Editing Dada (section)

==Overview==
{{overview section|date=June 2022}}
[[File:Francis Picabia, Dame! Illustration for the cover of the periodical Dadaphone n. 7, Paris, March 1920.jpg|thumb|[[Francis Picabia]], ''Dame!'' Illustration for the cover of the periodical ''Dadaphone'', n. 7, Paris, March 1920]]

Dada was an informal international movement, with participants in Europe and North America. The beginnings of Dada correspond with the outbreak of World War I. For many participants, the movement was a protest against the [[bourgeois]] [[nationalist]] and [[colonialist]] interests, which many Dadaists believed were the root cause of the war, and against the cultural and intellectual conformity—in art and more broadly in society—that corresponded to the war.<ref name=RichterAntiArt>{{Citation | last=Richter | first=Hans | year=1965 | title=Dada: Art and Anti-art | location= New York and Toronto | publisher = Oxford University Press}}</ref>

Avant-garde circles outside France knew of pre-war Parisian developments. They had seen (or participated in) Cubist exhibitions held at [[Galeries Dalmau]], Barcelona (1912), Galerie [[Der Sturm]] in Berlin (1912), the [[Armory Show]] in New York (1913), [[Mánes Union of Fine Arts|SVU Mánes]] in Prague (1914), several [[Jack of Diamonds (artists)|Jack of Diamonds]] exhibitions in Moscow and at [[Moderne Kunstkring]], Amsterdam (between 1911 and 1915). [[Futurism]] developed in response to the work of various artists. Dada subsequently combined these approaches.<ref name=oxfordart /><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=sPGdBxzaWj0C&dq=%22Barcelona+and+developments+in+Zurich%22%2C+1916%E2%80%9320&pg=RA1-PA6 Joan M. Marter, ''The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, Volume 1'', Oxford University Press, 2011], p. 6, {{ISBN|0195335791}}. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200209223618/https://books.google.com/books?id=sPGdBxzaWj0C&pg=RA1-PA6&lpg=RA1-PA6&dq=%22Barcelona+and+developments+in+Zurich%22,+1916%E2%80%9320&source=bl&ots=qbkgGKzLti&sig=WSVSo0NVM_bSoiKAaOMb-e-ez_E&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjS_IGtzcHRAhUMaxQKHdWzBGwQ6AEIJTAC#v=onepage&q=%22Barcelona%20and%20developments%20in%20Zurich%22%2C%201916%E2%80%9320&f=false |date=2020-02-09 }}</ref>

Many Dadaists believed that the 'reason' and 'logic' of bourgeois [[capitalist]] society had led people into war. They expressed their rejection of that ideology in artistic expression that appeared to reject logic and embrace [[Randomness|chaos]] and [[irrationality]].<ref name="Schneede"/><ref name="Budd"/> For example, [[George Grosz]] later recalled that his Dadaist art was intended as a protest "against this world of mutual destruction".<ref name="Schneede" />

According to [[Hans Richter (artist)|Hans Richter]] Dada was not art: it was "[[anti-art]]".<ref name=RichterAntiArt /> Dada represented the opposite of everything which art stood for. Where art was concerned with traditional [[aesthetics]], Dada ignored aesthetics. If art was to appeal to sensibilities, Dada was intended to offend.

Additionally, Dada attempted to reflect onto human perception and the chaotic nature of society. [[Tristan Tzara]] proclaimed, "Everything is Dada, too. Beware of Dada. Anti-dadaism is a disease: selfkleptomania, man's normal condition, is Dada. But the real Dadas are against Dada".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Tzara|first=Tristan|title=La Vie des Lettres|year=1920|location=Paris|language=French|chapter=VII}}</ref>

As [[Hugo Ball]] expressed it, "For us, art is not an end in itself ... but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in."<ref>{{Citation | title=DADA: Cities | url=http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2006/dada/cities/index.shtm | publisher=[[National Gallery of Art]] | access-date=2008-10-19 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081102003737/http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2006/dada/cities/index.shtm | archive-date=2008-11-02 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

A reviewer from the ''[[American Art News]]'' stated at the time that "Dada philosophy is the sickest, most paralyzing and most destructive thing that has ever originated from the brain of man." Art historians have described Dada as being, in large part, a "reaction to what many of these artists saw as nothing more than an insane spectacle of collective homicide".<ref name="gardners">{{Citation | author = Fred S. Kleiner | title = Gardner's Art Through the Ages | edition = 12th | year = 2006 | publisher = Wadsworth Publishing | page = 754}}</ref>

Years later, Dada artists described the movement as "a phenomenon bursting forth in the midst of the postwar economic and moral crisis, a savior, a monster, which would lay waste to everything in its path... [It was] a systematic work of destruction and demoralization... In the end it became nothing but an act of sacrilege."<ref name="gardners"/>

To quote Dona Budd's ''The Language of Art Knowledge'', <blockquote>Dada was born out of negative reaction to the horrors of the [[First World War]]. This international movement was begun by a group of artists and poets associated with the [[Cabaret Voltaire (Zürich)|Cabaret Voltaire]] in Zürich. Dada rejected reason and logic, prizing nonsense, irrationality and intuition. The origin of the name Dada is unclear; some believe that it is a nonsensical word. Others maintain that it originates from the Romanian artists Tristan Tzara's and Marcel Janco's frequent use of the words "da, da," meaning "yes, yes" in the Romanian language. Another theory says that the name "Dada" came during a meeting of the group when a [[paper knife]] stuck into a French–German dictionary happened to point to 'dada', a French word for '[[Hobby horse (toy)|hobbyhorse]]'.<ref name="Budd" /></blockquote> The movement primarily involved [[visual arts]], [[literature]], [[poetry]], [[art manifesto]]s, [[art theory]], [[theatre]], and [[graphic design]], and concentrated its [[anti-war]] politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in [[art]] through anti-art cultural works.

The creations of Duchamp, Picabia, Man Ray, and others between 1915 and 1917 eluded the term Dada at the time, and "[[New York Dada]]" came to be seen as a post facto invention of Duchamp. At the outset of the 1920s the term Dada flourished in Europe with the help of Duchamp and Picabia, who had both returned from New York. Notwithstanding, Dadaists such as Tzara and Richter claimed European precedence. Art historian David Hopkins notes:

<blockquote>Ironically, though, Duchamp's late activities in New York, along with the machinations of Picabia, re-cast Dada's history. Dada's European chroniclers—primarily Richter, Tzara, and Huelsenbeck—would eventually become preoccupied with establishing the pre-eminence of Zürich and Berlin at the foundations of Dada, but it proved to be Duchamp who was most strategically brilliant in manipulating the genealogy of this avant-garde formation, deftly turning New York Dada from a late-comer into an originating force.<ref>[https://books.google.fr/books?isbn=1118476182 Hopkins, David, ''A Companion to Dada and Surrealism''], Volume 10 of Blackwell Companions to Art History, John Wiley & Sons, May 2, 2016, p. 83, {{ISBN|1118476182}}</ref></blockquote>