The Dada movement
Zurich
Dada is revolt, even... Thus we could, by paraphrasing the title of Marcel Duchamp's famous "Large Glass", condense into a formula exactly what distinguishes this movement from the majority of modern esthetic schools: not satisfied to put into question certain concepts or out-of-date techniques, it is the incarnation of the most intense form of individual and collective subversion that has invaded our century. Breton had felt it coming as early as 1919: Dada's avowed purpose was "to kill art".
The history of the Dada movement is imbricated in the lightning-fast intellectual break-through set off, simultaneously and independently, in various parts of the world by several groups of young artists, writers and philosophers: in just a few years, from 1915 to 1923, it was to shake the esthetic foundations of the period, be they traditional or avant-garde, and set off a revolution which, from surrealism to pop art, would in half a century upset our vision of the world.
It was in Zurich, towards the end of the year 1915, that this rebellion's distinctive signs appeared clearly. In the wave of refugees of all origins that broke over this peaceful Alemanic city, were to be found a few young men hailing from various European countries and having no other affinity to one another than their hatred of a social order whose failure was attested to by the war itself. In a small room in the "Cabaret Voltaire", opened by Hugo Ball, a deserter from Munich and the Blaue Reiter, we find Germans like Hans Richter and Richard Huelsenbeck, Romanians like Tristan Tzara and Marcel Janco, or Alsacians like Hans Arp. To pass the time during their forced idleness, they organized social evenings in the Cabaret which, harmless at the outset, soon degenerated into systematic provocations against the bourgeoisie.
Welcome to the Dali House
Hugo Ball
The word "Dada" itself, purposely devoid of meaning, was discovered by chance at the beginning of 1916 in a dictionary. Exhibitions were organized regrouping the paintings of the dadaists (Otto Van Rees, Viking Eggeling, Augusto Giacometti, Walter Helbig, Oscar Lüthy, Max Oppenheimer, Otto Morach, Arthur Segal...), interspersed with the works of contemporary painters who had influenced most of them.
They were especially interested in abstract art, in impressionism, in Negro art, in art nouveau. The first really original signals could be detected in certain highly individualistic artists: from the beginning, Hans Arp had invented his simple, pure configurations which were abstract by nature and not as a result of research. His collages and reliefs, like the weavings and compositions of his companion Sophie Taeuber, are quite distinct from the contemporary productions of Mondrian and Kandinsky in that they are totally dependent on chance. The same could be said for Marcel Janco's polychrome plasters and for the Schadographies, original photographic proofs obtained in Christian Schad's laboratory by direct contact of the objects upon sensitive paper.
Under the prodding of their impresario, Tzara, and their gouru, Hugo Ball, the Zurich Dada group, reinforced in 1919 by Picabia's arrival, was to make headlines in the Swiss newspapers until 1920.
To read excerpts of Tzara's explanation of Dadaism taken from his "Dada Manifesto" [1918] and "Lecture on Dada" [1922], translated from the French by Robert Motherwell in his Dada Painters and Poets, New York, pp. 78- 9, 81, 246-51; reprinted by permission of George Wittenborn, Inc.
See: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jenglish/English104/tzara.html