Tristan Tzara, "Dada Manifesto 1918."

Dada was an art movement that began during the Great War. It literraly means nothing. Tristan Tzara, the leader of this group wrote a manifesto explaining Dada.  The entire manifesto is a clear example of Dada, it is literally nothing. The manifesto does not give us an idea of dada, since dada itself is nothing. Nothing is a very complicated concept. Since the beginning of mankind the term of nothingness was a very discussed one in monotheistic religions. Romans were not aware of the zero or in other words the nothingness. This is because the ideas in western civilization were base on polytheism. Polytheism is the idea or believe that the everything has been created out of something. For example in the Helen world of paganism, it was believed that the Earth came from a deity called Gaia. In the Sumerian's myth the world was created by the remainders of Marduk. These myths and many others that helped to shaped the West, they did not have about nothingness. It was not until monotheism and the coming of Christianity that the west was aware of the term of nothingness. In the Christian version of creation; Ex Nihilo, God creates the word out of nothing. This was revolutionary at the time, and the West began to be aware of nothingness. My Christian Doctrine professor; gave us this analogy of Monotheism myth of creation, "Monotheism is like a poet and a poem, the poem is created out of the poet and as long as the poet sings the poem it will exists." In my opinion, this is the main idea of dada, to focus on the ideas rather than the piece itself. In the pre World War I era, art was solely focus on the piece rather than the meaning. During the war, artists found themselves oppressed and experimented with many alternatives of expression. This formed a new group that will change the concepts of art from a strictly aesthetic form to a more expression form of art. This new group was known as Dada.