I’ve done plenty of searching and research, but I’ve never really been able to get a firm grasp on what the dada movement and Dadaism is.
I keep coming across it in terms of music (say, the work of Frank Zappa, and the non-political lyrics of System Of A Down), but I’m aware its roots lie elsewhere.
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Dada is a movement of conceptual art which is sort of a “rebellion against art.” It rejects the established ‘rules’ of art, flouting them with anarchic defiance, and it rejects/critiques/ridicules the culture which exists around art, including both the consumerist culture of popular art and the elitist, academic culture of ‘high’ art. A lot of Dada art carries an implicit, confrontational spirit of “hey, art viewer. there’s no deeper meaning in here, and you’re a pretentious a-hole for thinking there is.”
Of course, there’s some irony in the idea of using art to express these ‘anti-art’ sentiments. Playing with that irony is part of the deal.
Dada is a celebration of meaninglessness, and a rejection of everything that previous artistic traditions deemed meaningful.
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