Dada

(noun)

A cultural movement that began in Zürich, Switzerland during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1920. The movement primarily involved visual arts, poetry, theatre, and graphic design, and was characterized by nihilism, deliberate irrationality, disillusionment, cynicism, chance, randomness, and the rejection of the prevailing standards in art.

Related Terms

Examples of Dada in the following topics:

  • Dada and Surrealism

    • The origin of the name Dada is unclear.
    • Dada began in Zurich in 1916 Key figures in the Dada movement included Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Hans Arp and Raoul Hausmann, among others.
    • While broad, the Dada movement was unstable.
    • Some theorists argue that Dada was the beginning of postmodern art.
    • This poster for a Dada soiree references the medium of collage.

  • Surrealism

    • Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities during World War I and the most important center of the movement was Paris.
    • World War I scattered the writers and artists who had been based in Paris, and in the interim many became involved with Dada, believing that excessive rational thought and bourgeois values had brought the conflict of the war upon the world.
    • After the war, when they returned to Paris, the Dada activities continued.
    • Back in Paris, Breton joined in Dada activities and started the literary journal Littérature along with Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault.

  • Using Art

    • Hannah Hoch, Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany.
    • Hoch's Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, is an example of art resulting from the Dadaism movement.

  • Performance Art

    • Western cultural theorists trace performance art to early 20th century avant-garde movements such as Russian Constructivism, Futurism and Dada.
    • The Dada movement led the way with its unconventional poetry performances, often at the Cabaret Voltaire, by the likes of Richard Huelsenbeck and Tristan Tzara.

  • Process Art

    • It has roots in Performance Art, the Dada movement and, more traditionally, the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock.

  • Contemporary Art

    • With the introduction of the use of industrial artifacts in art came movements such as Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism as well as techniques such as collage and art forms such as cinema and the rise of reproduction as a means of creating artworks.

  • Neue Sachlichkeit

    • The verists developed Dada's abandonment of any pictoral rules or artistic language into a "satirical hyperrealism," as termed by Raoul Hausmann, and of which the best known examples are the graphical works and photo-montages of John Heartfield.

  • New Media for Art

    • From about the mid-1960s into the 1970s, performance art often derived from concepts of visual art, with respect to Antonin Artaud, Dada, the Situationists, Fluxus, Installation art, and Conceptual Art.

  • Primitivism and Cubism

    • Particular offshoots beyond France included the movements of Futurism, Suprematism, Dada, Constructivism and De Stijl, which all developed in response to Cubism.

  • Pop Art