Dada Exhibit at MoMA

Before I start with the intracacies of the Dada movement, I want to say it's one of my favorite in Art History. I used to hate everything related to Dada. When I first began my art history major in college, I was only really interested in Impressionism and early Renaissance. Then I finally took a class covering Dada and Early Modern. It was an irritation to me. Why the hell should i care about someone turning a fountain upside down or painting a red dot on a canvas and calling it artwork? that was before I understood that it was meant to be a mockery of the Art World as we know it. It came about during a time of unrest, leading into a terrible war and leaving us with some of the most important works of art in our world.

There is some controversy regarding who began the Dada movement, and where it actually started. I would have to say the roots definitely came out of Germany and Austria. That's where the term art de trouver really took off. But it moved, through France and into Switzerland, particularly during WWI. They felt safer in a neutral country, where they could do their art without persecution.

What makes Dada such as interesting movement is that it incorporatets political unrest with elements taken from other art forms (especially Primitive) and revives them in a way that people could take to mean various things. In this way DuChamp felt safe presenting a bicycle wheel on a stool as art while Jean Arp put together various collages that took in things from newspapers, old Dada magazines, and other elements. Often these were personalized, meant for certain people and in reference to private jokes.

Another element of Dada that is probably my favorite: the humor. There are a ton of pieces done as a joke in Dada. Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray first come into the m ind when one thinks of this, but Max Ernst is not far behind. Yes, there were plenty of pieces making political statements about what was happening with the worst world war known in history. But there were also pieces meant as a joke as artists and their populations tried to define what made art. The word "dada" itself is said to have been pulled out of a French German dictionary and means anything from "crap" to "a lot of nothing". Repeated over and over, it sounds like something a small child would say crying out for their father. So it perfectly fit this movement of artists looking for a place in their world and ours.