Narrator: In Cologne, Dada first emerged in the fall of 1919, when the city was under British military occupation. Dadaists loved to play on public fear and suspicion, launching this subversive headline in one of their publications:
Actor: Warning! Trust no one! Do not trust the most obvious of appearances. There are secret societies among you—do not trust even yourselves!
Narrator: One of the founders of Cologne Dada, Max Ernst frequently enlisted the enigmatic and absurd in the service of his art. Curator, Leah Dickerman:
Curator, Leah Dickerman: In a series of collages that Max Ernst made in 1919 and 1920, he used photographs that were published in military publications to produce seamless worlds that are both poetic and disturbing. In Chinese Nightingale, an image of an English Aviation bomb lying on the grass serves as the foundation for the work, and female arms have been added in a fan, and other elements, to create the appearance of the beak of a bird.
Part of the power of these often tiny works comes from the collision between bodies and machines, suggestions of sex and death and war and peace. And Max Ernst himself has served in the field artillery during the war and was wounded by the recoil of an artillery gun. He spoke of that moment as saying that he had died and then was resurrected. It makes the proximity of the war very clear.