The individual Dadaist hates stupidity and loves nonsense!
Raoul Hausmann, Invitation, First International Dada Fair, Berlin, 1920

Hobbyhorse

Dada, a French word for 'hobbyhorse', was an anti-art cultural movement which prized nonsense and irrationality. Dada ignored aesthetics and was intended to offend.

Dada‘s visual and literary artists worked between 1916 and 1924 in Berlin, Cologne, Hannover, Zurich, Paris and New York. The artists’ work was a sarcastic and irreverent reaction to the horrors of World War I.

While serious, Dada art was ‘nonsensical to the point of whimsy’ and featured multi media including assemblage, collage, photomontage and the use of ‘readymade’ objects – the most scandalous of these being Marcel Duchamps’ urinal that was turned onto its back, signed ‘R. Mutt’, and titled ‘Fountain’.

Photomontage

Collectively developed by the Berlin Dada group, photomontage is a variation on the collage technique, in which pasted items are actual photographs or photographic reproductions culled from the press. The appropriation of the mass media provided endless fodder for the Dadaists scathing critiques. The disjunctive cuts of photomontage effectively captured the fissures and shocks of modernity.

L’Ashby’s photomontage

In true absurdist style, Madam L’Ashby, substituting scissors and a glue stick for brushes and paint, employs photomontage combining individual photographs to create a new subject or visual image. The work contains elements at once real and imaginary, a metaphorical ‘cutting up of society’ and critique of the celebrity culture in which we live. The works also reference Glomesh, Madam L’Ashby’s lifelong ‘hobbyhorse’.

For more info about DADA check out:
http://arthistory.about.com/cs/arthistory10one/a/dada.htm
http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2006/dada/techniques/index.shtm