"Dada Means Nothing."

(The titular quote is culled from Tristan Tzara's Dada Manifesto 1918.)

As discussed in the previous post, Dada remains relevant because the impetus (the mechanization of society, total warfare, desensitization through the mass media) for its creation remains unresolved at best, but this only accounts for its continued validity as a philosophical construct. From an aesthetic standpoint, Dada was considered fairly oblique even in its heyday.

Accordingly, most have tended to consider Dada aesthetically unsuited to today's artistic environment. These people, both now and in the time of Dada (1916-1926), believed that they were reacting to a unified Dada aesthetic, which, incidentally, doesn't exist (to again quote Tristan Tzara: "Dada was born of a need for independence, of a distrsut towards unity"). In reality, what they were reacting to was the aesthetic values of individuals within the Dada school. It is for this reason that Paul Dermee wrote "Dada is not a literary school nor an aesthetic doctrine." This is due to the fact that Dada had no unified aesthetic premise, but rather functioned as an artistic umbrella that represented a number of highly creative and societally dissident artists.

Not only is there not a unified aesthetic for Dada, there is not even a prevailing medium. That is to say, Dada scholars continue to debate about whether literature or visual art represents quintessential Dada art. Collage and painted works have become the most famous Dada works in retrospect. At the time, Dada reviews made poetry and manifestos perhaps the dominant form of Dada expression. However, Dada began in live performance.

Thus, Dada does not represent a rigidly defined and obscure aesthetic doctrine but rather a philosophical umbrella that offers a wide range of aesthetic freedom for contemporary dissedent artists. It is for this reason that Dada should be revived as an artistic movement.
-Richard P. Chandler