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 20^th 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.