Dadaism - Art and Anti Art The Dadaists at the Cabaret Voltaire HANNAH H. Zurich was a melting pot for these exiles and it was there on February 5th, 1. Hugo Ball and his partner Emmy Hemmings opened the 'Cabaret Voltaire', a rendezvous for the more radical element of the avant- garde. Among the original contributors to the 'Cabaret Voltaire' were Jean (Hans) Arp, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco and Richard Huelsenbeck. Their initial 'performances' were relatively conventional but they became increasingly dissident and anarchic in response to the carnage of World War 1. They saw the unremitting slaughter as the undeniable proof that the nationalist authorities on both sides had failed society and that the system was corrupt. United in their protest against the war and in their opposition to the establishment, 'they banded together under the battle cry of DADA!!!!'Although the Dadaists were united in their ideals, they had no unifying style. Between 1. 91. 7- 1. Dada group attracted many different types of artists including Raoul Hausmann, Hannah H. Anti- War, Anti- Establishment and Anti- Art. Dada's weapons of choice in their war with the establishment were confrontation and provocation. They attacked traditional artistic values with irrational attitudes and provoked conservative complacency with outrageous statements and actions. They also launched a full scale assault on the art world which they saw as part of the system. It was considered equally culpable and consequently had to be toppled. Dada questioned the value of all art and whether its existence was simply an indulgence of the bourgeoisie. The great paradox of Dada is that they claimed to be anti- art, yet here we are discussing their artworks. Even their most negative attacks on the establishment resulted in positive artworks that opened a door to future developments in 2. The effect of Dada was to create a climate in which art was alive to the moment and not paralysed by the traditions and restrictions of established values. The Dada Title Fight. Art movements are usually named by critics but Dada was the only movement to be named by the artists themselves. However, the authorship of the name has long been contested and there is no hard evidence to support any individual claim. When Hans Richter joined the group in 1. Da- Da' was taken from the Slavonic language of Tzara and Janco and meant 'Yes- Yes' - an enthusiastic and positive affirmation of life. Another and more often accepted version was that Richard Huelsenbeck and Hugo Ball discovered the word while looking in a French/German dictionary. In French, 'Dada' means 'hobbyhorse' and they chose it for its childishness and na. Ball stated, 'What we call Dada is foolery, foolery extracted from the emptiness in which all higher problems are wrapped.....'Dada Poster Poems. RAOUL HAUSMANN (1. ABCD'. 1. 92. 0 (collage)'ABCD' by Raoul Hausmann is a typical Dada collage which he described as a 'poster poem'. It is a visual counterpart to the Dada 'sound- poems' that were heard at the 'Cabaret Voltaire'. In 1. 91. 6 Hugo Ball proclaimed, . However, it would be more generous to attribute their inspiration to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti of the Italian Futurists and Hausmann acknowledges this debt by including the letters 'VOCE', the Italian word for voice. The word 'MERZ', which appears on a ticket in the centre of the collage, refers to the art of Kurt Schwitters who was a co- exhibiter with Hausmann in the early years of Dada. You don't treat me no good no more Whoa, lover, lover, lover You don't treat me no good no more. I'm gonna give it up and quit, ain't never coming' back. You don't treat me no good no more Woah, lover, lover, lover You don't treat me no good no more Well the truth Yeah, it hurts to say. Ain't never comin back.
The Czech banknote in the bottom left hand corner is a souvenir from their visit to Prague where they performed a joint recital of Hausmann's sound poem, 'fmsbwt. A spiralling arrangement of ticket stubs and typographic elements frame the artist's head. It is difficult to ignore the communicative power of the letters and numbers and you cannot help but enter into a dialogue in an attempt to make sense of them. It's an impossible task but there are just enough recognizable elements to keep your curiosity engaged. It had proved to be ineffectual in bringing about the level of change that the Dadaists desired. The Expressionists were inward looking and nationalistic, steeped in a German Gothic past. They were part of the problem. In the Berlin Dada Manifesto of 1. Richard Huelsenbeck launched a scathing attack on the impotence of Expressionism, . Dada is one with the times, it is a child of the present epoch which one may curse, but cannot deny..... Under the pretext of inwardness the Expressionist writers and painters have closed ranks to form a generation which is already expectantly looking forward to an honourable appraisal in the histories of art and literature and is aspiring to honours and accolades..... Expressionism is not spontaneous action. It is the gesture of tired people who wish to escape themselves and forget the present, the war and the misery..... The Expressionists are tired people who have turned their backs on nature and do not dare look the cruelty of the epoch in the face. They have forgotten how to be daring. Dada is daring per se, Dada exposes itself to the risk of its own death. Dada puts itself at the heart of things. It is a satirical illustration of Raoul Hausmann’s statement that the average supporter of what he considered to be a corrupt society “has no more capabilities than those which chance has glued to the outside of his skull; his brain remains empty”. As they relocated to Berlin, Cologne, Hanover and some as far as New York, Dada developed an international reputation but each of these venues had its own distinctive style inspired by the artists who settled there. In post- war Berlin, Dada became less anti- art and adopted a more political stance. Reality bit hard as the war- weary population struggled to survive the effects of economic meltdown. Raoul Hausmann, Hannah H. The technique that most of them trusted to deliver their disparaging commentary was photomontage: a collage of photographs and text cut from contemporary newspapers and magazines. The immediacy of this photographic imagery added an air of authority to their work by physically linking their ideas to the real world. The layout of these works was influenced by the flattened and fragmented arrangements of Cubism and Futurism. George Grosz GEORGE GROSZ (1. The Pillars of Society'. The work of George Grosz gradually evolved from the nihilistic protest of Dada to a more focused expression of his disgust at the cruelty and decadence of the bourgeoisie. Grosz's vitriolic drawings and paintings exposed the hypocrisy of the politicians, the press, the army, the ruling classes and their corrupt clergy. A very few earn millions, while thousands upon thousands are on the verge of starvation. But what has this to do with art? Precisely this, that many painters and writers, in a word, all the so- called 'intellectuals' still tolerate this state of affairs without taking a stand against it... To help shake this belief and to show the oppressed the true faces of their masters is the purpose of my work. In medieval art, saints were painted carrying symbolic attributes to help identify them to the illiterate. For example, Saint Peter was usually depicted holding keys as Christ told him . Grosz updates this device with an outrageous dose of irony to identify his oppressors. In the foreground we have a German officer wearing a monocle and a swastika which, in 1. Nazi party. He has a cruel face with duelling scars on his cheek and a thin slit of a mouth aggressively exposing his teeth. The attributes that he carries are a glass of beer and a sabre, symbols that expose him as a drunken warmonger. However, he is blind to his own brutality as he sees himself as a gallant hussar, illustrated by the delusional thoughts coming out of his head. Behind him on the left is a portrait of Alfred Hugenberg, the press baron, who is wearing a chamber pot engraved with an Iron Cross as a hat. This symbolizes both the bias of his newspapers and Grosz's opinion of them. His attributes are a pencil for writing articles and a blood stained palm. Historically the palm is a symbol of peace, but stained with the bloody consequences of his newspapers' propaganda, it becomes a symbol of hypocrisy. Behind him on the right is a portrait that looks remarkably like Friedrich Ebert, the leader of the Social Democratic Party and the first President of Germany from 1. His attributes are a leaflet that reads, . Grosz leaves no doubt as to what he thinks of his policies by giving him a pile of steaming faeces for brains. At the rear of this work is a clergyman whose sanctimonious face is flushed with the long term effects of alcohol. With closed eyes he preaches from the safety of his room, blind to the reality of the burning city outside his window and ignoring the brutality of the civil war that unfolds behind his back. Cologne Dada. JOHANNES THEODOR BAARGELD(1. Typical Vertical Misrepresentation as a Depiction of the Dada Baargeld'. In Cologne, Max Ernst and Johnannes Baargeld were the founding members of Gruppe D (D for Dada) whose 1. Dada- Vorfr. The show was held in a pub where the public had to enter through the men's toilet where they were confronted by a row of urinals and a woman in a communion dress reciting obscene poems. They also encouraged visitors to smash up certain exhibits and provided them with a hammer to do so, enlisting their participation in the 'anti- art' spirit of Dada. Max Ernst. MAX ERNST (1. The Chinese Nightingale'. Max Ernst, like most of the great artists associated with Dada, saw imaginative possibilities in the techniques that the Dadaists employed for their 'anti- art' activities. Where Hausmann and Heartfield had used the fragmented imagery of photomontage as a vehicle for political satire, Ernst took a more lyrical approach by creating a visual poetry built from the unconscious associations of juxtaposed images.
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