The Origins, and non-origins, of DADA

The origins, meanings, and beginnings of Dada are shrouded in DADA mystery. The following will alternate published (and on-the-record) Dada origin stories with Dadaismyname’s completely accurate/non-accurate/dadaDadaDADA information on how Dada came about and is still coming...

'”Dada means nothing. We want to change the world with nothing.”

(Richard Huelsenbeck)

The word Dada came from a fourth-wave café in 2030 that served coffee with Dada written in the froth (Dadaismyname)

“A word was born, no one knows how, DADA DADA we swore friendship on the new transmutation, which means nothing and was the most tremendous protestation, the most intense affirmation salvation army freedom oath mass combat speed prayer tranquillity guerrilla private negation and chocolate of the desperate.” (Tristan Tzara)

Dada came when the world came (Dadaismyname)

“It was in the interplay of opposites, whether ideas or people, that the essence of Dada consisted.” (Hans Richter)

Dada, means sitting on a chair reading nursery rhymes and chanting profound words (Dadaismyname)

“Dada is like your hopes: nothing
like your paradise: nothing
like your idols: nothing
like your heroes: nothing
like your artists: nothing
like your religions: nothing”

(Francis Picabia)

I named Dada Dada in 1898, before I was born, while on a surfing trip to the West Indies (Dadaismyname)

“distended arc of my heart typewriter for the stars

who told you = broken foam of prodigious clock-sadnesses

offers you a word that cannot be found in Larousse

and wants to be your equal”

(Tristan Tzara, from his poem, Flake house)

Dada is like a dream with cold water that becomes warm and hot and cold (Dadaismyname)

“There is nothing odd about the fact that I chose DADA as the title of my magazine in 1916; I was with some friends, and I was looking in a dictionary for a word that fitted in with the sonorities of every language; it was almost dark when a green hand planted its ugliness on that page of Larousse – pointing with precision at Dada – my choice was made, I lit a cigarette and drank a black coffee. Because DADA was not meant to say anything or give any explanation for this growth of relativism that is neither a dogma nor a school, but a constellation of free individuals and facets.” (Tristan Tzara)

I came up with the concept of Dada in 1662 while sitting in my chamber with my chambermaid, bored (Dadaismyname)

“Tzara is badgering us about publishing a periodical. My suggestion that we call it Dada has been accepted.” (Hugo Ball)

 

Dada is all around us but barely anyone has the courage to see him/her her/him (Dadaismyname)

“According to the poet Huelsenbeck, he and Hugo Ball discovered the word by chance in a Larousse German-French dictionary, while they were looking for a stage name for a singer in the cabaret.” (from the book, DADA The REVOLT of ART by Marc Dachy)

Dada came about in response to the appeal ‘buy one get one free!’ (Dadaismyname)

“Marcel Janco claimed that Tristan Tzara had found the name in the dictionary, and that the group had immediately accepted it unanimously. ‘It was accepted,’ he explained, ‘because it represented that feeling of naivete, that sense of purity, of natural art, intuitive art’.” (from the book, DADA The REVOLT of ART by Marc Dachy)

Turn on the water and you will find Dada (Dadaismyname)

 

To quote Dona Budd's The Language of Art Knowledge,

Dada was born out of negative reaction to the horrors of the First World War. This international movement was begun by a group of artists and poets associated with the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich. Dada rejected reason and logic, prizing nonsense, irrationality and intuition. The origin of the name Dada is unclear; some believe that it is a nonsensical word. Others maintain that it originates from the Romanian artists Tristan Tzara's and Marcel Janco's frequent use of the words "da, da," meaning "yes, yes" in the Romanian language. Another theory says that the name "Dada" came during a meeting of the group when a paper knife stuck into a French–German dictionary happened to point to 'dada', a French word for 'hobbyhorse'.[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dada

Dada is the bottom scoop on a double-scoop ice-cream while being the cone and the top scoop (Dadaismyname)

There is no consensus on the origin of the movement's name; a common story is that the German artist Richard Huelsenbeck slid a paper knife (letter-opener) at random into a dictionary, where it landed on "dada", a colloquial French term for a hobby horse. Others note that it suggests the first words of a child, evoking a childishness and absurdity that appealed to the group. Still others speculate that the word might have been chosen to evoke a similar meaning (or no meaning at all) in any language, reflecting the movement's internationalism.[11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dada

Dada – like your grandparents, parents, dog, cousins, table, computer, and river – just needed to be named to be (Dadaismyname)

This new, irrational art movement would be named Dada. It got its name, according to Richard Huelsenbeck, a German artist living in Zurich, when he and Ball came upon the word in a French-German dictionary. To Ball, it fit. “Dada is ‘yes, yes’ in Rumanian, ‘rocking horse’ and ‘hobby horse’ in French,” he noted in his diary. “For Germans it is a sign of foolish naiveté, joy in procreation, and preoccupation with the baby carriage.” Tzara, who later claimed that he had coined the term, quickly used it on posters, put out the first Dada journal and wrote one of the first of many Dada manifestoes, few of which, appropriately enough, made much sense.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/dada-115169154/