Dadaism and the "Dada Manifesto"

It is fair to say people truly suffered from the First World War and that is what brought about this Dada “meaningless” art.  People wanted to stray away from everything that Germany now was and defy it, not just art but Germany as a whole.  Creating this anti-art was a way to express that.  To me it may not be considered “expressionism” and come from the soul as expressionism does, but it does show the feeling of the artists.  It shows the hate and anger they feel, just not expressed so dramatically and with color.

“The movement became famous for its use of "photomontage" as a way of creating a fragmented experience of art, that they believed reflected modern experience and for its "anti-art" stance in favor of depictions of unpleasant even ugly pictures. In Germany, the Dada movement was more consciously political than other Dada movements.”  I picked this passage because it explains Dadaism exactly how I see it.  Ugly art, yes.  So oddly put together like a collage, with so much going on, it is the first thing that came to mind when looking at the pictures.  I also picked this passage, because it is strange to me that in a time of them opposing the war and everything that followed, they seemed to take so much from the war and put it into their art.  To me their art looks like propaganda, which is what I thought it was a first.  It seems odd they would almost mimic it when they just went through such hard times. 

“How can one get rid of everything that smacks of journalism, worms, everything nice and right, blinkered, moralistic, europeanised, enervated? By saying dada. Dada is the world soul, Dada is the pawnshop. Dada is the world's best lily-milk soap. Dada Mr Rubiner, dada Mr Korrodi. Dada Mr Anastasius Lilienstein. In plain language: the hospitality of the Swiss is something to be profoundly appreciated. And in questions of aesthetics the key is quality.”

In Hugo Ball’s Manifesto he is pretty much saying that although the word itself does not have much meaning the movement does.  This movement will be everything, this movement will be a way to turn all that ugliness into something more.  Also, to “rid of everything that smacks of journalism, worms, everything nice and right…” was through the Dadaism movement. Nothing was nice and right after the war, and the view that people had to go back to things being “nice and right” was not one lived through “Dada.” You needed something different, something new, break away from what was before and express and defy as he is doing in his manifesto.  “Each thing has a word,” everything has a name but not only that it’s what that name possess and carries, and the quality in which it is delivered.  At the end of the passage I chose it says, “and in questions of aesthetics the key is quality.”  Pretty much saying what I just said previously, the process in which Dadaism is delivered can make things beautiful again through quality of it, the cooperation and feeling about it that he has.  This can relate to the world in any struggle really.  There is always a different outlook and different approach to see things and do things.