Emerging in Paris, Zurich, and Berlin between the first and second World Wars, the Dada movement proclaimed a liberating nihilism -- a fundamental distrust of the entire European political and social structures that had created World War I. Although Dada is... [more]
Emerging in Paris, Zurich, and Berlin between the first and second World Wars, the Dada movement proclaimed a liberating nihilism -- a fundamental distrust of the entire European political and social structures that had created World War I. Although Dada is often associated with the work of Marcel Duchamp, Duchamp himself never declared himself a Dadaist; rather, he deeply influenced French Dadaist Fracis Picabia and the expatriot American Man Ray, who used the Dada banner to name their paradoxical works. The Swiss arm of the movement was led by the poet Tristan Tzara, who adopted the title to mean "nonsense", investing it with sound poems and chance-based performances. But the most vital and coherent movement came out of Berlin, where George Grosz, Hanna Hoch, John Hartman, and others used collage and painting to create social satire and an alliance with radical politics. Berlin Dadaists denounced the First World War as the cynical creation of the bourgeoisie; from the early 1930s on they used their work as anti-fascist propaganda. [show less]