Dadaism Definition, History, and Famous Dada Artists

Dada was an artistic and literary movement in Europe and the United States that began in the early twentieth century during the cultural and social upheaval following the first World War. Dadaism mocked and antagonized the conventions of art itself, emphasizing the illogical, irrational, and absurd.

Dadaist artists often utilized collage, montage, and assemblage of disparate elements to create their art. These artists often had left-wing political views and created work that questioned every aspect of society and culture.

Beginning with a group of artists working in Zurich, Switzerland, Dadaism quickly became an international movement that spread throughout Europe and the U.S., with centers in Paris, Cologne, Berlin, and New York City. The art, poetry, and performances created by Dadaist artists had a lasting impact on avant-garde art in Europe.

The new ways of thinking and creating promoted by Dadaism influenced Surrealism and countless other conceptual art movements like Fluxus and Pop Art. Here is a brief overview of the origins of Dadaism:

• Early influences: Dadaism drew upon several trends and artistic movements that occurred in Europe, including Cubism and Futurism. One of the first artists to be associated with the Dada movement was the French sculptor Marcel Duchamp. In the early 1910s, he coined the term “anti-art” to describe his readymades. These were prefabricated, mass-produced objects presented in a gallery as art to question the elitist nature of art itself.
• World War I displacement: Throughout World War I, many European artists flocked to neutral cities like Zurich, Switzerland, to find a sense of creative community. As the war raged throughout Europe, their art and writing became more dissident, experimental, radical, and irreverent. In 1916, poet Hugo Ball opened the Cabaret Voltaire, which became a haven for artists to stage spoken-word poetry, performance art, and other provocative avant-garde shows.
• Coining the term “Dada”: There is some dispute over the definitive origin of the word “Dada,” but many art historians trace it back to one night at the Cabaret Voltaire. The artist Richard Huelsenbeck and the writer Hugo Ball turned to a random page in a French-German dictionary and found the word “dada,” meaning “yes yes” in Romanian and “rocking horse” or “hobbyhorse” in French. They liked that it sounded like a nonsense word and used it to describe the kind of absurdist art that they and their contemporaries—like Tristan Tzara, Jean Arp, and Marcel Janco—were creating at the time.

Dadaism eschewed the classical rules of art and defied conventions, but there are several recognizable characteristics of Dada art.

1. 1. Made from found objects: Dada artists often incorporated found objects or images from mass media into their art through collages and readymades. The artist Marcel Duchamp famously created Dadaist readymade sculptures by manipulating found, prefabricated objects in a simple way, then presenting them in a gallery as art. Artist Hannah Hoch is famous for her use of collage. She pioneered photomontage, in which elements of different photos are pasted together to create a new image.
2. 2. Nonsensical: Dadaist art often features irrationality, humor, and silliness. Marcel Duchamp famously painted a mustache on a postcard of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to show his irreverence for established artistic traditions and his sense of humor.
3. 3. Spontaneous: Dadaist art was often spontaneous, playing with the elements of chance and encouraging spur-of-the-moment creativity. At Dada shows, poems would be created by cutting words out of a single sheet of newspaper, scattering them on the ground, and then randomly organizing them onto a page.

Here are five famous artists who were prominent in the Dada movement.

1. 1. Francis Picabia: Picabia was a French printmaker and painter who often created spontaneous conceptual works. In his Dadaist self-portrait Tableau Rastrada, he collaged elements from found media to create an image depicting himself as a social-climbing playboy.
2. 2. Hannah Hoch: Hannah Hoch was a German photographer and artist known for collages and photomontages. Her 1919 collage Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Beer-Belly of the Weimar Republic is a series of disparate images cut from mass media to create a piece of art critiquing the Weimar German Government.
3. 3. Hugo Ball: Poet and author Hugo Ball was one of the founding members of the Dada movement. Ball opened the Café Voltaire—a Dadaist haven—and allegedly gave the movement its name.
4. 4. Man Ray: Man Ray was a Surrealist and Dadaist photographer famous for manipulating his photographs to create strange and surreal compositions. He lived and worked in Paris in the 1920s, and his work was exhibited in the first Surrealist exhibition. One of his most famous photos is Ingres’s Violin, which shows a seated nude woman pictured from behind with the F-holes of a violin superimposed on her back.
5. 5. Marcel Duchamp: French artist Marcel Duchamp began his career in Paris in the 1910s and fled to America following World War I. Duchamp was most famous for creating the first readymade sculptures, including the 1913 sculpture Bicycle Wheel—a bicycle wheel mounted upside down on a three-legged stool—and the 1917 sculpture Fountain—a urinal turned upside-down and mounted on a pedestal.

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