Dadaism: Artistic Response to the Fall of European Society

The following work analyzes the Dadaist movement and how it fits into the decadence of European society, which results in the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Using as a starting point the studies of Eric Hobsbawm, which identifies the First World War as being the true beginning of the twentieth century, and the research done around the concept of the mass man. Through the works of José Ortega y Gasset and Hannah Arendt we get an overview of the decadence of European society in the early twentieth century with a surgical analysis of the growth of the mass man, and his infiltration in the most prestigious places in the social order. The Dadaist movement and its associated works will then be analyzed in an attempt to establish links between the artistic avant-garde, through the eyes of art historians such as Hal Foster, and the thoughts about the "massification" of society in the prewar period.