Elsa Bethanis - Dada & Surrealism For Beginners

For Beginners LLC
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Text Copyright: 2006 Elsa & Peter Bethanis
Illustrations and Cover: 2006 Joe Lee
Book Design: David Janik
Book Editing: Merrilee Warholak, Beau Friedlander and Lauren Buzzeo
Content Reviewer: Patrick Kinsman

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A For Beginners Documentary Comic Book
Copyright 2006

Cataloging-in-publication information is available from the Library of Congress.

eISBN: 978-1-939994-02-8

For Beginners and Beginners Documentary Comic Books are published
by For Beginners LLC.

v3.1

Then you may be ready to be a Dada or Surrealist.

To get started, lets assume the right mood, which requires some adjustment of your modern approach. So we will head to Zurich, Switzerland, in 1916.

Elsewhere in Europe, World War I is raging and Europe is a mess. So Zurich is filled with soldiers, refugees and revolutionaries, and people are frightened. Devastation of the war surrounds Switzerland, as does unimaginable suffering, and though it is safe for now, Zurich is terribly tense.

Now lets head down the street to the Dadas hangout,

JUST WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

The Dadas may or may not introduce themselves, depending on how bourgeois they find us, so heres an introduction:

HUGO BALL (German), the founder of the Cabaret Voltaire. A former theater director, hes seen the war (although he did not fight; he was rejected from military service on medical grounds), and hates it. A conscientious objector, hes an idealist and doesnt stay with the group long.

TRISTAN TZARA (Romanian), a student of literature and philosophy, whose adopted name means sad in country.

EMMY HENNINGS (German), actress, dancer, cabaret singer, expert forger, and Balls companion.

RICHARD HUELSENBECK (German), a medical student who was drafted and fled to Switzerland to study medicine.

HANS ARP (Alsatian) a painter, sculptor, and poet who later became a Surrealist. The author Gale writes that Arp gained some notoriety for a painting at a girls school that was considered corrupting to the students.

MARCEL JANCO (Romanian). Friend of Tzara and a student of architecture, he becomes known for his Dada masks.

And thats the original group. This is Balls venue, and hes promoting a Dada happening for this evening.

The Dadas enjoyed hijinx, irony, and paradoxthey posed the question of whether Dada is art or fire insurance, nothing or everything, art or anti-art?

Balls the one whos set up the cabaret, which has been going on for about three months now.

The Dadas claimed to know all about Enlightenment ideasReason. Rationality. Morality. The arts ennoble peoplethe arts are supposed to make people better human beings, right? But the Dadas looked around Europe and saw death, destruction, and inventions designed for the purposes of death and destruction.

Tzaras reaction is a state of mind that was common: many international youths and artists recognized this irrational response to the turbulent politics and war of the time.

The Dadas are young, passionate, and angry. They have a point: all this reasonable rational talk from the nice normal middle class buzzes around them while people are hung, hurting and still dying horrible deaths. The middle class is talking about God and country, flags and churches, while the devastation rages around them. Its crazy. But the middle class, if they know anything about Dada, think its nonsense.

So, if a group of clearly irrational people have decided that YOU are the one with a problem, maybe its better not to be like them at all. The Dadas prefer at this point to form their own identity, preferably as different from the middle class as possible. Maybe the irrational is better than the rational, given whats happening around Europe. Thats what the Dadas are talking about. Theyre sad and angry. They have resorted to tactics of shock and irony, and the irrational has become a frame of mind set in opposition to the devil machinery of World War I.