Artists’ Corner-In The
Aftermath Of World War I- Dada Takes A Stab At Visually Understanding The World
After the Bloodbath
By Lenny Lynch
I don’t know that much
about the Dada movement that swept through Europe in the early part of the 20th
century in response to the creation of modern industrial society that was going
full steam and the modern industrial scale death and destruction brought upon
this good green earth by World War I. The war to end all wars which came up
quite short of that goal but did decimate the flower of the European youth,
including vast swaths of the working class. I don’t know much but this space
over this centennial year of the last year of the bloody war, the armistice
year 1918 which stopped the bloodletting will explore that interesting art
movement which reflected the times, the bloody times.
Step up George Groz,
step up and show your stuff, show how you see the blood-lusted world after four
years of burning up the fields of sweet earth Europe making acres of white-crossed
places where the sullen, jaded, mocked, buried youth of Europe. Take one look Republican Automatons. Look at the urban
environment, look at those tall buildings dwarfing mere mortal man and woman, taking
the measure of all, making them think, the thinking ones about having to run, run
hard away from what they had built, about fearful that to continue would bury
men and women without names, without honor either.
Look too at honor denied,
look at the handless hand, the legless leg, the good German flag, the Kaiser’s bloody
medal, hard against the urban sky. The shaky republic, the republic without
honor, shades of the murders of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, thoughts of renegade
burned out soldiers ready for anything. Weimar would shake and one George Groz would
know that, would draw this picture that would tell the real story of why there
was a Dada-da-da-da-da movement to chronicle if not fight against that beast
from which we had to run.
