The scream that silenced Europe: When dada declared war on art
The night of February 5, 1916, reeks of stale tobacco and spilled beer in the Cabaret Voltaire, a small Zurich establishment crowded with refugees, deserters, and artists in flight. Among them, a man dressed in a cubist costume made of cardboard and aluminum foil steps toward the stage. Hugo Ball, the venue’s founder, settles at the piano and begins reciting words that aren’t words: "gadji beri bimba glandridi laula lonni cadori." His voice rises, cracks, becomes a liturgical chant, then the cry of a wounded beast. In the audience, some laugh, others cover their ears. No one understands. No one is meant to. That night, in this cabaret lost in the heart of a Europe in flames, Dada is born.
By Artedusa
••9 min readThis movement, later called anti-art, is not mere provocation. It is a bomb hurled at the heart of a world that has lost all meaning. World War I rages, millions die in the trenches, and the artists gathered in Zurich refuse to take part in this madness. They no longer want to create beauty. They want to scream. And their cry—this "dada," which means nothing—will shake the very foundations of art.
01Switzerland, refuge for madmen and geniuses
Zurich in 1916 is a strange city. Neutral, it draws those fleeing the war: conscientious objectors, anarchists, poets, painters. Among them, Tristan Tzara, a sharp-eyed 20-year-old Romanian who arrives with a suitcase full of poems and a visceral hatred for convention. There is also Marcel Janco, a Romanian architect sculpting African masks in his studio, and Hans Arp, an Alsatian drawing organic forms as if nature itself dictated his lines.
Why Switzerland? Because it is the only place where one can still breathe. In Paris, Berlin, or Vienna, artists are mobilized, galleries close, and art becomes an obscene luxury. In Zurich, by contrast, people can still gather, drink, smoke, and, above all, mock everything. The Cabaret Voltaire, opened by Ball and his partner Emmy Hennings—a former prostitute turned singer—becomes the headquarters of this rebellion. They host evenings blending poetry, music, theater, and absurdity. They play piano with hammers, recite texts in German, French, and Romanian, sometimes in an invented language. They dance, drink, laugh, but beneath this apparent lightness lies a simmering anger.
For Dada was not born of boredom. It was born of rage. Rage against the war, against governments sending young men to be slaughtered, against intellectuals justifying this butchery. "Reason has failed," Ball writes in his journal. "We must find a new form of expression, one uncontaminated by bourgeois logic." And that new form would be the absurd.
02Absurdity as a weapon: when words lose their meaning
Picture a concert hall. On stage, a man in a clown costume bangs on pots with a wooden spoon. Beside him, a woman reads a newspaper upside down, while a third artist shouts random numbers. This is a Dada evening. No melody, no rhythm, no meaning. Just noise.
The Dadaists understood something essential: if the world has gone mad, then art must be mad too. They reject lyrical poetry, figurative painting, traditional theater. Instead, they invent new forms: sound poetry, where words are reduced to sounds; collage, where images cut from magazines are assembled into visual monsters; the ready-made, where an everyday object (a urinal, a bicycle wheel) becomes art by the artist’s sheer will.
Take Hugo Ball’s "Karawane." It is not a text but an incantation. "Jolifanto bambla ô falli bambla / grossiga m’pfa habla horem / egiga goramen." These words have no meaning, and that is precisely their power. They free language from its utilitarian function and turn it into a tool of rebellion. Similarly, Hannah Höch’s collages, like "Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada," assemble images of politicians, soldiers, and women in grotesque poses, creating a visual satire of unparalleled violence.
But absurdity is not just provocation. It is also resistance. By refusing to give meaning to their works, the Dadaists refuse to participate in the system. They do not want to be understood; they want to be felt. And sometimes, that emotion is so strong it becomes unbearable.
03Marcel Duchamp and the art of scandal: when a urinal becomes a masterpiece
On April 9, 1917, a letter arrives at the Society of Independent Artists in New York. Signed "R. Mutt," it requests the exhibition of a work titled "Fountain." The piece in question is a white porcelain urinal, flipped upside down and signed with this mysterious pseudonym.
The Society of Independent Artists, which prides itself on accepting all works without jury, nonetheless refuses to exhibit "Fountain." Too provocative, too vulgar, too… anti-art. Marcel Duchamp, hiding behind this "R. Mutt," resigns in protest. The scandal erupts immediately. Newspapers seize the story, critics are outraged, and Duchamp smiles. For this is exactly what he wanted: to show that art is not about beauty or technique, but about choice.
"Fountain" is not a work; it is a question. A question posed to all those who still believe art must be noble, elevated, spiritual. Duchamp answers: what if art were just a game? What if any object could become art simply because an artist decided it was so?
This idea—the ready-made—will revolutionize art history. It paves the way for conceptual art, where the idea outweighs execution, and for contemporary art, where anything can become a work. But in 1917, no one yet grasps the scope of this provocation. No one, except perhaps a woman, a German artist exiled in New York, who had the same idea months earlier.
04Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven: the baroness who invented anti-art
She is called Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, but everyone knows her as "the Baroness." Born in 1874 in Germany, she fled an unhappy marriage to become an artist, poet, and performer. In New York, she strolls dressed in tin cans, metal spoons, and feathers, a dead rat pinned to her hat. She is eccentric, provocative, and, above all, ahead of her time.
In 1917, months before Duchamp submitted "Fountain," the Baroness buys a plumbing trap in a New York hardware store. She names it "God" and presents it as a work of art. No one takes her seriously. No one, except perhaps Duchamp, who moves in the same circles.
Today, art historians wonder if Duchamp was influenced by the Baroness. If "Fountain" was not, in fact, a response to "God." But at the time, no one speaks of her. Women artists are relegated to the background, and the Baroness, with her eccentricities and rejection of convention, is dismissed as a madwoman. She dies in poverty in 1927, never recognized for her genius.
Yet it is she, more than Duchamp, who embodies the Dada spirit. A woman who refused the roles society assigned her, who turned her life into a work of art, and who understood, before anyone else, that art was not about gender, class, or talent, but about freedom.
05Berlin, 1920: when Dada declared war on society
If Zurich is Dada’s cradle, Berlin is its battlefield. In 1920, the city is in chaos. The war is over, but Germany lies in ruins. Inflation soars, unemployment spreads, and shell-shocked veterans wander the streets. It is in this context that Berlin’s Dadaists launch their offensive.
Unlike their Zurich counterparts, who favor the absurd and poetry, Berlin’s Dadaists are political. They want to destroy bourgeois society, and they use art as a weapon. George Grosz draws caricatures of bloated capitalists and bloodthirsty generals. John Heartfield creates photomontages superimposing images of politicians and war machines. Raoul Hausmann invents the "optophonetic poem," where words are replaced by shouts and noises.
In June 1920, they organize the "First International Dada Fair," an exhibition that sparks scandal. Mannequins dressed in military uniforms, posters calling for revolution, works blending painting, collage, and text—all provoke outrage. The press is indignant, the police threaten to intervene, but the Dadaists don’t care. They know they’ve struck a nerve.
Yet this radicalism comes at a cost. By 1922, the movement fractures. Some, like Grosz and Heartfield, join the Communist Party. Others, like Hausmann and Höch, prefer to remain independent. And Tristan Tzara, who left Zurich for Paris, quarrels with André Breton, the future pope of surrealism. Dada is dead, but its spirit lives on.
06The legacy of Dada: when the absurd becomes the norm
Today, more than a century after its birth, Dada is everywhere. In Marina Abramović’s performances, pushing the body to its limits. In Barbara Kruger’s collages, using advertising images to critique consumer society. In Damien Hirst’s ready-mades, displaying dead animals in formaldehyde. In Yoko Ono’s happenings, inviting the public to participate in the work.
But Dada is not just an artistic movement. It is an attitude. A way of seeing the world with irony, with anger, with despair sometimes, but always with absolute freedom. The Dadaists understood something essential: if art cannot change the world, it can at least make it a little more bearable.
And perhaps that is Dada’s greatest lesson. In a world that often seems absurd, art need not be beautiful, noble, or even comprehensible. It only needs to be true. To be a scream, a provocation, a question. To be, as Tristan Tzara said, "a protest with the fists of one’s whole being in destructive action."
So the next time you see a work of art that seems incomprehensible, provocative, or simply stupid, remember Dada. Remember these artists who, in 1916, decided to smash everything to rebuild it. And ask yourself: what if that is true freedom?