Dadaism

Dadaism is a radical avant-garde movement that arose in 1916 in Zurich as a revolt against the meaninglessness of the First World War, bourgeois culture, logic, and traditional art. The Dadaists professed anti-art, épatage, absurdity, chance, and the destruction of form and sense; they created collages and 'poems from a hat' (from randomly drawn words), proclaiming the negation of all aesthetic and social norms. The origin of the name is uncertain; a popular account holds that it is the French word 'dada' ('hobby horse'), found at random in a dictionary. Its founders are Tristan Tzara, Hugo Ball, and Hans Arp. Dadaism did not last long but prepared the ground for Surrealism and all subsequent avant-garde. Its rebellious, destructive spirit and its play with absurdity and chance typologically echo some of the radical experiments of the Ukrainian avant-garde of the 1920s — the Futurists led by Mykhail Semenko, who likewise broke traditional norms of versification and shocked the public.