Dada: Art and the Discourse of Advertising

The Dada movement's employment of advertising, though readily apparent and frequently noted, is often seen as a simple satire of bourgeois consumer culture, a parody that targets advertising itself. This article presents a more historically informed account of the use of advertising in the Dada movement. After demonstrating similarities between the Dadaists' advertising strategies and those advocated by advertising theorists and practitioners of the time, the article shows how Dadaists used advertising to intervene in ongoing debates about art and commerce, pitting themselves against both expressionist artists who struck a noncommercial pose and cultural reformers who argued for a synthesis of art and industry.