Journal Article

Advertising Seizes Control of Life: Berlin Dada and the Power of Advertising

Simmons, Sherwin

1999

Overview

The article examines Berlin Dada's interaction with advertising and popular culture, situating it within art's increasingly complex relationship to the mass-produced commodity during the century's second decade. Changing commercial practices within the art world contributed to an increasingly overt commodification of art, while art was also called upon to market mass-produced commodities. The Berlin Dadaists were deeply enmeshed in these changing conditions of art, as well as with the modern practice of propaganda which emerged from advertising during the war. They turned brandnames and slogans into poetic concepts, creating montages intended to sow chaos within and encourage resistance to an economic-political order that was still negotiating its relationship with the mass media and advertising. The Dadaists believed that real socio-political entities were increasingly embodied and mobilized through visual signs, a practice that intensified during the revolution. The article examines Berlin Dada's effort to understand and respond to this emerging practice, an effort crucial to Dada's viability as social and artistic critique.

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Subject: Art exhibitions / Art photography / Commercial art / Dadaism / Design / Expressionism / Graphics / Political advertising / Propaganda