Dada Quotes

“Dada was not a fashion, a style, or a doctrine.”

“We, the founders of Dada-movement try to give 'time' its own reflection in the mirror.”

“Dada aimed to destroy the reasonable deceptions of man and recover the natural and unreasonable order.”

“[ Tinguely is a] Meta-Dadaist... [who had] fulfilled certain ideas of ours, notably the idea of motion.”

“Dada is an utterly a-religious attitude, like that of the scientist with his eye stuck on his microscope.”

“[Dada would] take away from art its pricelessness and make of it a new and engaging diversion, pastime, even dissipation.”

“There is a difference between sitting quietly in Switzerland [Dada in Zurich] and bedding down on a vulcano, as we did in Berlin.”

“[N]ever has a group disposed of such equipment for saying nothing, and never has a group gone to such lengths to reach the public and bring nothing.”

“In the good times of Dada, we detested polished works, the distracted air of spiritual struggle, the titans, and we rejected them with all out being.”

“I did exhibitions with the Surrealists [in Paris, circa 1929] because their attitude revolted against 'art' and their attitude toward life itself was wise, as was Dada's.”

“Let's transplant the primitive soul to the ultramodern New York, inject his soul with the noise of the subway, of the 'el'', and may his brain become a long street of buildings 224 stories high.”

“Dada remains within the framework of European weaknesses, it's still shit, but from now on we want to shit in different colors so as to adorn the zoo of art with all the flags of all the consulates...”

“Dada doubts everything. Dada is an armadillo. Everything is Dada, too. Beware of Dada. Anti-dadaism is a disease: selfkleptomania, man's normal condition, is Dada. But the real dada's are against Dada.”

“Dada is irony. (Katherine Dreier)
Dada is 'nothing'. (Marcel Duchamp)
Dada is a 'state of mind'. (Man Ray)
Dada is having a good time. (Stella)”

“Dada exhibition. Another one! What's the matter with everyone wanting to make a museum piece out of Dada? Dada was a bomb... can you imagine anyone, around half a century after a bomb explodes, wanting to collect the pieces, sticking it together and displaying it?”

“Our cabaret 'Cabaret Voltaire' is a gesture.. .Every word that is spoken and sung here says at least this one thing: that this humiliating age has not succeeded in winning our respect.”

“'Dada is political'
'Dadaist man is the radical opponent of exploitation'
'DADA is the voluntary destruction of the bourgeois world of ideas'
'Dada kicks you in the behind and you like it'
'Come to Dada if you like to be embraced and embarassad'
'Dada, Dada über alles'”

“the streams buck like rams in a tent
whips crack and from the hills come the crookedly combed
shadows of the shepherds.
black eggs and fools' bells fall from the trees.
thunder drums and kettledrums beat upon the ears of the donkeys.
wings brush against flowers.
fountains spring up in the eyes of the wild boar.”

“Dada hurts. Dada does not jest, for the reason that it was experienced by revolutionary men and not by philistines who demand that art be a decoration for the mendacity of their own emotions.. .I am firmly convinced that all art will become dadaistic in the course of time, because from Dada proceeds the perpetual urge for its renovation.”

“Only a radical cleaning of social and artistic life as, in the domain of art, is already done by Dada, which is anti-sentimental and healthy to the core, since it is anti-art. Only unscrupulously striking down any systematically bred amateurism in any field, can prepare civilization for the New Vision's happiness which is greatly and purely alive in a dew people.”