This international "anti-movement" of radical young artists claimed that virtually anything could be art.
c. 1913 - 1920
Beginner's guide
Dada was short-lived and difficult to define, but it continues to have a major impact on art today.
videos + essays
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Dada’s “Approximate Man”: A Portrait of Tristan Tzara by Marcel Janco
This mask is a rare document of the Dada movement and an embodiment of the so-called “approximate man.”
Dada Performance
“Every word that is spoken and sung here says at least one thing: that this humiliating age has not succeeded in winning our respect.”
Dada Readymades
The purpose of the readymade is fundamentally conceptual. Any objection that the object is not beautiful, or did not require any skill to make, misses the point.
Dada Politics
The Dadaists were effective in creating devastating social and political criticism in postwar Germany.
Raoul Hausmann, Spirit of the Age: Mechanical Head
A century before democracy was tested by social media gone rogue, Hausmann understood the dark side of technology.
Francis Picabia, Ideal
Though Picabia borrows from the popular machine aesthetic, nothing about his apparatus is functional.
Introduction to Dada
The avant-garde reached new heights by looking to “low” culture; after all, the whole thing started with a urinal!
Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No 2
As the European public grew increasingly hard to scandalize, Duchamp crossed the Atlantic to stir up more trouble.
Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass)
Love, sex, science, broken glass, a coffee grinder, a bride from another dimension—this one really has it all.