Monthly Archives: June 2008

Richard Huelsenbeck (1920)
En Avant Dada: A History of Dadaism
From En Avant Dada: Eine Geschichte des Dadaismus, 1920
(reprinted in Art and Social Change, Will Bradley and Charles Esche, eds., London: Tate, 2007, pp. 61-68)

From the First German Dadaist Manifesto, written by Huelsenbeck:

“Art in its execution and direction is dependent on the time in which it lives, and artists are creatures of their epoch. The highest art will be that which in its conscious content presents the thousandfold problems of the day, the art which has been visibly shattered by the explosions of last week, which is forever trying to collect its limbs after yesterday’s crash. The best and most extraordinary artists will be those who every hour snatch the tatters of their bodies out of the frenzied cataract of life, who, with bleeding hands and hearts, hold fast to the intelligence of their time.” [62]

[That is: art – and artists – as an expression of their times, in and of and bearing witness to the moment. This is opposed, specifically to the ethereal idealism of the German Expressionists, but also to the absurdity of the Zurich Dadaists]

“Hatred of the press, hatred of advertising, hatred of sensations, are typical of people who prefer their armchair to the noise of the street, and who even make it a point of pride to be swindled by every small-time profiteer. That sentimental resistance to the times, which are neither better or worse, neither more reactionary nor more revolutionary than other times, that weak-kneed resistance, flirting with prayers and incense when it does not prefer to load its cardboard cannon with Attic iambics, is the quality of youth who never knew how to be young.” [62-63]

[Again, an argument against purity and isolation: an Avant Garde which is very much of the present]

And later, not part of the manifesto:

“The Dadaist, as the psychological man, has brought back his gaze from the distance and considers it important to have shoes that fit and a suit without holes in it.” [64]

“While Tzara was still writing: ‘Dada ne signifie rien’ (Dada means nothing), in Germany Dada lost its art-for-art’s-sake character with its very first move.” [63]

William Morris (1891)
“The Socialist Ideal: Art”
New Review, January 1891
(reprinted in Art and Social Change, Will Bradley and Charles Esche, eds., London: Tate, 2007, pp. 47-52)

“…I assert that socialism is an all-embracing theory of life, and that as it has an ethic and a religion of its own, so also it has an aesthetic: so that to everyone who wishes to study socialism duly it is necessary to look on it from the aesthetic point of view.” [47]

[That is: socialism is more than an economic or political system, it is also a way of seeing and creating. One might extend this idea (though Morris does not) to argue that just as socialism engenders an aesthetic an esthetic may engender socialism. In the rest of the essay Morris criticizes “utilitarian brutality” of Victorian capitalism]

“For in fact, considering the relation of the modern world to art, our business is now, and for long will be, not so much attempting to produce definite art, as rather clearing the ground to give arts its opportunity.” [52]

[That is: part of the artist’s job is top change social conditions in order for art to flourish. Given this person is an artist, and art is their tool of choice and expertise, it’s a bit of a necessary Catch 22]