Sunday, September 28, 2014

Reading Assignment 1: Dada Manifestos

The two Dada manifestos that would be compared were written by Hugo Ball and Tristan Tzara. In Ball’s manifestos, the Dada spirit was emphasized in language. Ball used a unique, or to be more clear, a very individual writing style. He tried to take his manifestos as an example of how Dada worked in our society. On the other hand, Tzara had defined Dada further and has more related it into art.
According to Tzara’s manifestos, Dada is nothing. Dada rejects the meaning of every thing and expresses the concept of pointless. When speaking about “Art”, Dada is also known as an anti-art movement, denying the general idea which applied in most art works – aesthetic. It was been mentioned by Tzara in his manifestos, “a work of art should not be beauty in itself, for beauty is dead”. As the first paragraph has introduced, the difference of the two Dada manifestos is Ball involved Dada in literature. However, talking in the similar way about how Tzara opposed aesthetic, Ball brought out a question that how word itself has replaced by its meaning and why can’t we create our own words. In conclusion, two manifestos explained about Dada by discussing aesthetic should not represent artwork itself, and the definition should not replace word as well.
In my opinion of the two manifestos, I agree the aesthetic should not always connect to artwork, or even become the work itself. As the sense of beauty varies from person to person, a piece of artwork can receive any kind of critique such as if it is “beautiful” or it is considered as art. However, I disagree what Ball said about word and its meaning. Words were created to express any specific meaning. They are the agent of meanings. That is, words are not replaced by meanings because without meaning itself, word just exists as a meaningless symbol.

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