What They Don't Show You in Art Hum: Dada Masterpieces at MoMA

As one of its foremost champions, Tristan Tzara described Dada as "the amusement of redbellies in the mills of empty skulls."
Or, in less mockingly obtuse words, Dada doesn't mean anything.
It's hard to remember this while scanning mounted paintings on clean, white walls at the Museum of Modern Art's much-hyped Dada exhibit. Human nature calls for definitions, and MoMA often provides them, but Dada stands defiantly, guns drawn, against definitions. The defense of the art's meaninglessness is perhaps the Dadaists' most aggressive stance-nearly as aggressive as their own self-marketing.
But meaninglessness is not necessarily the equivalent of insignificance, or even anonymity. Marcel Duchamp-Dada's most famous name-had his ironically handsome urinary masterpiece "Fountain" named the world's most influential piece of art in December 2004. And whether or not Duchamp would have valued this honor-mainstream acceptance from the "vulgar herd" was not really one of Dada's major goals-it still stands as a testament to the fact that Dada's impact has far outlived its creators.
The Dadaists never left their legacy to chance, though. It was secured through eye-catching visuals combined with blatant advertising, along with a certain fondness for puns. Francis Picabia's "Dada Movement" is a playful interpretation of a technical illustration, with artists like Picasso, Kandinsky, and Cezanne providing the circuitry to an alarm clock and Dadaists like Tzara and Marcel Janco as the face of the clock.
Along with being more self-referential, Dada also carries a stronger feeling of community than most other movements. Picabia's "L'Oeil Cacodylate," in which he had his prominent friends sign a canvas while he was recovering from an eye injury, looks like it came straight out of a high school yearbook.
A major facet of Dada was its literal unpredictability. Two examples of Raoul Hausmann's "poster poetry" are on display, including "fmsbwtözäu." Hausmann created these by having his printer randomly draw the order of the letters. The result is puzzling, charming, and very simple. Though Dada works may seem to be easily imitable, the spirit of Dada is more difficult to reproduce.
Dada, at its heart, was passive. World War I made a great impact on the would-be Dadaists, and it's no coincidence that the seedlings of Dada sprang up in neutral countries. The more obvious political messages seem out of place in the exhibit, perhaps because everything else is so conceptual. One of the more well-known pieces, Hannah Höch's collage "Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany," has a clearer message than most collages, though this could be attributed to the highly descriptive title. Still, the work leaves little room for ambiguity. Dada, in spite of its protests, did actually mean something.
Most visitors will probably hate about half the works in the exhibit. Some of the pieces are repulsive, and, even worse, some will make you think, "I could have done that." But that's the point. Go, hate it, and make Duchamp a happy man. Just don't call it beautiful.