Dadaism and World War I: Origins, Spread, and Legacy

The literary and artistic movement known as Dada originated in the Swiss city of Zurich during the First World War, as a response both to the war itself and to the nationalism that many considered to have sparked it. Inspired by Futurism, Cubism, Expressionism, Constructivism, and other innovative movements, Dadaism's output ranged from poetry, collage, and painting to performance arts and sculpture (Jones, 2002; Hulsenbeck, 1988). The movement's aesthetic, characterized by contempt for nationalistic and materialistic attitudes, strongly influenced artists in major cities across the globe — including Berlin, Paris, Cologne, Hanover, and New York — each of which developed its own separate Dada group. Ultimately, the rise of Surrealism contributed to Dadaism's decline.

Sickened by the nationalism that triggered WWI, Dadaists were steadfastly opposed to authoritarianism and all guiding ideologies or forms of group leadership. Their primary concern was revolting against what they saw as middle-class conventions, cultural snobbery, and the political forces behind WWI's continuation. Dada events — including spontaneous shows, exhibitions, and readings — were already occurring at the Cabaret Voltaire, co-owned by Hugo Ball, for roughly three years before Tzara credited himself with inventing the term in his 1918 Dada Manifesto (Hulsenbeck, 1988).

Several explanations have been offered for the movement's name. The most popular, however, is that of Huelsenbeck, a co-founder, who claimed to have selected it randomly by plunging a knife into a dictionary. The term "Dada" is French — an informal word meaning "hobbyhorse." It also evokes a child's first words, and this aura of silliness and childishness appealed to the artists, who were keen on distancing themselves from conventional society's sobriety. Another reason the word attracted them was that it carries a similar connotation across many languages, and the group firmly asserted their identity as internationalists.

The literary and artistic movement known as Dada, or Dadaism, was conceived in Europe during the First World War. The war prompted an influx of artists, writers, and intellectuals — particularly from Germany and France — into neutral Switzerland. Rather than feeling relieved at having escaped the conflict, these new arrivals were incensed by Switzerland's modern society. They decided to use art as a form of protest (Elder, 2013), deliberately creating what they called "non-art," since art was seen as holding little significance in Swiss society anyway.

These self-described non-artists developed work characterized by soft obscenities, overt puns, commonplace objects, and scattered humor. Marcel Duchamp is credited with creating perhaps the most shocking of Dada pieces — a reproduction of the Mona Lisa sporting a mustache, with obscenities scrawled beneath the image (Buskirk & Nixon, 1996). Duchamp also created Fountain — a urinal bearing a fake signature and no plumbing — a work that challenged the very definition of art.

Society was predictably revolted by the movement. But Dada artists were only encouraged by this reaction. The movement gradually spread out of Zurich to other European cities and even to New York (Richter, 1978). During the early 1920s — just as several mainstream artists began taking the movement seriously — Dada collapsed.

While the movement was chiefly a protest, it was simultaneously humorous and entertaining: ridiculous, satirical, colorful, and eccentric. Viewers unfamiliar with the rationale underlying Dadaism would have been left puzzling over what the artists intended (Richter, 1978). Although the art appeared inane and comical to outside observers, Dada artists were entirely serious about their work. Dadaism showed no preference for any particular medium; artists made use of all materials, from plaster and glass to wood and geometric tapestries. Additionally, Dadaism influenced several visual art trends, with Surrealism being the most significant.

Dadaism's demise in Zurich took place after the April 1919 event "Dada 4-5," which eventually sparked a riot. Immediately afterward, Tzara made his way to Paris, where he came across André Breton. Together, they began developing the theories that Breton would eventually term "Surrealism." Dada artists had not set out to deliberately create regionally distinct art movements; however, as the movement spread across multiple European cities and into New York, its character was shaped by the major artists in each location. Every city, in turn, left its mark on its local Dada group's aesthetics (Jones, 2005).

Club Dada in Berlin operated between 1918 and 1923, and its participants included artists such as Raoul Hausmann, George Grosz, Johannes Baader, and Hannah Höch. Living closer to the front lines of the war, German Dadaists produced politically satirical collages and paintings featuring governmental authorities, political cartoons, and wartime imagery recontextualized into sharp social commentary. In Hanover, Kurt Schwitters and other Merz artists created works drawing on Constructivism; Schwitters in particular explored Modernist preoccupations with color and shape. In Cologne, Max Ernst and Hans Arp collaborated and made significant advances in collage. Meanwhile, in Paris, influenced by Tzara and Francis Picabia, Dadaism took on a more "dandyish" character before collapsing into internal disputes and finally giving way to the Surrealist movement.

The cross-cultural potential of language lay at the heart of Dadaism's concept of free expression. In his early sound-poem readings at Cabaret Voltaire, Hugo Ball emphasized this by deconstructing words into guttural sounds intended to be understood universally. Similarly, Hans Arp and other visual artists employed spontaneously created abstract compositions to express natural patterns that could be read intuitively, regardless of the viewer's cultural background.

On the whole, Dada art presented a fascinating contradiction: it endeavored to demystify art while remaining sufficiently ambiguous to allow viewers to interpret it in a variety of ways. Like Cubist artists, some Dadaists depicted landscapes, backgrounds, and figures representationally in order to analyze motion and form. Schwitters and others pursued abstraction to express the metaphysical dimension of their subjects. Both approaches aimed at deconstructing everyday experience in revolutionary and stimulating ways. The key to understanding Dada art lies in reconciling its apparently meaningless, chaotic styles with its compelling anti-war messages. Tzara, notably, resisted the claim that Dadaism constituted a political statement. Nevertheless, Tzara and his collaborators grew increasingly disturbed by politics and sought to provoke a matching anger in their viewers (Sade, 2014).