Dada and its influence in Graphic design

 “I speak only of myself since I do not wish to convince, I have no right to drag others into my river, I oblige no one to follow me and everybody practices his art in his own way.” -Tristan Tzara

It all began after the poet Hugo Ball opened the Cabaret Voltaire Zurich, Switzerland. Tristan Tzara joined Hugo Ball, Jean Hans Arp and Richard Huelsenbeck. The Dada movement started around 1916 and lived by one rule which was “Never follow any known rules.” This movement began to spread around the world such as in France, Germany, U.S and Spain. Hugo Ball and his group invented the Dada because they opposed the war and the values that led to it and because the war didn’t make any sense to them. As a result they decided that neither their art should make sense in order to reflect their ideology in relation to the war.

As a matter of fact these artists managed to cause chaos as a result of World War 1 by creating unexpected pieces of art. The Dadaists created their art from common objects but refused to accept that common things also have beauty. Such artists include Marcel Duchamp who managed to create and display a urinal fountain, and also made fun of one of the major artists of all time by modifying the Mona Lisa.

Dada’s use of photomontage and typography had a great influence on Graphic Design. In this image  below a good example of layout and typography is being used. Here one can see the use of bold and thick san serif fonts and the use of white space. The typefaces are set in vertical, horizontal and diagonal and here the Dadaist experimented with line spacing and letter spacing. 

"Dadadegie" by Baader and Hausmann 1919

On the other hand, this image below is showing a good example of the use of photomontage. The Dadaist manage to give a different meaning to their art even if they cut and paste words and pictures from other media sources.

 

ABCD (Self-portrait) A photomontage from 1923–24

References

Esaak, S. (2014). What Dada Was and Why It Matters. [online] About. Available at: http://arthistory.about.com/cs/arthistory10one/a/dada.htm [Accessed 2 Nov. 2014].