My Dada Base

Monday's Manifesto:

Below are excerpts from our favorite art history "movement", Dadaism, which sprung forth with the aid of the Dada Manifesto, written and performed live by Hugo Ball in 1916.  In case this is not your area of general knowledge, the Dada movement was carried forward by many other artists, which opened the door to the Surrealist Manifesto, written by Andre Breton, and paved the way for the Fluxus movement, the Situationists, the "Happening", etc.  (Now we have the Lady Gaga).

Hugo Ball, 1916

from "Gas Heart" a play by Tristan Tzara

Hugo Ball brought his his rant to life, in a between-two-world-wars moment. A moment in which "The total number of casualties in World War I, both military and civilian, were about 37 million: 16 million deaths and 21 million wounded. The total number of deaths includes 9.7 million military personnel and about 6.8 million civilians."from Wiki(ofcourse)pedia OMG! The artists were - (to put it in middleschool boy terms) "pissed off" about it and they wanted to crunch everything up and start truly anew. There is something fertile and poignant (even futile) about their uprising-like point of view in relation to today's idiotic deja-vu global-slugfest.

Excerpt from:   http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dada_Manifesto_%281916,_Hugo_Ball%29

Max Ernst

Hugo speaks out:  "It will serve to show how articulated language comes into being. I let the vowels fool around. I let the vowels quite simply occur, as a cat meows . . . Words emerge, shoulders of words, legs, arms, hands of words. Au, oi, uh. One shouldn't let too many words out. A line of poetry is a chance to get rid of all the filth that clings to this accursed language, as if put there by stockbrokers' hands, hands worn smooth by coins. I want the word where it ends and begins. Dada is the heart of words."

Nam Jun Paik, played by Charlotte Moorman

To further douse us in this exalted history, here is Marie Osmond doing Hugo Ball's poetry!  
http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/ball_hugo/Ball-Hugo_Karawane.mp3

A few years later, the Dada movement evolved through the works of other artists, including Tristan Tzara, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp etc: http://www.ralphmag.org/AR/dada.html

La Tonsure, Duchamp

"I don't believe in art.  I believe in artists"  Marcel Duchamp

Why does the Ranger love Dada?

Joseph Cornell box, sometimes lumped in with Dada

Because she can!  And because the more you look into things, the more absurd they are, especially today, and especially then and especially right now!  We feel fresh, able inspiration from this kind of kick in the pants art.  Beauty will come by accident, rarely on purpose.  Just be ready to embrace it.