D

DADA

Dada was a visual and literary arts movement
known for promoting an anti-art agenda that
began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I.
However, there were many independent Dada
groups in other cities, particularly Berlin, Paris and
New York. In 1916, Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings
founded the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich and quickly
attracted the participation of Richard Huelsenbeck,
Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, Marcel Janco, and Hans
Richter. Later that year, a periodical sharing the
name,Cabaret Voltaire, published the first use of
the term Dada. Huelsenbeck claimed that the term
was selected by the random act of stabbing a dic-
tionary with a knife and adopting the pierced word.
Tzara emphasized the term’s polyglot appeal in his
‘‘Dada Manifesto 1918’’:

We read in papers that the negroes of the Kroo race call
the tail of the sacred cow: DADA. A cube, and a mother,
in a certain region of Italy, are called: DADA. The word
for a hobby-horse, a children’s nurse, a double affirma-
tive in Russian and Romanian, is also: DADA.
(Huelsenbeck 123)
At its essence, Dada initiated an anti-art aes-
thetic. The dehumanizing violence of World War I
forced these artists to question the rationalism of
European culture and call for a radical revolution,

informed by both Anarchism and Communism.

Expressing revulsion with socio-political ideologies

that justify reactionary nationalism and rampant

materialism, Dada artists sought to shock the bour-

geoisie by questioning the values and motives of

dominant social institutions. To accomplish these

goals, many Dadaists experimented with photo-

graphic materials and processes.

In 1917, Christian Schad, associated with Dada in

Zurich, used photomechanical materials to contest

conventional art-making strategies. By placing var-

iously textured materials onto photosensitive paper

and exposing the arrangements to light, Schad made

cameraless images that defied artistic conventions.

These art works embraced chance and recalled the

sudden shifts in scale and abrupt juxtapositions asso-

ciated with Cubist and Futurist collages. Tzara, who

acquired many of these works, named them ‘‘Scha-

dographs,’’ which exemplifies the Dadaists’ penchant

for word play; the term is both a homophone for

‘‘shadowgraph,’’ a process used by William Henry

Fox Talbot, and an echo of the German word ‘‘scha-

den,’’ which means damaged and thereby epitomizes

the group’s despair (Marien 247).

The Berlin Dada group, more than other mani-

festations of Dada, embraced the technique of

montage. By cutting, arranging, and pasting frag-