“Dada is not at all modern. It is more in the nature of a return to an almost Buddhist religion of indifference. Dada covers things with an artificial gentleness, a snow of butterflies released from the head of a prestidigitator. Dada is immobility and does not comprehend the passions.”

— Tristan Tzara

1920s, Lecture on Dada', 1922

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Dada is not at all modern. It is more in the nature of a return to an almost Buddhist religion of indifference. Dada co…" by Tristan Tzara?

Tristan Tzara 19

Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performa… 1896–1963

Related quotes

“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.”

Richard Huelsenbeck (1892–1974) German poet

Quote of Huelsenbeck, in 'Dada Lives', Transition no. 25 (Autumn 1936), as cited in The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology, ed. Robert Motherwell (1951)

“You will often hear that Dada is a state of mind. You may be gay, sad, afflicted, joyous, melancholy or Dada. Without being literary, you can be romantic, you can be dreamy, weary, eccentric, a businessman, skinny, transfigured, vain, amiable or Dada… Dada is here, there and a little everywhere, such as it is, with its faults, with its personal differences and distinctions which it accepts and views with indifference.”

Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist

1920s, Lecture on Dada', 1922

“The Cubists want to cover Dada with snow; that may surprise you, but it is so, they want to empty the snow from their pipe to bury DaDa.
Are you sure?
Positively sure, the facts are revealed by grotesque mouths. They think that Dada can prevent them from practicing this odious trade: Selling art expensively.
Art costs more than sausages, more than women, more than everything.
Art is visible like God (see Saint-Sulpice).
Art is a pharmaceutical product for imbeciles.
The table turns thanks to spirit; the paintings and other works of arts are like strong-box tables, the spirit is inside and becomes more and more
inspired according to the auction prices.
Farce, farce, farce, farce, farce, my dear friends.”

Francis Picabia (1879–1953) French painter and writer

In 'DADA manifesto 1920'; as quoted in Manifesto: A Century of Isms, ed. Mary Ann Caws, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001, nr. 9.16 Francis Picabia, p 318
1920's

“Mama does everything for the baby, who responds by saying Dada first.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

“How does one achieve eternal bliss? By saying dada. How does one become famous? By saying dada. With a noble gesture and delicate propriety. Till one goes crazy. Till one loses consciousness. How can one get rid of everything that smacks of journalism, worms, everything nice and right, blinkered, moralistic, europeanised, enervated? By saying dada..”

Hugo Ball (1886–1927) German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists

1916, Dada Manifesto (1916)

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

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Quoted in: Anna Moszynska, Abstract Art, Thames and Hudson, London, 1990, p. 66
Attributed from posthumous publications

“Do you know the first thing I said as a child, before I said "Mama" or "Dada"? I said "Leave me alone!"”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

(laughs) Is that not the mantra of stand-up comedy?
Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (2012 — Present), Season 3 (2014)

“Dada is a farce, a legend, a state of myth. A badly behaved myth whose subterranean survival and capricious manifestation upset everyone... The aesthetic of absolute negativity has been changed into methodical doubt, thanks to which it will finally be able to incarnate new signs... After the NO and the ZERO, there is a third position for the myth; the anti-art gesture of Marcel Duchamp has been charged with positive energy. The Dada spirit identifies itself with a method of appropriation of exterior reality of the modern world... The ready-made is no longer the height of negativity or of polemic, but the basis element of a new expressive repertoire. Such is the New Realism: a direct means for getting one's feet back on the ground but at 40 degree above Dada zero.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 41, note 30

“The name [Pop] sounds so awful. Dada must have something to do with Pop. it's so funny, the names are really synonyms. Does anyone know what they're supposed to mean or have to do with, those names? Johns and Rauschenberg, Neo-Dada for all those years, and everyone calling them derivative and unable to transform the things they use, are now called progenitors of Pop. It's funny the way things change. I think John Cage has been very influential, and Merce Cunningham too, I think.... History books are being rewritten all the time.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: 1963 - 1967, What Is Pop Art? Interviews with Eight Painters, Part 1 (1963), pp. 116-19

“I’ve always enjoyed feeling a connection to the avant-garde, such as Dada and surrealism and pop art. The only thing the artist can do is be honest with themselves and make the art they want to make. That’s what I’ve always done.”

Jeff Koons (1955) American artist

Jeff Koons in: Graeme Green. " 60 SECONDS: Jeff Koons http://metro.co.uk/2007/07/18/60-seconds-jeff-koons-532798/#ixzz3bThr2XKI," at metro.co.uk, 2007/07/18
1990s and later

“Dada is not at all modern. It is more in the nature of a return to an almost Buddhist religion of indifference. Dada covers things with an artificial gentleness, a snow of butterflies released from the head of a prestidigitator. Dada is immobility and does not comprehend the passions.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Tristan Tzara 19

Related quotes

Related topics