Anti-Art? Dada and Anarchy

Anti-Art? Dada and Anarchy Daniela Padularosa Although Dadaism has often professed its apolitical bedrock, it was strictly bound to the political thought of its time. The artistic revolution carried out by the historical Avant-gardes of the 1910s-1930s – and particularly by Zurich Dadaism – in its desire for a political revolution proved to be deeply committed to social aims. Dadaist artists were first and foremost convinced pacifists and socialists. During the pre-Dadaist period some important Swiss socio-political and literary magazines, such as “Der Revoluzzer”, “Der Mistral”, and “Sirius”, did play an important role as haven for all those alternative artists and intellectuals opposed to the First World War. Most of them exceled through political activities and joined clubs with clear anarchist leanings, such as Fritz Brupbacher’s circle inspired by Russian classical anarchic thought. Yet, with the foundation of the Cabaret Voltaire, Dadaist artists dissociated from any political activity and transformed the political concept of anarchy into an aesthetic and linguistic practice stressing its spiritual and moral importance. Based on the “destruction” of the traditional work of art and on the “re-montage” of a new one Dadaist aesthetic principles and art practices made fruitful Bakunin’s notion of the new society emerging from the enthusiastic destruction of the former order. On the one hand Dadaists followed this ubiquitous stylistic notion of anarchy by renouncing traditional forms of art and by tricking them in the name of a new artistic and linguistic freedom. On the other hand they were looking for a primitive, original and uncorrupted art, which was supposed to be closer to the spiritual and ‘holy’ sense of life. Outcome of this relationship between anarchist thought and a new spirituality some Dada artists discovered through their language experiments a new and original bond between political (or social) freedom and spiritual (or internal) freedom within language itself. Side by side with abstract art and Futurism, and strongly influenced by Nietzsche as well as by Mauthner’s critique of language, Dadaists longed for the emancipation of humanity through the liberation of language from its “filth” and “conventionality”. Whereas Mauthner believed in the power of poetic language, Dada poetry assumed a creative, liberating and almost therapeutic purpose of the freed language. This freedom in Dadaism came along with Dionysian elements causing ecstasy and ravish. But also the absurd, the nonsense had its place in Dadaism oscillating between a political anarcho-libertarian gesture and a religious event. With that, the artist became the herald of new linguistic and social values, a vanguard prophet boosted by anarchic notions.