Shaun Hadnett
posted 18 April 2007

A simultaneous sense of excitement and desolation is provided by the collection of Dada art and 'reviews' currently on show at the Dean Gallery in Edinburgh. This sense is captured in the very layout of the German reviews Der Blutige Ernst and Der Artz that spoke to radicalised yet defeated Germans in Berlin in 1919.

A few display cases away, the pacifist anger of Cabaret Voltaire artwork produced in the comparative sanctuary of Zurich in 1916 is displayed. A documentary print of Marcel Duchamp’s inverted urinal 'Fountain' has a clear place in one of the exhibition’s centre units. That mundane art object seems to spray an historical message via optimistic New York in spring 1917 that world recycling would be the future reward for sacrifice and victory in global war.

Furious wit and intelligence were the mainstays of Dada art in a period where militaristic activity seemed to prove that the machine could dominate humanity. Other material on display such as the publications Cannibale and Proverbe from Paris between 1920 and 1922 shows the disarray of Dada artists as they tried to stay human in a post-Versailles world, but dehumanised their cultural opponents through using crude ape-like imagery to represent them.

Wider society provoked Dada artists to make their art more complete despite the backdrop of war. To these experimentalists art could no longer be understood in isolation from society, so a new idea of performance art was being tested.

It was in Berlin that some of the most important experimental art was produced. The exhibition has examples of Kurt Schwitter’s 'Merz' art including text and pictures. Questions of leadership and meaning in the art world and broader society permeated the 1920s. A closer examination of Kurt Schwitter’s recorded sound poems such as 'Ursonate Part 3; Scherzo', (not available at the Dean Gallery, but at www.ubu.com) has that artist pursuing a new type of expression through fusing nineteenth century German song structures, twentieth century recording techniques and himself as performer. The desperate lack of resonance for Schwitter’s 'Merz' output is not surprising given that Germany was already cast as the ultimate pariah state following World War One. Hugo Ball’s demand from Zurich in 1916 for a beautiful art proclaiming the virtues of international peace had become an anguished plea for humanist understanding by the early 1920s in Schwitter’s Berlin.

The feeble attempt in Schwitter’s art to move modernity away from war has counterpoint in the Parisian project to overthrow language itself. This is exemplified in Dada publications on display such as Proverbe from 1921 and 1922. Artists such as Francis Picabia used those journals to promote the idea of automatic writing. Individual human control of language was being surrendered to outmoded spiritualist nonsense by confused Dada practitioners.

The exhibition also displays originals of the occasional journal 391 and the even more occasional Dada magazines. Andre Breton’s retreat from realism and Tristan Tzara’s nihilist approach to the world found voice in these publications. Mysticism damped the Dada attempt to reach truth in art. That intelligent and privileged artists gave in to the forces of hokum during the 1920s shows how terrifying that decade was, whether in triumphant New York or humiliated Berlin.

This exhibition reminds the visitor that an exhilarating time in the modern past was argued over by artists who were trying to be more complete humans, not just producers of ornament. The attempts of the Dada artists to influence society reverberated all too slightly. The display rooms’ modest proportions within the Dean Gallery realise this.

The value of this exhibition is to cast another light onto the watery pop-punk nihilism that drenches early 21st century consciousness. The meaning of Dada art in 2007 is surely that a future of sorts is still being made and we should ask more of that than re-arranging the Surrealism and Futurism of yesterday. The exhibition seems to say we have comparative peace in the developed world, so let’s produce better art for today and tomorrow.

Till 30 April 2007. Free.