The Carnival of Dada: New York, Paris and Berlin
A survey of Dada as it developed in New York, Paris and Berlin
“Dada, born in the throes of World War I, was certainly the most consistently carnivalesque of all twentieth-century art movements” (Connelly 112).
Dada is a word appropriated by a group of émigré artists in Zurich in February 1916 as a slogan to propagate their activities at the Cabaret Voltaire. The origin and originator of the word remains disputed to this day but it seems most probable that the word Dada was “accidentally discovered by Hugo Ball and myself in a German-French dictionary, as we were looking for a name for Madam le Roy the chanteuse at our cabaret. Dada is French for a wooden horse. It is impressive in its brevity and suggestiveness”. (Richard Huelsenbeck, En Avant Dada: a History of Dadaism, 24).
Both the date and place of the founding of Dada are significant. The principal artists involved in the Cabaret Voltaire (Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, Marcel Janco, Hans Richter and Richard Huelsenbeck) had gathered in neutral Zurich in disgust at the nationalistic motives which had started the First World War and the resulting slaughter. Many had been influenced by and participated in the most important artistic movements of pre-war Europe - Futurism (Tzara), Cubism (Arp), Expressionism (Ball and Huelsenbeck). Zurich offered them both a haven from the war and a cosmopolitan environment that encouraged the development of new and revolutionary ideas of an international character (both Jung and Lenin lived in Zurich at the time). The international character of Zurich Dadaism and the talent for propaganda of Tristan Tzara ensured the rapid spread of the word Dada after the war as a common slogan applied to the work of many artists in Paris, New York, Berlin, Hanover and Cologne.
The fact that the word Dada was essentially used as an international artistic slogan rather than as a description of a particular type of artistic method, such as had been the case of Fauvism or indeed Cubism, meant that during the principle period of Dadaist activity (1916 to 1923) an enormous number of artists work was labelled Dadaist, although in many cases, such as the work of Francis Picabia or Marcel Duchamp, much of their most significant work predated and indeed presaged the most important elements of Dadaist art. In addition, while occasionally a particular artist was rejected as a Dadaist by another artist, such as Kurt Schwitters by Raoul Haussmann, there was no accepted leadership of the movement, despite Tzara's efforts, and whether or not a particular artist work is regarded as a Dadaist is in many cases contentious. Nevertheless, it is possible to establish certain common crucial elements in Dada art which in turn enables certain works to be classified as Dadaist, at least in spirit.
“The appropriation by Dada of these three principles, bruitism, simultaneity and, in painting, the new medium (collage) is of course the ‘accident’ leading to psychological factors to which the real Dadaist movement owed its existence.”[1] This quotation identifies three characteristics elements of Dada art which it took over and developed: bruitism, or the use of sound independently of meaning, had been used by the Italian Futurists and especially Filippo Marinetti (1876-1944) and Luigo Russolo (1885-1947): simultaneity or the recital or staging of several often incongruous events simultaneously, derived from the simultaneous poem which had already been introduced by the French poet Tristan Derème (1889-1941); and collage with which Picasso and Braque had begun to experiment from 1912.[2] Another crucial concept in Dada art, which was part of its attraction to André Breton and other future Surrealists, was the use of chance as an integral part of the act of artistic creation. Dada’s mistrust of traditional or even modern aesthetics encouraged the view that the results of chance, whether in the creation of literature or visual images, were just as valid as the conscious effort of the mind.
The common elements of Dadaist art identified above manifested themselves in each of the centres of Dada activity that developed after the end of World War One. Although there was a constant exchange of artistic ideas, each centre developed a particular variant of Dada activity depending on the personalities involved and the political situation confronting them. The work of the leading Dada artists in three of the main centres - New York, Paris and Berlin - will be briefly examined to illustrate the nature of Dada art and its artists and also to demonstrate the variety of forms and directions that Dadaist activity took. Indeed, a discussion of Dada art cannot usefully be restricted to any one form of artistic creation. It is of the very essence of Dada that it sought to destroy the traditional concept of what is art or an artist. As Huelsenbeck said: “Everyone can be a Dadaist. Dada is not limited to any art. The bartender in the Manhattan Bar who pours out Curaçao with one hand and gathers up his gonorrhoea with the other, is a Dadaist.”[3]
The principal artists associated with Dada in New York were Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), Francis Picabia (1879-1953) and Man Ray (1890-1976). Although, there is no evidence of any contact between their work and the activities of those involved in the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916, a similar intellectual spirit was at work and Picabia went on to become one of the most active participants in Paris Dada.
Marcel Duchamp arrived in New York in 1915 from Paris, where he had been a painter. He developed a style which was strongly influenced by Cubism, and to a lesser extent by Futurism and culminated in his 1912 work Nu descendant un escalier, no 2, which Duchamp himself described as being an attempt to achieve “a static representation of movement … without any attempt to render cinematographical effects through the medium of painting”.[4] After 1912, Marcel Duchamp effectively abandoned painting in favour of a more intellectual and less representational attitude to artistic creation which led him to commence work on a glass artwork entitled The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (1915-1923) and a series of signed ‘Ready-Mades’. The Ready-Mades were everyday objects that Duchamp selected precisely for their lack of aesthetic qualities which he then labelled and presented to the art public as works of art.[5] The most famous was a men's urinal which, under the title Fountain signed by R. Mutt, Duchamp submitted to the first independence exhibition in New York (1917). The Ready-Mades by their radical rejection of traditional aesthetic norms and their “definite destructiveness towards art and its precepts of mass and medium”[6] embodied the Dada spirit.
Man Ray, an American, also originally intended to be a painter but concentrated increasingly on photography. He collaborated closely with Marcel Duchamp on the single issue of New York Dada in April 1921,[7] with a contribution form Tristan Tzara, and on the second issue of The Blind Man in May 1917,[8] and photographed the effects of dust settling onto Duchamp’s glass panels The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors Even (1915-23). He invented the ‘Aerograph’, made by spraying colour on canvas with an airgun, produced assemblages, and one of the first kinetic sculptures. In photography, Man Ray found a medium where he could combine this spirit of technical inventiveness, discovering such techniques as solarisation and the rayogram, with the creation of images that reflected many of the concerns of Dadaism and later Surrealism - the objective workings of the laws of chance and the subconscious power of images.
Francis Picabia, born into a wealthy Cuban family, first arrived in New York in 1913 and participated in the Armory Show that year. Fascinated by the modernity of New York and inspired by Duchamp’s rejection of the visual elements in paintings, he produced in 1915 a series of machine paintings and drawings to which he gave tautological or poetical titles “where the relationships between words and forms have no objective, representational intent but recreate among themselves their own intrinsic relations.”[9] In 1917, Picabia edited the review 391[10] in Barcelona[11] and in 1918 on a visit to Lausanne he met the Zurich Dadaists. In 1919, he moved to Paris and was instrumental in bringing Tzara to Paris and played an active role in Paris Dada.
From this brief survey of New York Dada, it can be seen that it was not a style but rather an attitude of mind strongly influenced by the technical and modernist character of American Society. Each of the leading artists abandoned or minimised the existing preoccupations of representational art – as epitomised by paintings with its concerns with three and two-dimensional space - and concentrated rather on the conceptual and technical aspects of the creative process.
The history of Paris Dada is, as might be expected in the light of the long established role of Paris as the centre of the avant-garde, more complex. The situation was further complicated by the fact that the development of Surrealism during the period 1919 to 1923 was inextricably linked with that of Dada. Surrealism did not emerge as a fully independent movement until the publication of Andrew Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto in 1924.[12]
Although the use of the word Dada did not become widespread until the arrival of Tzara from Zurich in 1919, the ground had already been well prepared by individuals such as the romantic figure of the Swiss artist and boxer Arthur Cravan (1887-1918), who published the art review Maintenant from 1912 to 1915, the poets Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) and Compte de Lautréamont (1846-1870), the pen name of Isidore Lucien Ducasse, and the enigmatic figure of Breton’s friend Jacques Vache (1895-1919). Vache had been given prominence by Louis Aragon (1897-1982), André Breton (1986-1966) and Philippe Soupault (1897-1990) who had founded the magazine Littérature in 1919. Their work at the time, including the fundamental surrealist book Les Champs Magnétiques (1920) by Breton and Soupault, was concerned with the liberating effect of the subconscious as a technique of literary creation. This research made them receptive to the ideas of New York and Zurich Dadaists as they reached Paris through reviews such as 391 and Tzara's Manifeste Dada 1918.[13] With the arrival of Tzara and Picabia in Paris, the Littérature group together with other artists and writers such as Paul Éluard (195-1952), Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes (1884-1974) and Benjamin Péret (1889-1959) joined with them in an era of public demonstrations and succès de scandale.
The activities of the Dada artist in Paris during the period 1919 to 1923 were principally of a literary and theatrical kind, although the paintings of artists such as Hans Arp (1886-1966) and Max Ernst (1891-1976), who would play such a key role in the development of surrealist painting, were promoted by the Dadaists. This may be explained both by a general Dadaist mistrust of figurative painting and also the predominance of literary artists among the leading Paris Dadaists. It was only later that Breton was to realise the crucial contribution that painting could make to the development of Surrealism.
The literary works produced in the brief lifetime of Paris Dada included: the Journal DADA edited by Tzara, including Anthologie Dada (Dada 4-5, May 1919), Bulletin Dada (DADA 6, February 1920) and Dadaphone (DADA 7, March 1920);[14] the two-issue magazine Cannibale (1920)[15] and 391 edited by Picabia, Littérature edited by Breton, Aragon and Soupault from 1919 to 1921,[16] and works by Éluard and Ribemont-Dessaignes. Most of the works were published by the publishing house Au sans pareil. In addition, there was a series of theatrical performances such as Festival Dada at the Salle Gaveau in 1920 with performances by Tzara, Breton, Picabia and Soupault, exhibitions, public meetings, and even public outings to the monuments of Paris organised by Breton. By 1923, however, the public unity of the Paris Dadaists had begun to break up, leading to an open conflict between Breton who wished to give an intellectual coherence and direction to the group’s activities and Tzara who opposed all such attempts to bridle Dada’s anarchic character. The result was Breton’s establishment of the surrealist movement and the dissolution of Paris Dada.
In Berlin, the political and social situation was to have a direct and decisive influence on the development of Dadaism. Defeat in war brought misery and hardship and provided fertile ground for political radicalism. The brutal murder in January 1919 of Rosa Luxembourg (1871-1919) and Karl Liebknecht (1871-1919), the leaders of the Spartacist revolt, and the subsequent repression that followed led many of the Berlin artists involved in Dada to align themselves closely with the German Communist Party and direct much of their artistic energy toward supporting its aims.
The ideas of Dada itself had reached Berlin from Zurich during the war, and in 1917 Richard Huelsenbeck returned to Berlin from Zurich and immediately set about propagating the ideas of Dada. Two existing publications had already prepared the way: the first was Freie Strasse, which include the future Dadaist Raoul Hausmann (1886-1971) as a contributor, and the other Neue Jugend which included contributions from the Herzfelde brothers (Helmut, who changed his name to John Heartfield (1891-1968) and Wieland (1896-1988)), and George Grosz (1893-1959).[17] Together with Hanna Hoch (1889-1978), Johannes Baader (1875-1955), Franz Jung (1888-1963) and Walter Mehring (1896-1961), these artists were to be the core members of Berlin Dada (Bergius 128).
The work and public manifestations of the Berlin Dadaists during the brief period of its existence, 1918 to 1920, reflected both the influence of Dadaist artistic ideas and their political commitment. The collective expression of these ideas was contained in three editions of Der Dada published between 1919 and 1920, with contributions from Hausmann, Johannes Baader (1875-1955), Walter Mehring (1896-1981), Tzara, Huelsenbeck, Heartfeld and Grosz.[18] These three editions exemplify the mixture of Dadaist techniques, the haphazard use of typography and text, together with examples of the specific contribution to Berlin Dada, namely the satirical caricatures of Grosz and the photomontages and collages of Hausmann and Heartfeld which would be used so effectively in their political activities. Another significant Dada publication, edited by George Grosz, Wieland Herzfeld and John Heartfield, was Die Pleite published between 1919 and 1924.[19] The culmination of Berlin Dada was the first international Dada Fair in June 1920 where 176 Dadaist works were exhibited. The political nature of many of the slogans at the Fair – ‘Art is dead, long live Tatlin's machine art’[20] (Grosz and Heartfeld) and ‘DADA is political’ - demonstrated the principal concerns of the Berlin Dadaists and led logically thereafter to their concentration on direct political propaganda and the end of Berlin Dada.
This brief summary of Dada artists and their works in three of the centres of Dadaist activity has necessarily been highly selective and has omitted entirely the important work carried out by artists closely involved with the Dadaist movement and working in the same period in Cologne by Hans Arp and Max Ernst[21] and in Hanover by Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948)[22]. It also does not consider the influence that the works of the Dadaist artists had on future artists such as performance artists. However, it does indicate the breadth and fertility of the work of the Dadaist artists, many of whom went on to contribute to other artistic movements, notably Surrealism. It also shows that in each of the centres examined, the Dadaist artists were strongly influenced by the surrounding environment: in New York by the modernism of American Society, in Paris by the existing avant-garde cultural environment and in Berlin by the febrile political situation. These interactions were the principal characteristics of the Dada movement.
Bibliography
Bergius, Hanne. “Dada à Berlin, de l’ésthetique du laid à la beauté révolutionnaire.” Paris-Berlin, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1978, pp. 126-141.
Buffet-Picabia, Gabrielle: “Some Memories of Pre-Dada: Picabia and Duchamp.” Edited by Francis Picabia. St. Raphael, 1922. Reprinted in The Dada Painters and Poets. An Anthology. Edited by Robert Motherwell, 2nd edn., Belknap Press, 1989.
Connolly, Frances S. The Grotesque in Western Art and Culture: The Image at Play. Cambridge UP, 2012.
Giroud, Michel. “Dada à Paris, ou les métamorphoses de Dada.” Paris-Berlin, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1978, pp. 118-125.
Huelsenbeck, Richard. En Avant Dada: A History of Dadaism. Translated by Ralph Manheim. first published as En Avant Dada: Eine Geschichte des Dadaismus, Hannover, Leipzig, Vienna, Zurich, Paul Steegemann Verlag, 1920. Reprinted in The Dada Painters and Poets. An Anthology. Edited by Robert Motherwell, 2nd edn., Belknap Press, 1989.
Ribemont-Dessaignes, Georges. History of Dada. 1931. Reprinted in The Dada Painters and Poets. An Anthology. Edited by Robert Motherwell, 2nd edn., Belknap Press, 1989.
Schwarz, Arturo. La Mariée mise à nu chez Marcel Duchamp, Même. Translated by Anne-Marie Sauzeau-Boetti, Georges Fall, 1974.
Siepmann, Eckhard (Editor). Montage: John Heartfield: vom Club Dada zur Arbeiter-Illustrierten Zeitung. Elefanten Press, 1980.
Spies, Werner (Editor). Max Ernst: A Retrospective. Prestel, 1991.
[1] Richard Huelsenbeck, En Avant Dada: a History of Dadaism, in The Dada Painters and Poets, at p. 37.
[2] “Collage is the exploitation of the chance meeting of two distant realities on an unfamiliar plane, the culture of systematic displacement ad its effects – and the spark of poetry that leaps across the gap as the two realities converge.” Max Ernst, cited in Max Ernst: A Retrospective. Edited by Werner Spies, Prestel, 1991, at p. 291.
[3] En Avant Dada: a History of Dadaism, in The Dada Painters and Poets, at p. 28.
[4] Quoted in Arturo Schwarz, Marcel Duchamp, p. 30. My Translation.
[5] See for an analysis of Duchamp’s readymade L.H.O.O.Q, where he scrawled a moustache onto a reproduction of the Mona Lisa and at the bottom wrote in classical script L.H.O.O.Q, Connelly, p.112.
[6] Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes. History of Dada, in The Dada Painters and Poets, at p. 139)
[7] Available at: https://monoskop.org/New_York_Dada
[8] Issue no. 2 (1917) of The Blind Man is available at: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/747647
[9] Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia: Some Memories of Pre-Dada: Picabia and Duchamp, reproduced in The Dada Painters and Poets, at p. 261
[10] Editions available at: https://monoskop.org/391
[11] Picabia continued to edit 391 in New York, Zurich and Paris until it closed in 1924.
[12] In October of the same year, Yvon Goll (1891-1950), leader of a rival Surrealist grouping, had published Manifeste du surréalisme.
[13] Reprinted at: https://www.ubu.com/papers/tzara_dada-manifesto.html
[14]Available at: https://monoskop.org/Dada_(journal)
[15] Available at: https://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/islandora/object/ui:dada_24847
[16] Breton relaunched the magazine as Littérature : Nouvelle Série from 1922-1924.
[17] For examples of Neue Jugend and Der Dada see: https://www.johnheartfield.com/John-Heartfield-Exhibition/john-heartfield-art/weimar-republic-art-heartfield-grosz
[18] Available at: http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/derdada/
[19] Issues 1-6 Available at: http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/die_pleite/index.htm?utm_source=pocket_saves
[20] “Die Kunst ist tot. Es lebe die neue Machinenkunst TATLINS.” Tatlinʼs Tower, or the project for the Monument to the Third International (1919–20), was a design for a grand monumental building by the Russian artist and architect Vladimir Tatlin (1885-1953), that was never built. Wikipedia.
[21] See Werner Spies, “Les Manifestations Dada à Cologne.” Paris-Berlin, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1978, pp. 142-153.
[22] See Eberhard Roters, “Eve Mafleur Bleue. Kurt Schwitters et les années vingt à Hanovre.” Paris-Berlin, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1978, pp. 154-163.