Dada: art and anti-art. Translated from the German by David Britt Book

Hans Richter's first-person narrative, describing in adamant detail the Dada movement-- a storm that broke over the world of art as the war did over the nations-- is luxuriously rich in summarizing Dada on all accounts, unraveling the misunderstandings that currently constitute the image of Dada. 'Dada: Art and Anti-Art' is the Dada Bible. In 1909 the Italian Futurists were publishing manifestoes which were as like Dada as two peas in a pod. From the Futurists came the Swiss Dada movement, beginning in Zurich at the Cabaret Voltaire led by Hugo Ball, at the beginning of 1916. The Futurists had already introduced the idea of provocation into art and practiced it in their own performances. As an art, it was called Bruitism, and was later given musical status by Edgar Varèse, who followed up Russolo's discoveries in the field of noise-music, which was a basic contribution made by Futurism in modern music. These musical experimentations eventually became to be what is known as musique concrète. Richter acknowledges The Futurists as precursors to Dada, impregnating Dada with an artistic revolution free of all aesthetic and social constraints. Dada's philosophies are discussed at full-length by Richter, as well as personal accounts given, describing each individual involved in the Dada social circuit, and to the various movements that swept over Europe between 1916 and 1922.

"Dada was not a school of artists, but an alarm signal against declining values, routine, and speculation, a desperate appeal, on behalf of all forms of art, for a creative basis on which to build a new and universal consciousness of art." The Dadaists were all in their twenties, full of spontaneous energy and nonconformist ideologies, and ready to defy all the fathers of the world. Dada in Berlin had a very different tone from Dada in Zurich and New York. The situations and the cities were very different for each of the various Dadaist groups. In Berlin they had a real revolution, the ideas reflected in New York were known to only a small group but still became an intermediary link between European and American artists, Hanover and Cologne possessed independent Dadaisms of their own, which were less noisy, but no less important than Berlin Dada, and Paris Dada went off like a Roman candle, raising sparks in the shape of names, ideas and events.

Each movement successfully contributed to the anarchy of Dadaist revolution, though it was in Paris that Dada achieved its maximum volume (and here that it met its dramatic end). It had started with riots, poems, speeches, and manifestoes in Zurich in 1916, and with riots, poems, speeches, and manifestoes it came to its end in Paris. The young writer and poet Jacques Vaché acquired special importance through his influence on André Breton, who, along with Tzara, were the dominating figures of Dada and Surrealism. Eventually these two strong personalities fought over leadership, and Breton eventually took over Dada and embraced his theory of Surrealism which became more of a popular product than Dada could have ever attained.
Neither Dada nor Surrealism are isolated phenomenons, as they are a single coherent experience. The significance of both movements lies in their mobilization of the subconscious in the service of a new conception of art. Surrealism gave Dada significance and sense, and Dada gave Surrealism its first breath of life.

As for Dada, it got what it wanted: the fury of the bourgeois. "Dada was the effective expression of a mighty surge of freedom in which all the values of human existence-- were turned on their head, mocked and misplaced, as an experiment, in order to see what there was behind it, beneath it, against it, mixed up in it." Despite common belief, Dada was never a 'school', a 'current', or a 'style'. Dada's points of departure had been established before the war through Expressionism, Cubism, and Futurism, however Dada was more aggressive and uncompromising, with more interest in asserting the artist's state of mind than in the finished product as such, becoming in the true sense, Nothing. The Dadaists claimed Genius, committing only to the present, freeing one's self from all bonds of history and convention, confronting reality face to face and forming it after one's own image. Dada led to a new image of the artist, producing this new state of mind, and thus bringing a new self-awareness into modern art.

Hans Richter contributes on account of his own Dada experiences, making for a critical and historically compelling narrative. 'Dada: Art and Anti-Art' is not only the history of Dada and its players in this secret society, but a first-hand account of Dadaism and everything that it stood for (and didn't stand for). Incredibly informative, this book reads like a manual for the most serious student of Dada. "Art must first be totally despised, it must first be thought totally pointless, before it can once more come into its own." Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada...