Dada and Modernism.

“The beginnings of Dada were not the beginnings of art, but disgust.”1

Modernist movements rejected traditional art styles, turning against the classical, more formal aesthetics in exchange for newer, more abstract ways of viewing the world. The emergence of Dada as an anti-art movement was described by Kleiner as: "a phenomenon bursting forth in the midst of the economic and moral crisis [of war-torn Europe], a savior, a monster, which would lay waste to everything in its path... a systematic work of destruction and demoralization... In the end it became nothing but an act of sacrilege."2
Founded during World War 1 in neutral Zurich, Dada was a direct reaction to the madness of early 20th Century Europe – the movement capturing the cultural upheavals and paradigm shifts of the time. The movement rebelled against fashions, governments, and class systems; it was anti-society. It was a cultural expression of the horrors and insanity of a warring, socio-economically imbalanced Europe, and in rebelling against everything that Europe stood for it lay the foundations for Abstract Art, Pop Art, Postmodernism and Surrealism.
The Cabaret Voltaire was the epicentre of Dada; a meeting place for the creative minds of those who fled as refugees to Switzerland. Described by Huelsenbek as "a center for the newest art," it hosted musicians, artists, dancers and poets of all types3; all brought together, creating "a complete work of art,”4 combining aural and visual effects into a ‘sensory overload’ in order to produce a powerful reaction from the audience.
Hailed as the precursors to both Surrealism and Dada, the poetic works of both Appolinaire and Lautreamont were the basis of many key components of both movements. Appolinaire, in 1912, discussed the “poetry” of the media and propaganda: “handbills, catalogues, posters… that’s what poetry is this morning.”5 Man Ray later commented on his “excitement of the commonplace”6. This propagandist motif can be seen in many early Dada newspaper collages, expressing the absurdity of World War 1 political propaganda, as shown in Hannah Hoch’s collage “Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany”7. Dada’s destruction and reinvention of language and propaganda was drawn from their belief that both contemporary literature and language had been tainted and destroyed in various nation’s patriotic declarations supporting World War 1. Dada understood the government’s use of literature as justification and propaganda for atrocities committed through warfare. Artists believed that language had been abstracted from its roots in knowledge and creativity to the point that they rendered it worthless through their support of inhumanity.
This form of rebellion generated great interest and controversy – as shown through the exhibition of “Degenerate art” in Nazi Germany in 19378. This event could be described as the perfect exhibition space for Dada – it acknowledged its stance as anti-art and saw it for the parody it was, finding the humour and the idiocy in slogans such as “take Dada seriously, it’s worth it”. The exhibition proved more successful than the exhibition of approved works, shocking the public with its anti-establishment symbolism and radical art practice.
Between 1915 and 1919, members of the Cabaret Volitaire continued to speak out en-masse against their governments and the contemporary art movements around them. The founder of the Dada group in Zurich, Hugo Ball, refused to create or associate with manifestos or any other unified solid literary Dada work.9 However this did not stop individual Dada artists from crafting manifestoes of their own. The writings of artists such as Tristan Tzara were crucial in spreading Dada to further European cities10. The binding factor of Dada outside Zurich was the idea that language, both visual and written, had to be completely fractured and fragmented in order to mirror their view of contemporary man – equally, if not more fractured and fragmented than the cubist and abstract paintings of their time. Hugo Ball commented that:

“The image of human form is gradually disappearing from the painting of these times and all objects appear only in fragments. This is one more proof of how ugly and worn the human countenance has become, and of how all the objects of our environment have become repulsive to us. The next step is for poetry to decide to do away with language for similar reasons”11

While European Dada served as a protest against a very visible war, American Dada followed a more conceptually challenging revolution. Dada and Modern Art was first introduced to America through the Armoury show of 1913, However New York had always held a collection of French and American writers and artists whose methods and ideas almost parallel to the Dada ideals being developed in Zurich.12 Similar to Hoch’s works, Collage as an anti-art form was also being pioneered in America. The first abstract anti-art collage work was by Man Ray – his Tapestry (1911) was created in simple defiance against the regimented practice of his teacher in art school. Created five years before the founding of Dada, his work is a precursor to the anti-establishment and anti-art ideals of Dada. He labelled it a painting, although it was created purely from coloured rectangle clothing samples. His conceptualisation of painting was developed in reaction to the dislike he felt towards his teacher and the academic learning he received – a microcosmic embodiment of the Dada movement.13
American-based artists Man Ray, Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp all shared similar notions and ideas to the European Dadaists: their use of photography, photomontage and collage, their use of machines and mechanical constructions, and their use of found and mundane objects as the focus of their work.
Suzanne Duchamp’s “Un et une menaces (A Menaced Male and Female) was created in 1916, as her reaction to working as a nurse’s aide during the First World War. The image displays a frowning, androgynous face in the foreground, with a crane behind it. Her work utilises both watercolour and found objects, such as clock gears and metal rings. This “mechanomorphic style” was brought to America by Marcel Duchamp – its dehumanised style resonating with a world uncertain about its future. The image has been left open to several readings – possibly the image serves as a universal figure; representing the world’s angers and grievances during the First World War. The figure personifies a dissociated state, in an artist forever affected by witnessing the ravages of the war machine. The mechanomorphic style was abstracted by American artists such as Morton Shamberg in his readymade sculptures,14 where mechanical parts were assembled to represent and interpret the artists view of the world.

Readymades were largely attributed to Duchamp, and were his largest contribution to Dada and Modernism. They epitomised the notion of dehumanizing art or the “non-artistic”. Readymades varied from the political [The Fountain] to what Duchamp saw as aesthetically pleasing [Bycicle Wheel]. In creating art without the perceived sculpting or painting methods Duchamp defied the strict stylistic regimens of his time – his experiences with “Nude Descending Staircase No. 2” were a key motivator for such a departure from the popular movements of the period. 15
The emergence of Dada in Europe and America was an expression of protest and rejection to world events. Many of the original artists in the movement were refugees, physically separating themselves from wartorn countries at the time of World War I in 1915. Poets like Appolinaire and Lautreamont, and artists like Hoch reacted against the misappropriation of language for propaganda whilst Dada as a movement spread across the globe; effectively changing the art world forever through its vehement reactions to the world around it.
Bibliography:
Ball, Hugo “Flight out of Time: a Dada diary” (London: University of California Press) 1987
Ball, Hugo La fuite hors du temps (Editions du Rocher, 1993)
Camfield, William A “Suzanne Duchamp and Dada in Paris” from Woman in Dada, Essays on Sex, Gender and Identity, edited by Naomi Sawelson-Gorse (Massachusetts: MIT) 1998
Conrad, Peter “Modern Times, Modern Places. Life and Art in the Twentieth Century,” (Thames and Hudson) 1998.
“Cut with the Kitchen Knife Through… 1919-1920,” retrieved 4/6/2013 http://arthistory.about.com/od/dada/ig/Dada-at-MoMA---Berlin/Cut-with-the-Kitchen-Knife.htm
Ferrier, Francisco The Origins And Ideas Of The Modern School, (Knickerbocker press, 1909)
Gold, Mick “Europe After the Rain” Arts Council of Great Britain, 1978
“Guide to the Degenerate Art Exhibition (1937)” retrieved 2/6/2013http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1578
Huelsenbeck, Richard “En avant Dada: A History of Dadaism” (1920) reprinted in Art and Social Change, Will Bradley and Charles Esche, (London: Tate) 2007
“The International Dada Archive,” The University of Iowa, last modified 2o12http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/history.htm
Kleiner, Fred S. Gardner 's Art Through the Ages (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing) 2006
Knowles, Kim, A Cinematic Artist: The Films by Man Ray (International Academic Publishers, Bern 2009)
Ramirez, Juan Antonio “Duchamp: Love and Death, even” (London: Reaktion Books) 1998
Scanlan, John “Words and Worlds: Dada and the Destruction of Logos, Zurich 1916,” The Marcel Duchamp Studies Onlije Journal 5, April 2013 http://www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_5/articles/scanlan/scanlan2.html
Schwarz, Arturo “Man Ray, The Rigour of Imagination,” London: Thames and Hudson Ltd) 1977

Bibliography: Ball, Hugo “Flight out of Time: a Dada diary” (London: University of California Press) 1987 Ball, Hugo La fuite hors du temps (Editions du Rocher, 1993) “Cut with the Kitchen Knife Through… 1919-1920,” retrieved 4/6/2013 http://arthistory.about.com/od/dada/ig/Dada-at-MoMA---Berlin/Cut-with-the-Kitchen-Knife.htm Ferrier, Francisco The Origins And Ideas Of The Modern School, (Knickerbocker press, 1909) Gold, Mick “Europe After the Rain” Arts Council of Great Britain, 1978 “Guide to the Degenerate Art Exhibition (1937)” retrieved 2/6/2013http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1578 Kleiner, Fred S. Gardner 's Art Through the Ages (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing) 2006  Knowles, Kim, A Cinematic Artist: The Films by Man Ray (International Academic Publishers, Bern 2009)