Research into Dada

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07w6j9h/gaga-for-dada-the-original-art-rebels - this link is where I have found most of my research into the history of Dada.

Dada was an artistic and literary movement that began un Zurich, Switzerland. It began as a reaction to World War 1. The Dada theme included Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism and Expressionism and it was shown with in several artistic styles. Ranging from performance art, photography, poetry, sculpture, painting and one that was very popular collage. Dada's mark was expressing mockery and humour with in his work, however some people were against his masterpieces as they were offensive to certain people. The photo below is an example of one of the collages the artists would make. This particular one was created by German collage artist Hannah Hoch. This ended up being a very famous collage throughout the Dada period as it brought a sarcastic and humorous feel to the audience about political views. It was made using past papers and was cut up using a kitchen knife in 1919. 

In 1916, the famous artists Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Tristan Tzara, Jean Arp, Marcel Janco, Richard Huelsenbeck, Sophie Taeubar and Hans Richter, along with others, discussed art and put on performances in Cabaret Voltaire expressing their disgust with the war. They created pieces of art against the war and expressed their views on it using their artwork, however some of the artists took their ideas a little too far and caused a political rage between politicians and the artists themselves. An example is this piece of artwork below, John Heartfield was an artist and a pioneer in the use of art as a political weapon, some of his photomontages were anti-Nazi and anti fascist statements. This piece of work he created caused a lot of problems between him and politicians as this sculpture was very offensive towards german soldiers as the dummy is implying that they were pigs sense the pig face and the soldiers uniform. Although it caused problems, it did make a good impact on some views of the war as it made people see how bad it really was and what the other countries seemed to be like during the war.

As well as collages and sculptures these artists expressed their feelings using poetry but it wasn't normal poetry. Hugo Ball was a poetry artist he twisted words from the war into sounds then he created new words in his own unique way. None of his poetry made sense but had a very fun and exciting vibe to it when reading it. What I found very strange when researching into Hugo, was that when he would present the poetry he would dress up in extremely weird clothing. The images below are of the poetry he created and the ''magic bishop costume'' he wore when presenting his work.