Berlin is Dada, we are all Dada !

Revolution in Berlin in 1920

From the blog of Philippe CADIOU

1920: international Dada fair in Berlin. A moment of grace in the twentieth century. After this push up, the Dada effect will dissolve, except for the artists who will be involved: George Grosz, Hannah Höch (the Dadasophe), John Heartfield, Franz Jung, Walter Mehring, Erwin Piscator, Richard Huelsenbeck , Raoul Hausmann (the Dadasophe), Carl Einstein, Hans Arp, Max Ernst (the Dadamax), Johannes Baader, Walter Serner, Wieland Herzfeld, Kurt Schwitters ... of which so little is known today.

Picasso discovers art as a creative revolution in the context of painting - his work revolves around an empty nucleus that always requires starting from scratch and moving in new directions. Dada artists have also discovered art as a creative revolution by exploding the general framework of the aesthetic tradition, art as a whole becomes an empty nucleus that needs to start from scratch and seek new uses of art and, for instance, directly reach life: to transform life into art. A revolution explodes inside the frame, a revolution explodes out of frame. Should we not see that the two movements belong to the same story instead of opposing them?

How does art in the twentieth end by identifying with the creative revolution? Science ? Politics ? A creative revolution is the encounter of a creative idea and a field of experience to be reinvented within a life. Imagine that these lives are gathered around the same idea, the creative revolution enters into a multiple field.

Just as the genius of the unconscious, the creative revolution is anonymous. It does not matter if there is such and such a name in the history of art and that -surprisingly enough- . an astonishing religion of the creative personality emerges:  "Glory is a scandal," said rightly Arthur Craven. Let us say that he who leaves his name in art or in science is the one who has essentially captured the direction of the creative revolution of his time.  (...)

The fact that in Berlin 1920, this amazing encounters of thoughts took place, which would be the center of the creative insurrections of the twentieth century, marks our history and show the proximity of the political question to art. For the creative revolution cannot be entirely monopolized by technology insofar as technology creates no truth for man. It is from the side of poetry that a truth alone is said which will affect and radically change our lives.

By Philippe Cadiou, 2016  

Written originally in French, my own translation, sorry if there are mistakes.