Laura Gascoigne on the Pompidou Centre’s massive survey of Dada
Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism: it’s funny how many names of modern art movements originated as insults on the lips of critics. Not Dada, though. The founders of art’s first anartism were ahead of the game, pre-emptively christening their movement with a silly name designed to put any critic off his stroke.
The many derivations since attributed to the word ‘dada’ are missing the point, which is that, as founder Dadaist Tristan Tzara plainly stated, ‘Dada does not mean anything.’ Dada was a nickname given to a war baby born in 1916 at the Café Voltaire in Zurich and brought up by a Bohemian riff-raff of bachelor uncles — and the odd aunt — who encouraged it to misbehave. But the movement’s fundamental aims were serious. For the group of young pacifist writers and artists who adopted the name as an artistic protest against the horrors of the first world war, Dada was also a manifesto — the first and most succinct of many — declaring the founders’ radical intention to throw all capitalism’s precious art toys out of the cot.
My, how baby has grown! Who would have guessed that less than a century later it would be given the run of Europe’s premier museum of modern art, occupying the top floor of the Pompidou Centre with 1,000 works by 50 artists? The first major survey of Dada since the 1966 exhibition at the old Musée National d’Art Moderne, Dada at the Pompidou Centre (until 9 January 2006) is a blockbuster and a half.
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