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Dada

Dada or Dadaism, international nihilistic movement among European artists and writers that lasted from 1916 to 1922. Born of the widespread disillusionment engendered by World War I, it originated in Zürich with the poetry of the Romanian Tristan Tzara. Dada attacked conventional standards of aesthetics and behavior and stressed absurdity and the role of the unpredictable in artistic creation. In Berlin, Dada had political overtones, exemplified by the caricatures of George Grosz. The French movement was more literary in emphasis; it centered around Tristan Tzara, André Breton, Louis Aragon, Jean Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, and Man Ray. The latter three artists carried the spirit of Dada to New York City. Typical were the elegant collages devised by Arp, Kurt Schwitters, and Max Ernst from refuse and scraps of paper, and Duchamp's celebrated Mona Lisa adorned with a mustache and a goatee. Dada principles were eventually modified to become the basis of surrealism in 1924. The literary manifestations of Dada were mostly nonsense poems—meaningless random combinations of words—which were read in public.

See R. Short, Dada and Surrealism (1980); S. C. Foster, ed., Dada-Dimensions (1985); H. Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art (1985); R. Motherwell, ed., The Dada Painters and Poets (1951, 2d ed. 1989).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright © 2004.
Licensed from Columbia University Press

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Dada

Nihilistic movement in the arts. It originated in Zürich, Switz., in 1916 and flourished in New York City, Paris, and the German cities of Berlin, Cologne, and Hannover in the early 20th century. The name, French for “hobbyhorse,” was selected by a chance procedure and adopted by a group of artists, including Jean Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Francis Picabia, to symbolize their emphasis on the illogical and absurd. The movement grew out of disgust with bourgeois values and despair over World War I. The archetypal Dada forms of expression were the nonsense poem and the ready-made. Dada had far-reaching effects on the art of the 20th century; the creative techniques of accident and chance were sustained in Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, conceptual art, and Pop art.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

Amin (Dada Oumee), Idi

Idi Amin.

(born 1924/25, Koboko, Ugan.—died Aug. 16, 2003, Jiddah, Saud.Ar.) Military officer and president (1971–79) of Uganda. A member of the small Kakwa ethnic group and a Muslim, he was closely associated during his military career with Milton Obote, Uganda's first prime minister and president. In 1971 he staged a coup against Obote. He expelled all Asians from Uganda in 1972, reversed Uganda's amicable relations with Israel, was personally involved in the hijacking by Palestinian and West German militants of a French airliner to Entebbe (see Entebbe raid), and ordered the torture and murder of 100,000–300,000 Ugandans. In 1978 he ordered an attack on Tanzania, but Tanzanian troops, aided by Ugandan nationalists, were able to overpower the invaders. As the Tanzanian-led forces neared Kampala, Uganda's capital, Amin fled to Libya and eventually settled in Saudi Arabia.

Learn more about Amin (Dada Oumee), Idi with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.