What does the backround text say in this picture?

[The Mighty Sisto]

Hey, I just found this picture of Hitler and the gang and there's a huge poster or wall that has writing painted on it. I don't speak or read German, so can anyone please translate what it says? Danke!

*The Mighty Sisto*

[Karl]

It means ‘take ‘dada’ seriously. It’s worth it.’ Signed George Graf.

Weird. Don’t know what they mean by dada and I am not sure where they are either.

[The Mighty Sisto]

Woah...that's pretty freakish... Danke!

*The Mighty Sisto*

[Peter H]

Thats the 'Degenerate Art' Exhibition held at Munich 16th July 1937.The guy to the right of Hitler is Adolf Zeigler,ReichDirector Performing Arts.
This exhibition was shown to demonstrate the so called decadence of 'modern' art.

More pics here:

http://faculty-web.at.nwu.edu/art-histo ... y_20_1999/


DADA was a modern art movement that flourished in Weimar Germany.

[varjag]

The picture looks like a photographers 'opportunity' more than a 'statement'. Where and when was it taken? Austria 1938? The graffiti in the background may well be irrelevant to the the picture subject - other than in the photographers mind. It doesn't smell of Hoffman......who was Dada and what group made the graffiti?

[Durand]

Hallo,

As Moulded noted DaDa is not the name of a person, but rather the name of an artistic movement. It was abstract art whether on canvas, sculpture, or in performance. It could be splashes of paint, poetry using gibberish words, banging on a drum, or anything. The movement was was founded by Hugo Ball, Richard Huelsensbeck, and Tristan, Tzara at a satiric cabaret in Zurich in 1916. In an effort to find a stage name for a singer at the cabaret, Ball and Huelsenbeck were searching through a German-French dictionary. They came across the word "Dada" which was a children's word for a hobby horse. The name seemed to capture the spirit of the absurd within their movement and they adopted the word "DaDa".

Regards,

Durand

[Ti.P]

also dada has now turned into a label names darmanie dada or something like that and im pretty sure the darmani is jsut to make it sound italian and that its german(im not sure jnust know that the clothes are being made under dada)

[HaEn]

Looking at the background I cannot help but think how true that has become. Music has turned into screaming females sounding like jungle cats in pain, or hoarse sounding males, yelling obsenities accompanied by out of tune banging on guitars and jungle drums. Graphic art has turned into either garbage paint splattered on a canvas, which could have been done by a chimpansee, grotesk sculptures, and structures made from junk. Or . . . plain just insanity, like the "art" exhibition in London consisting of an empty room with a lamp going on and off, called "light going on and off" for which the "artist"(sic) received a prize. Years ago a wize man told me "At first we tolerate, next we accept, and finally we embrace" . Oh well. HN

[walterkaschner]

The Mighty Sisto asked:

Hey, I just found this picture of Hitler and the gang and there's a huge poster or wall that has writing painted on it. I don't speak or read German, so can anyone please translate what it says? Danke!

Karl replied:

It means ‘take ‘dada’ seriously. It’s worth it.’ Signed George Graf.

Karl's translation was quite accurate, except for the name of the author of the phrase. He was Georg Gross or, as he later changed his name, Georges Grosz, a well known Dadaist painter who fled Germany for the United States in the 1930s, established an atelier in New York State which was fairly successful and died sometime around 1960 IIRC. I suspect that the poor reproduction of the German sign for the "double s" or "es-tset" led Karl astray.

Regards, Kaschner

[Karl]

I was wondering who that was, walterkaschner.

Thank you.

[Geli]

Looking at the background I cannot help but think how true that has become. Music has turned into screaming females sounding like jungle cats in pain, or hoarse sounding males, yelling obsenities accompanied by out of tune banging on guitars and jungle drums. Graphic art has turned into either garbage paint splattered on a canvas, which could have been done by a chimpansee, grotesk sculptures, and structures made from junk. Or . . . plain just insanity, like the "art" exhibition in London consisting of an empty room with a lamp going on and off, called "light going on and off" for which the "artist"(sic) received a prize. Years ago a wize man told me "At first we tolerate, next we accept, and finally we embrace" . Oh well. HN

Aw, HN! Don't be so pessimistic. Yes, ridiculous "art" surfaces from time to time and in some cases becomes very popular, but there is still a lot of beauty out there. I've been to several recent art exhibitions of new oil paintings that are done in a realisitc style. They convey emotion and are uplifting. Successful artists of today, such as Wyland or Mary Engelbreit, certainly create images that could not have been done by a chimpanzee. For each "musician" like Eminem, there's someone like Celine Dion. We all have different tastes, thank goodness we have a choice.

[Tiger S04]

Geli, I completely agree that we should have a choice. But the fact remains that while someone putting some elephant dung in a bag or splattering it on a canvas is called an "artist" by the so-called "experts", while the guy who creates beautiful pieces of what most of us would consider "real" art is usually left drawing charicatures for pennies in the town square.

Real artists are dismissed, while some drugged-up freak is lauded by the establishment for displaying her unmade bed.

I think this is what HaEn was driving at.