Reciting Shells. Dada and, Dada in & Dadaists on the First World War

Abstract Dada's origin is generally associated with the protest movement against the First World War, yet scholarship on this issue is relatively thin. An examination of a few key Dada figures (Tzara, Ball, Huelsen- beck, Arp) and some artists that have been associated with the movement (Van Doesburg, Feis, Van Ostaijen, Vaché) indicates that the Dadaists were by no means pacifists, though they were alarmed and disgusted by the Great War. Whether they asked for a real, political (communist) revolution or an artistic-spiritual one, their rhetoric and iconography were heavily drenched in violence.