Well - what a morning! The excellent results are below.
Introduction to Dada
(http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/dada)
Dada artists
felt the war called into question every aspect of a society capable of starting
and then prolonging it – including its art. Their aim was to destroy traditional values in
art and to create a new art to replace the old.
As the
artist Hans Arp later wrote:
Revolted by the butchery of the 1914 World
War, we in Zurich devoted ourselves to the arts. While the guns rumbled in the
distance, we sang, painted, made collages and wrote poems with all
our might.
In
addition to being anti-war, dada was also anti-bourgeois and had political
affinities with the radical left.
The
founder of dada was a writer, Hugo Ball. In 1916 he started a satirical night-club in
Zurich, the Cabaret Voltaire and a magazine which, wrote Ball, 'will bear the
name "Dada". Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada.' This was the first of many dada publications. Dada became an international movement and eventually
formed the basis of surrealism in Paris after the war.
Leading
artists associated with it include Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia and Kurt Schwitters.
Duchamp’s
questioning of the fundamentals of Western art had a profound subsequent influence.
Man
Ray, who wrapped a sewing machine was also seen as part of Dada. Christo was influenced by Man Ray. [Art Circle 22 September: Christo, wrapping & pink rubber...]
