Dadaist Research Paper

aDadaism was a cultural protest movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1916. It was conceived as a rebellion against traditional social values, especially reason and logic, which the Dadaists saw as being morally bankrupt and which had led the world into the destructiveness of World War I. Their answer was to embrace anarchy and the irrational. By seeking the destruction of a flawed value system, they believed they could build a new one guided by a more humane outlook.
The movement began in 1916 when Hugo Ball recited the first Dadaist manifesto at the Café Voltaire in Zurich. They declared that they had lost confidence in culture and vowed to destroy the existing order and reconstruct it. The Dadaists embarked on their crusade by trying to shock the public by constructing offensive or outrageous works of art and literature. They expressed themselves with creations that were “anti-art”, meaning that they ignored aesthetics, had no underlying meaning, and sought to offend.
The most influential Dadaist artist was the French sculptor Marcel Duchamp. He exhibited what he called ready-mades, or common objet that he would submit as works of art, such as bicycle wheels or a birdcage. His intent was to ridicule the idea that art had to convey some profound message. Duchamp’s most famous work was Fountain, a urinal. It was rejected by the art community when Duchamp first showed it in 1917. But it later became celebrated as a brilliant reflection of the Dadaist movement. In 2004, it won a British prize as “the most influential work of modern