You've got until May 14 to go see the Dada exhibition at the National Gallery of Art (NGA), and to go back and see it again. It's phenomenal, the most extraordinary representation of the movement I've ever seen. Hands Down. I find the stuff fascinating, from its origins to its name to its artists to its art. It is understood to be a response to the incomprehensibility of World War I—the scale, stupidity, ugliness, horror, devastation, nearly 10 million killed—all of it so barbaric and unsettling that it required whole new way of understanding and expressing our selves.
That new way of thinking wasn't limited to art. At the same time Freud was blowing open the closets of our psyches. And women demanded the right to vote. And I don't know who else was at it at the time, but it's clear we needed new ways of interpreting everything. Nothing was safe from reexamination; everything was being turned upside down.
Dada chose a name for itself that defied definition. Its artists chose media never before used. They were defiant, arrogant, determined. NGA honors them by city: Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris. You can see how each community of artists had its own dialogue, and how they all screamed in chorus. The exhibition begins with footage of warfare and carnage from WWI and proceeds through years of artistic rebellion and soul searching. It includes the usual suspects, and also some of the lesser known. At least to me anyway. I'd never seen Hannah Höch's collages or needlework before. Now I want them commercialized in kits so I can mimic them myself. How they would hate me. But if Tristan Tzara is right, that we can make a Dadaist poem by butchering a newspaper, then I want to do it with everything.
Many of these artists were stopped in their tracks in the 1930s and 40s. Entartete Kunst attacked the Dadaists as well as the Impressionists, the Jews, the Socialists. Who knows what would have happened had these movements gone uninterrupted. Who know what genius was thwarted.
For a good twenty years, movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), 1984 (1956 (and 1984)), and more recently Westworld (1973) and Stepford Wives (1975) cautioned us against losing our identity, our uniqueness. And the sexual revolution taught us to reject convention and taboo. And the women's movement taught women (and men) to value our intelligence and take for granted our right to respect, and our right to choose, well, many things. Since then we're all trying harder and harder to fit in, and women are back to wearing back-busting stilettos and taking care of home and kids (albeit with pride). But the Dada exhibit wakes up that part of us that wants to fight to stay awake. So go. And remember.
In 1921, Man Ray wrote to Tristan Tzara, "Dada cannot live in New York. All New York is dada and will not tolerate a rival, will not notice dada." All cities should be so.
National Gallery of Art, National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets, Washington, DC, 202.737.4215
Bravo! Well done.
Posted by: tribeless | March 28, 2006 at 11:29 AM