What is Dadaism?

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]What would you call an art movement that rejects beauty, skill, logic, and even meaning? Who would submit a urinal as a piece of art and name it a masterpiece?

[00:00:12]And finally, what happens when culture loses faith in itself? Welcome to the art show. Today, we're going to talk about dada, one of the most controversial movements in the history of modern art.

[00:00:27]Dada began in 1916 in Zurich, Switzerland. Most of Europe was immersed in a World War I. Millions of people were dying and technology had made killing industrial. People lost face in progress, in reason, in their nation and in the ideals of heroism and nation state. Lots of young artists would flee to neutral Switzerland and gather in a bohemian place called Cafe Volter. Cabar voltter. One of these artists was Huga Bal, one of the most prominent representatives of this movement. Now, Huga was a poet who made poems which had no grammar, no logic and sounded like absurd. But in reality, when the world was burning, this was not just nonsense.

[00:01:14]This was the response of the artist to the chaos around them. They say that the word dada was actually taken from a French German dictionary. In French, it means a toy horse. In German, it means absolutely nothing. But the idea of it is that dada is nothing. Is absurd. It doesn't make any sense. And that's what's beautiful about it. That's what made the artist choose this word as a name for their movement that focused on absurd nonsense and that questioned morals and ideals of modern Europe at that time. Now let's look at the most prominent artists of this movement and their masterpieces.

[00:01:57]Of course the most famous representative of dadaism would be Marcel Duchamp. In 1917, Duchamp submits a porcelain urinal to an art exhibition and calls it his masterpiece. He titled his masterpiece a fountain. Now, the fountain wasn't made for him. He just purchased it and signed it. So, that was absolutely ridiculous and obviously the exhibition rejected it. However, today we've got replicas of this fountain in a famous museum such as state modern Philadelphia Museum of Art and obviously the original in MoMA. What was so special about the urinal that is now considered to be a masterpiece?

[00:02:42]Well, the urinal brought one clear and quite innovative idea with itself.

[00:02:48]Marcel Duchamp once said, "Art is defined by choice and context, not skill." And that was a fresh and revolutionary idea for the art world in the 20th century. Now, that didn't just stay in Surik. It soon spread to New York where uh the most notable representative of the movement is an artist called Marcel Duchan and Berlin where we country artists such as Rahul Houseman and Hana Hawk. Now, Hana Hawk was a particularly interesting artist because she would use photo montages that she would create to mock political authority. Her most important work is called Cut with a Kitchen Knife, and it combines politicians, machines, and dancers in a chaotic representation that is supposed to say that everything around us is staged. Art can be a work of a collage and so is identity, political ideology and politicians.

[00:03:49]Another central figure of this movement in Berlin was a man called Raul Houseman. Now unlike Marcel Ducham who questioned the idea of art and what an art piece is. Houseman was more interested in what a modern human being was. He also focused on photo images which were essentially a form of a collage and most of his collages were a satire on the political system of modern Europe. His most prominent work is called the spirit of our time or is also known as the mechanical head. Now the spirit of our time is a mannequin head with various mechanical and uh everyday objects around it. For example, there is a ruler, a pocket watch, a typewriter cylinder, and some measuring tools. At a first glance, it looks absurd, but when you look closer, you realize that the head itself is empty. All the meaning comes from external objects attached to it. This was a statement. Modern humans no longer think independently. According to Houseman, they are filled with external information. They are shaped by systems, measurements, bureaucracy, and media. The head does not generate ideas.

[00:05:08]It just stores ideas that are planted into it. Houseman was criticizing blind obedience, bureaucratic thinking, mechanical rationality, and the loss of inner reflection. And remember, we are talking about 1919, an era before internet, before television, and before social media. So do you think that these ideas are still relevant today? Now the key ideas of dadaism were an attack on traditional beauty, artistic skill, nationalism, bourgeoa and porn and blind face in institution. Instead daism embraced randomness, absurdity, kalash, performance and provocation. Now another famous representative of daism is a man called Tristanara. Now Zara was writer who would write manifestos that were essentially absurd and contradiction. He was mostly famous for creating poetry by cutting words from a newspaper, putting them into a bag and pulling them out randomly. Now dada art movement criticized ideas such as nationalism, cultural elitism, blind face in institutions and bourgeoa comfort. It did not offer any beautiful artistic solutions. Rather than that, it offered a rapture or in fact probably it just reflected the fracture and the processes that were going on in the European society at that time. The world was changing and the art was following. At the first glance, data seemed to be an art of absurd, but in reality, it was intellectual. Dada anticipated modern movements such as conceptual art, performance art, installation art, post-modern skepticism and institutional critique. It lay foundation for the many artists that have come afterwards and even now in the 21st century modern artists are still drawing inspiration from what was started by dada movement.

[00:07:17]Now the real question though is not whether it's still relevant or not today. The really exciting question is that when there is collapse in the society, should art comfort us or should it disturb us? Thank you.