happens in a completely idiotic way....We are incapable of treating
seriously any subject whatsoever, let alone this subject: ourselves.^13
Although cynicism and pessimism inspired the Dadaists, the
movement they developed was phenomenally influential and pow-
erful. By attacking convention and logic, the Dada artists unlocked
new avenues for creative invention, thereby fostering a more serious
examination of the basic premises of art than had prior movements.
But the Dadaists could also be lighthearted in their subversiveness.
Although horror and disgust about the war initially prompted Dada,
an undercurrent of humor and whimsy—sometimes sardonic or
irreverent—runs through much of the art. For example, Marcel
Duchamp (see page 930) painted a mustache and goatee on a repro-
duction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.The French painter Fran-
cis Picabia (1879–1953), Duchamp’s collaborator in setting up Dada
in New York, nailed a toy monkey to a board and labeled it Portrait of
Cézanne.
In its emphasis on the spontaneous and intuitive, Dada paralleled
the views of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and Carl Jung (1875–1961).
Freud was a Viennese doctor who developed the fundamental princi-
ples for what became known as psychoanalysis. In his book The Inter-
pretation of Dreams (1900), Freud argued that the unconscious and in-
ner drives (of which people are largely unaware) control human
behavior. Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist who developed Freud’s theories
further, believed that the unconscious is composed of two facets, a
personal unconscious and a collective unconscious. The collective un-
conscious comprises memories and associations all humans share,
such as archetypes and mental constructions. According to Jung, the
collective unconscious accounts for the development of myths, reli-
gions, and philosophies.
Particularly interested in the exploration of the unconscious as
Freud advocated, the Dada artists believed that art was a powerfully
practical means of self-revelation and catharsis, and that the images
arising out of the subconscious mind had a truth of their own, inde-
pendent of conventional vision. A Dada filmmaker, Hans Richter
(1888–1976), summarized the attitude of the Dadaists:
Possessed, as we were, of the ability to entrust ourselves to “chance,” to
our conscious as well as our unconscious minds, we became a sort of
public secret society....We laughed at everything....But laughter was
only the expression of our new discoveries, not their essence and not
their purpose. Pandemonium, destruction, anarchy, anti-everything
of the World War? How could Dada have been anything but destruc-
tive, aggressive, insolent, on principle and with gusto?^14JEAN ARP A Dada artist whose works illustrate Richter’s ele-
ment of chance was Zurich-based Jean (Hans) Arp(1887–1966). Arp
pioneered the use of chance in composing his images. Tiring of the
look of some Cubist-related collages he was making, he took some
sheets of paper, tore them into roughly shaped squares, haphazardly
dropped them onto a sheet of paper on the floor, and glued them into
the resulting arrangement. The rectilinearity of the shapes guaranteed
a somewhat regular design (which Arp no doubt enhanced by adjust-
ing the random arrangement into a quasi-grid), but chance had intro-
duced an imbalance that seemed to Arp to restore to his work a special
mysterious vitality he wanted to preserve.Collage Arranged According to
the Laws of Chance (FIG. 35-26) is a work he created by this method.
The operations of chance were for Dadaists a crucial part of this kind of
improvisation. As Richter stated: “For us chance was the ‘unconscious
mind’ that Freud had discovered in 1900....Adoption ofchance had
another purpose, a secret one. This was to restore to the work of art its
primeval magic power and to find a way back to the immediacy it had
lost through contact with ...classicism.”^15 Arp’s renunciation of artis-
tic control and reliance on chance when creating his compositions
reinforced the anarchy and subversiveness inherent in Dada.
CABARET VOLTAIRE Among the manifestations of Dada
that matured in 1916 in Zurich were the performances presented at
the Cabaret Voltaire, founded by Dadaist Hugo Ball (1886–1927), a
poet, musician, and theatrical producer. The first Dada perfor-
mances were fairly tame, consisting of musical presentations and
poetry readings. In keeping with Dada thought, however, they
quickly became more aggressive, anarchic, and illogical. Tristan
Tzara (1896–1963) described one of these performances in charac-
teristically absurd Dadaist language:
Boxing resumed: Cubist dance, costumes by Janco, each man
his own big drum on his head, noise, Negro music/trabatgea
bonoooooo oo ooooo/5 literary experiments; Tzara in tails stands
before the curtain, stone sober for the animals, and explains the new
aesthetic: gymnastic poem, concert of vowels, bruitist poem, static
poem chemical arrangement of ideas, ‘Biriboom biriboom’ saust
der Ochs im Kreis herum (the ox dashes round in a ring) (Huelsen-
beck), vowel poem a a ò, i e o, a i ï, new interpretation of subjective
folly of the arteries the dance of the heart on burning buildings and
acrobatics in the audience.^16Europe, 1900 to 1920 92935-26Jean (Hans) Arp,Collage Arranged According to the Laws of
Chance,1916–1917. Torn and pasted paper, 1 7 –^18 1 1 –^58 . Museum of
Modern Art, New York.
In this collage, Arp dropped torn paper squares onto a sheet of paper
and then glued them into the resulting arrangement. His reliance on
chance in composing images reinforced the anarchy inherent in Dada.1 in.