." The audience responded with cries of "crap!"

In the third segment, Walter Serner dressed as a groom, accompanying a headless tailor's mannequin to be wedded. He offered artificial flowers to the bride, then laid the bouquet at her feet. He then brought a chair onto the stage and with his back to the audience began reading from his anarchist manifesto "Final Dissolution." The howling began again, derisive at first, then frantic and abusive: "Cheat!" "Rat!" "Bastards!" "You've got nerve!" When Serner uttered the statement "Napoleon was a big, strong oaf, after all," the audience went wild. They climbed onto the stage, swinging parts of a banister over their heads, chasing Serner into the corridor and out of the building, demolishing the tailor's mannequin and the chair, and stamping on the bouquet. The whole place was in pandemonium. Tzara was delighted.

Guity Novin, Was ist Dada, Eine Kunst? Poster, 2011

The Spread of Dada

Through happenings, travels, exiles, and numerous publications, the Dadaist movement influenced other European cities and New York.

In 1918, Huelsenbeck left Zurich for Berlin. By reading the "First German Dada Manifesto" at J.B. Neumann's gallery on January 21 of that year, he started Berlin Dada. Berlin's First International Dada Fair was another Happening with the theme "Art is dead! Long live Tatlin!" All major Berlin Dadaists, including John Heartfield and George Grosz, exhibited works at a show whose central piece was a German officer with a pig's head hanging from the ceiling.

In Cologne, the Dada group was founded by Max Ernst, who settled there after the war together with Hans Arp and Johannes Baargeld. Their 1920 exhibition at the Winter Brewery was closed by police on charges of obscenity.

In Paris, Dadaists from around the world gradually gathered after 1920. Arp and Tzara came from Zurich, Man Ray and Picabia from New York, and Max Ernst arrived from Cologne. The Parisian intelligentsia—Louis Aragon, André Breton, and Ribemont-Dessaignes—were in contact with Tristan Tzara's journal "Dada" and various Dada groups. Endorsed by Tzara, this newly formed Paris group soon began issuing Dada manifestos, organizing demonstrations, staging performances, and producing journals.

In New York, which after the outbreak of war had become a refuge for European exiles, Francis Picabia encouraged Marcel Duchamp, then a Futurist, to join him. Soon after arriving in 1915, Duchamp and Picabia met American artist Man Ray. By 1916, the three started their anti-art activities. They were joined by Alfred Stieglitz and Marius de Zayas. Stieglitz's Photo Secession Gallery and journal "Camera Work" became influential venues for their radical politics and a window to avant-garde European art.

The International Surrealist Exhibition at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1938

When the first forms of surrealism emerged at the end of the 1910s, it was above all a literary movement. Surrealist poets were reluctant to engage in artistic production because, in their view, the mechanical act of creating art—whether drawing, painting, or sculpture—prevented spontaneous expression of the unconscious. It was not until the mid-1920s that the leading theorist of Surrealism, André Breton, in his seminal book "Surrealism and Painting," demonstrated the potential of visual arts as a tool for unleashing the power of the psyche and creating absurd works.

On the strength of his new convictions, Breton opened a dedicated gallery in Paris, the Galerie Surréaliste, and launched a series of collective exhibitions, starting with the first exhibition at the Galerie Pierre in 1925. This exhibition featured works by surrealist artists and others such as Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, and Marcel Duchamp, whose imaginative and provocative works aligned with surrealist art ideals.

With the growing popularity and sway of Surrealism on the international 

Dadaist and Surrealist, Paris, 1933

(from L to R) Tristan Tzara, Paul Eluard, Andre Breton, Hans Arp, Salvador Dali, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, René Crevel, and Man Ray - Colorized by Guity Novin

Dalì holding a mannequin, International Surrealist Exhibition, Paris, 1938. 

Colorized by Guity Novin

André Masson’s (left) and Joan Miró’s (right) mannequins at the International Surrealist Exhibition, 1938-- colorized by Guity Novin

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