Dadaism or Dada is a post-World War I cultural movement in visual art as well as literature (mainly poetry), theatre and graphic design. The movement was, among other things, a protest against the barbarism of the War and what Dadaists believed was an oppressive intellectual rigidity in both art and everyday society; its works were characterized by a deliberate irrationality and the rejection of the prevailing standards of art. It influenced later movements including Surrealism.

Hannah Hoch's "Cut with a Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany" (1919).

Hannah Höch (German, 1889-1978)
Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the
Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany
(Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser durch die letzte Weimarer
Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands), 1919-1920
Photomontage and collage with watercolor
44 7/8 x 35 7/16 in. (114 x 90 cm)
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie
© 2006 Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin
© 2006 Hannah Höch / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Photo © Jörg P. Anders, Berlin

To Make A Dadist Poem

  	Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are--an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though
unappreciated by the vulgar herd.

Tristan Tzara

"Friend" is the eighth creation by Whoisyourdada.wordpress.com

Ain’t she purdy?

"VENUSHULKEYE" is the eight creation of Whoisyourdada.wordpress.com

Yes, I know that the Popeye side was poorly done. I was going to re-do it, but then I remembered this is DADA, what do I care?!

I love ANTI-ART!

Tristan Tzara (also known as Samuel Rosenstock/Rosenstein) was a Romanian-born French poet and essayist known mainly as a founder of Dada, a nihilistic revolutionary movement in the arts.

“There is a literature that does not reach the voracious mass. It is the work of creators, issued from a real necessity in the author, produced for himself. It expresses the knowledge of a supreme egoism, in which laws wither away. Every page must explode, either by profound heavy seriousness, the whirlwind, poetic frenzy, the new, the eternal, the crushing joke, enthusiasm for principles, or by the way in which it is printed. On the one hand a tottering world in flight, betrothed to the glockenspiel of hell, on the other hand: new men. Rough, bouncing, riding on hiccups. Behind them a crippled world and literary quacks with a mania for improvement.

I say unto you: there is no beginning and we do not tremble, we are not sentimental. We are a furious Wind, tearing the dirty linen of clouds and prayers, preparing the great spectacle of disaster, fire, decomposition.* We will put an end to mourning and replace tears by sirens screeching from one continent to another. Pavilions of intense joy and widowers with the sadness of poison. Dada is the signboard of abstraction; advertising and business are also elements of poetry.

I have given a pretty faithful version of progress, law, morality and all other fine qualities that various highly intelligent men have discussed in so manv books, only to conclude that after all everyone dances to his own personal boomboom, and that the writer is entitled to his boomboom: the satisfaction of pathological curiosity; a private bell for inexplicable needs; a bath; pecuniary difficulties; a stomach with repercussions in life; the authority of the mystic wand formulated as the bouquet of a phantom orchestra made up of silent fiddle bows greased with philtres made of chicken manure. With the blue eye-glasses of an angel they have excavated the inner life for a dime’s worth of unanimous gratitude. If all of them are right and if all pills are Pink Pills, let us try for once not to be right. Some people think they can explain rationally, by thought, what they think. But that is extremely relative. Psychoanalysis is a dangerous disease, it puts to sleep the anti-objective impulses of men and systematizes the bourgeoisie. There is no ultimate Truth. The dialectic is an amusing mechanism which guides us / in a banal kind of way / to the opinions we had in the first place. Does anyone think that, by a minute refinement of logic, he has demonstrated the truth and established the correctness of these opinions? Logic imprisoned by the senses is an organic disease. To this element philosophers always like to add: the power of observation. But actually this magnificent quality of the mind is the proof of its impotence. We observe, we regard from one or more points of view, we choose them among the millions that exist. Experience is also a product of chance and individual faculties. Science disgusts me as soon as it becomes a speculative system, loses its character of utility-that is so useless but is at least individual. I detest greasy objectivity, and harmony, the science that finds everything in order. Carry on, my children, humanity . . . Science says we are the servants of nature: everything is in order, make love and bash your brains in. Carry on, my children, humanity, kind bourgeois and journalist virgins . . . I am against systems, the most acceptable system is on principle to have none. To complete oneself, to perfect oneself in one’s own littleness, to fill the vessel with one’s individuality, to have the courage to fight for and against thought, the mystery of bread, the sudden burst of an infernal propeller into economic lilies…. Every product of disgust capable of becoming a negation of the family is Dada; a protest with the fists of its whole being engaged in destructivc action: *Dada; knowledge of all the means rejected up until now by the shamefaced sex of comfortable compromise and good manners: Dada; abolition of logic, which is the dance of those impotent to create: Dada; of every social hierarchy and equation set up for the sake of values by our valets: Dada; every object, all objects, sentiments, obscurities, apparitions and the precise clash of parallel lines are weapons for the fight: Dada; abolition of memory: Dada; abolition of archaeology: Dada; abolition of prophets: Dada; abolition of the future: Dada; absolute and unquestionable faith in every god that is the immediate product of spontaneity:* Dada; elegant and unprejudiced leap from a harmony to the other sphere; trajectory of a word tossed like a screeching phonograph record; to respect all individuals in their folly of the moment: whether it be serious, fearful, timid, ardent, vigorous, determined, enthusiastic; to divest one’s church of every useless cumbersome accessory; to spit out disagreeable or amorous ideas like a luminous waterfall, or coddle them -with the extreme satisfaction that it doesn’t matter in the least-with the same intensity in the thicket of one’s soul-pure of insects for blood well-born, and gilded with bodies of archangels. Freedom: Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE”

From “Dada Manifesto” [1918] and “Lecture on Dada” [1922], translated from the French by Robert Motherwell, *Dada Painters and Poets*, by Robert Motherwell, New York, pp. 78- 9, 81, 246-51.

Now, how does that make you feel? Confused?

You should be.

There is no current campaign for Dadaism in the area that we know of, although, there is an exhibit in the Jewish Museum in New York that ends next year.  It celebrates the arrival of Dadaism to America.  The exhibit features work from artist Alias Man Ray.

The features of Dadaism are not traditionally defined by conventions of art; Dadaism rejects it.  It is also characterized by protest, it is the opposite of art, designed to offend.  Originally, Dadaism was not intended to have a message, but current Dadaists use the wider message of protest, whether conventional art specifically or something broader.

The majority of the public does not recognize Dada by definition, but the Internet has spurned many Dada-influenced works through programs like Photoshop.  If the audience went by images, they would undoubtedly recognize Dadaism.  The audience would recognize that Dadaism rejects conventional art standards, but wouldn’t necessarily pick up the artist’s intended message (which was the original point of Dada).  However, they would probably subconsciously pick up on the protest, merely because of the lack of traditional art conventions.

This is your last chance!

Visit The Jewish Museum in New York to see the final of the daytime lecture series.

December 14 @ 11:30am
Man Ray in the 21st Century
This lecture examines the legacy of Man Ray and the Dada and Surrealism movements on post-Dada artists (e.g. the New York School) and the contemporary art scene.

The Jewish Museum is located at:

1109 5th Ave at 92nd St.
NY, NY 10128

ENJOY DADAISM!

Visit The Jewish Museum in New York to see the final of the daytime lecture series.

December 14 @ 11:30am
Man Ray in the 21st Century
This lecture examines the legacy of Man Ray and the Dada and Surrealism movements on post-Dada artists (e.g. the New York School) and the contemporary art scene.

The Jewish Museum is located at:

1109 5th Ave at 92nd St.
NY, NY 10128

Do not miss your chance to revel in all that is Dada!

Merz Picture 32 A. The Cherry Picture by Kurt Schwitters (German, 1887-1948) Created in 1921

Learn more by clicking the picture! YAY DADA!

Another recent favorite. Took this shot originally on a whim. Ended up liking it better than I thought I would. I found that this was one of those images where I could just stare at it and think about the possibilities. My thoughts obviously led me to the idea of how this image is all about things being held together and how they’re held together. Nuts and bolts. The phrase “nuts and bolts” used to be slang meaning “the basics”. What are the nuts and bolts of our lives that help us hold it together?

Creative, creative, imitative
Creative, creative, let’s be native

Creative, creative, correlative
Creative, creative, also procreative

– Niebla ( © 2009 )

Written in response to a prompt from One Single Impression.

Poza superfaina gasita pe net:

Fara comentarii …

After a fruitful weekend, I think I found the case study/new media artist for my thesis that embodies the ideas I have about the changing roles of the 21st century artist, art, institutions, art viewer, etc.: Natalie Bookchin (http://bookchin.net/).  Her newest works are a change from her previosuly internet based works to a Duchampian appropriation method of found media on the internet which can be displayed in both on and off line spaces. I think I will focus on…

Testament series (including ‘Laid Off’, ‘My meds’, and ‘I am not’) (started 2009, ongoing)  http://bookchin.net/projects/testament.html

Mass Ornament (2009) http://bookchin.net/projects/massornament.html

and Trip (2008) http://bookchin.net/projects/trip.html

I have included the net.art introduction link below for anyone interested in written by Bookchin and another new media artist, Alexei Shulgin, in 1999 as part of an art work:

http://www.easylife.org/netart/