DADA/ DADAISM
Dadaism, or dada, is an avant-garde movement in literature, the visual arts, theater, and cinema. Born during the First World War in neutral Switzerland, in Zurich (Cabaret Voltaire). It existed from 1916 to 1923. In the 1920s French Dadaism merged with Surrealism, and in Germany with Expressionism. Some art theorists believe that postmodernism emerged from Dadaism.
Dadaism emerged as a reaction to the aftermath of World War I, the brutality of which, according to the Dadaists, underscored the meaninglessness of existence. Rationalism and logic were declared among the main culprits of devastating wars and conflicts. The main idea of Dadaism was the consistent destruction of any aesthetics. The Dadaists proclaimed, "Dadaists represent nothing, nothing, nothing, no doubt they will achieve nothing, nothing, nothing.
The main principles of Dada were irrationality, the rejection of recognized canons and standards in art, cynicism, frustration and haphazardness. Dadaism is considered a precursor of Surrealism, largely determining its ideology and methods. Dadaism's founders are most often attributed to the poets Hugo Ball, Richard Huelsenbeck, Tristan Tzara and the artists Hans Arp, Max Ernst and Marcel Janko, who met in neutral Switzerland. According to Huelsenbeck, "they were all thrown beyond the borders of their homeland by the war, and they were all equally imbued with a rabid hatred of their governments.
In the fine arts, the most widespread form of Dadaist creativity was the collage, a technical method of creating a work of art from pieces of various materials (paper, cloth, etc.) that were composed in a certain way and glued to a flat base (canvas, cardboard, paper). In Dadaism we can distinguish three branches of the development of collage: the Zurich "accidental" collage, the Berlin manifestation collage, and the Cologne-Hannover poetic collage.
