I Want My Dada!

The first World War was sold as -- and thought to be -- a noble, necessary endeavor that was to end all wars. Soon it became evident that this first-mechanized war was a heartbreakingly horrific slaughter house of epic proportions.

The senseless decimation of virtually all the young men who -- with fervor and patriotism -- eagerly enlisted to "defend" their nation so repelled a group of artists and writers that they felt compelled to question the very meaning and purpose of artistic and cultural values.

Thus the Dada Movement was born. All (so-called) modern thought was called into question. It was reasoned that at that point in history we had become so barbarous that precious human life was chillingly expendable for the most ill-conceived and deceptive purposes.

Today, this is all known too well by many and ignored by just as many more.

When the government and its citizens are in a witting and unwitting dance of death with the media play the tune, I implore, I compel, and I all but beg those in the creative community to once again question and challenge and redefine the purpose of culture and its affect.

I want my Dada!

Comments

[MagisterLudi]

Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman."
Guillaume Apollinaire

"'Come to the edge,' He said. They said, 'We are afraid.' 'Come to the edge,' He said. They came. He pushed them...and they flew." - Copy to Clipboard

Guillaume Apollinaire

[protagonia]

Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman."
Guillaume Apollinaire
----------­----------­----------

This time around, Dada-ism is in the effort to BECOME human again.

[OutsideLookingIn]

A shallow, simplistic and almost childish article.

WW1 was merely the 'logical' culmination of a military mindset that had been turning battles into slaughterhouses since the Napoleonic Wars. The slaughter of the Western Front merely replicated on a grand scale what had occurred 50-years earlier at Gettysburg and the other 'lines of men against bullets' battles of the American Civil War. There, too, occurred "the senseless decimation of virtually all the young men who -- with fervor and patriotism -- eagerly enlisted to "defend" their nation".

Hitler at least, having been there, learned the lessons that many Generals didn't and instituted a new style of warfare - blitzkrieg - which broke the military mold and very nearly succeeded.

Dadism 'failed' because it was essentially nihilistic. It condemned patriotism for patriotism's sake - "my Country right or wrong" - but offered no alternative.

It is the alternative we need, rather than Dadism. I just don't know what it is.

[rmreddicks]

There was an end to the city state. It seems quite likely that there will be an end to the nation state.

Art movements are art movements. They have meaning only so much as other humans invest them with meaning or such meaning as they invest in themselves.

I usually prefer Impressionists. Others may prefer Dadists or Surrealists or whatever. In fact, I enjoy any who are so bold as to take a chance.

And drink saki for lunch. Speaking of which...,

[rmreddicks]

isn't that sake?

[KenTao]

and drink saki for lunch...

[KenTao]

I am the First & Only Minister of Gallantry in the Church of the Everlasting DadA. We have been driven WAY uNdeRgrouNd. do not attempt to contact US... but BE aware of the signs... make yourself Holey to ACCEPT the TRUTH... we have a POPE but (s)he is unemployed... give till it hurts...

Earthlings Unite!

[justjohn]

Okay, Belz, since you asked: http://just-john.com

[kingofscotts]

Great post with respect to our current situation.

However I am curious if you would suggest that the US should not have fought in WWI. Do you feel different about WWII. I ask only out of curiousity. It's hard to imagine an argument against fighting WWII. It seems fairly universally clear that we honestly had no choice but to fight the Axis.

[ZingoBonMot]

Perhaps had we NOT joined in WWI, it might have fizzled out on it's own, meaning no need for the excessively puntative (thanks to U.S. corporate interests) Treaty of Versaille that led to Germany's economic collapse. And the result of that collapse? The rise of Adolph Hitler, German National Socialism, and eventually, WWII.
Sorry, but we continue to bring this shit on ourselves. And we never learn.

[Joeseo]

Well Richard, you got it right.
I always had the sense of futility watching the cartoons
of Monty Python with the body parts spewn all over and the life stomped out of everyone.

The movie Max has me without hope. Max's assassination sure proved Hitler's concept of Politics as the new art.

Your call for artists is spot on. John Cusack, for instance, surely has answers combining his art and the analysis of Naomi Klein. She has it right regarding the Crisis tool for exploiting. Its the evolution of dada and even Hitler's art.

[PeteBogs]

each conflict has its own impact on the arts... I have already seen a number of CDs, paintings and sculptures out there that are a reaction to the war, though no single, cohesive movement...

great post

[January]

For any kind of protest against the sensitivities, it is required that there be a degree of sensitivity remaining.

There's tons, literally tons, of artistic (visual as well as verbal) protest. It's all treated as graffiti, whether on an alley wall or in a museum. What has died is the human heart. We are living through the New Dark Ages.

We kill sensitivity early on in our children by smothering them in exploitative advertising and entertaining violence. Our old dog-eat-dog world is now dominated by love of Big Dogs. We are doomed.

[mmeo]

January has it right.
The protest movement against the "merchants of death" grew to large proportions after World War I because a large fraction of the population expected the contual improvement of the civilized world.
After Auschwitz, after "civilized" Germany committed genocide, and Hiroshima, name your own crime that describes what the U.S. did, . . . very few people believe that history is a continuous upward curve.
The decay of the American Empire is only what is to be expected. Irresponsible immaturity in positions of power has happened before and will happen again, so long, I suppose, as we don't obliterate all human life.
George W. Bush, meet Caligula. And his friend Paul I Romanov.

[John]

I agree with your essential premise. That is why I consider the most important thing that I can teach my children is compassion. It may be too late, but I think societies can change for the better, just as individuals can. It just happens to be a very rare thing.

[Bill C]

I want my Dada at MOMA!

In 2006, MOMA presented a DADA exhibition. There are several websites devoted to it but, I'm providing this one as a service to mpower1952.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/arts/design/16dada.html

Also, Google for a photo of Marcel DuChamp in drag as Rrrose Selevy. You'd swear you were looking at Rudy Giuliani!

[protagonia]

Richard,

You're one of the Genius Jesters, telling the truth right under the in-bred king's nose. The hippest guy in the entire castle. (Back when HIP meant well-informed in ye' days of olde')

In the 80's, detachment was "in" because we weren't faced with the same degree of compounded crisis all at once. The Viet Nam war had ended and we phased out the need for art delivering vital information - and inspiration, for that matter.

In the 90's, humor about unimportant things became the standard. Comedy with a message was frowned down upon as being "Too preachy".

Tick follows Tock. Here we go again. As history is being re-written by an insidious media, the Storytellers get the truth out in lyric and rhyme.

"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall..."

[MajorKong]

Richard, don't you know that all of recorded history took place between 1938 and 1945 and there are no lessons to be found in any other time period? Just ask any neoconservative.

[RumiSouth]

But Richard, we're living past The End of History. See, now we repeat all of history all of the time. There are no "new" cultural or artistic or political movements anymore, just rewrites of the same old scripts.

Now, every day is Groundhog Day.

http://www.osborneink.com

[AmandaM]

The fallout from WWI is also a huge part of why we have so many problems in the Middle East. The various European powers were trading pieces of the Ottoman Empire without any regard for the people who actually lived there. It was all done for strategic reasons - the British set up their colonies so they could both appease Russia and have an uninterrupted rail line between the Mediterranean coast and India. Plus, they were largely ignorant of the actual geography and cultures involved.

[MagisterLudi]

"One can't carry one's father's corpse about everywhere." Guillaume Apollinaire, Generalissimo of Dada.

[jesusquintana]

Excellent, Richard. I consider you to be a leader of the "new Dada movement," along with Steven Weber, Stan Goff, and a few other bloggers on this site. There are local artists & rappers where I live who produce material similar in intention to Dadaists. Keep up the good work.

[stellanoir]

The relentless dismissiveness of the creative community by the poli-types is completely irreverent to the role of the Bards of old.

"May beauty and art rise to its much deserved place of heroic leadership."

I want my dada back too.