Posted on August 25, 2011 by Dave
Dada as just another shop, another boutique in the arcade? Dada put into question the myths surrounding originality, and the relationship of the artist to the category of “genius”. Dada suggested instead, or implied that everyone could be an artist, an almost anything could be art, such as a Duchamp urinal or bicycle wheel. It began in the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, Voltaire himself was hardly a revolutionary, having no sympathy whatsoever for the common man. Voltaire once write Frederick the Great, ” once the populace begins to reason, then everything is lost. I abominate the idea of government by the masses.”
Still, Surrealism, Constructivism, Guy Debord Situationism, Fluxus, Pop Art, Conceptual Art, punk rock, and Minimalism and almost all 20th century artistic movements that began after the early 1920′s have an important connection to Dada, through the permeation of non-aesthetic content. Dada art still possesses a radicality and form of novelty attractive to culture jammers like Adbusters and those seeking to rupture the rhythms of life as usual. In terms of its nihilism, for the most part gratuitous and not connected to a more profound spiritual or messianic basis, the question of its honesty and artistic integrity can be questioned.