Question

Why was the art produced during the Dada movement considered art at all?

Answer 1

Because Dada was explicitly about upsetting received ideas of what art is, the question—“why count it as art at all?”—is exactly what the movement set out to force people to ask. There are several overlapping reasons why Dada works came to be treated as art:

- Artist’s intention and context: Dadaists deliberately made objects, performances and texts to attack bourgeois values and artistic conventions. That intentionality—producing something as an artistic act, often in an art setting (salons, exhibitions, journals, manifestos, performances)—is a key reason people regarded those things as art rather than mere trash or prank.

- Redefining aesthetics: Dada rejected traditional standards of beauty, craft and representation. Instead it used chance, collage, absurdity, and found objects (readymades) to make aesthetic and conceptual points. It’s still an artistic strategy—one that shifts the criterion from “skillful rendering” to questioning meaning, authorship, and value.

- Institutional recognition: Works like Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917) or collages by Hannah Höch were shown, discussed and collected in art contexts. Over time galleries, critics and museums accepted and displayed Dada work, which also helped legitimate it as art (the “artworld” effect).

- Conceptual lineage: Dada anticipated conceptual art by prioritizing idea over craft. If art can be defined by the concept or provocation it produces, then Dada pieces qualify. Duchamp’s readymades are a direct demonstration that selection and context can turn an ordinary object into an artwork.

- Political and cultural critique: Dada was a response to World War I, nationalism and the failures of rationalist culture. Its works had political and social aims—another form of artistic expression—and used shock, satire and fragmentation as tools for critique.

In short: Dada didn’t fail to be art so much as change what “art” could be. By intentionally using provocation, found objects, performance and irony to interrogate art’s purposes and institutions, Dada both functioned as art and expanded the definition of art for later generations.