Dada

What was Dada?

• A subversive art movement that developed at the time of World War I

• A protest movement that sought to destroy traditional values in art and to create new art to replace the old

Dada

Marcel Duchamp – Fountain, 1917

Made for the exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists but rejected from the exhibition

- Dada was started by Hugo Ball in 1916 and the name was randomly chosen from a French-German dictionary (means hobby-horse)

- The Dadaists rejected old artistic structures and purposely set out to scandalize and outrage their audience. They did this by reciting nonsensical poetry and producing imagery and objects meant to shock viewers.

- Practiced by artists throughout Europe but was mostly centered in Paris

- The group dissolved in 1921 but most of the artists went on to become Surrealists

- Became known for creating “Ready Made “ objects and art based on chance

• Hugo Ball reciting poetry

• Dada was the birth of performance art

Important names

• Marcel Duchamp• Man Ray• Hugo Ball (founder of Dada)• Hans Arp (also called Jean Arp)

Hans Arp- Collage with Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance, 1916-17

- Art that comes from improvisation, unpredictability

- Hans Arp made a series of collages based on chance, where he would stand above a sheet of paper, dropping squares of contrasting colored paper on the larger sheet's surface, and then gluing the squares wherever they fell onto the page.

Marcel Duchamp – L.H.O.O.Q , 1919

"Elle a chaud au cul«

Questioning / subverting the idea of the «valuable » in art

Hannah Hoch, Cut with a Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany (1919)

Here Hoch is critiquing culture by literally slicing it apart into vivid, disjointed, emotional depictions of modern life. In this image, Höch pits human against machine.

The title refers to the decadence of pre-war German culture, metaphorically criticizing humankind's lack of humanity.

Hannah Höch, Photomontage

Photomontage by Raoul Hausmann

What does the imagery suggest here?

Man Ray, The Gift, 1921Man Ray, Rayograph, 1922

Legacy of Dada

• “ready mades” – the idea that sculpture could be made only out of things that already existed

• The idea that artists would question, “what is art?” – and would rebel against the very idea of art

• Collages• Performance art• Assemblage, appropriation

SURREALISM

What was surrealism?

• Encompassed literature, art, photography and film

• Aimed to challenge our perceptions of reality, using dreamlike images

• Greatly influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis

Salvador DaliThe Persistence of Time, 1931

Persistence of memory, 1931

• Construct of time is undermined. What is time, anyway?

• Ants represent decay• Limp head – thought to be Dali’s own face• Could represent anxiety, desolation, loneliness

• Surrealism is a cultural movement and artistic style that was founded in 1924 by André Breton.

• Key artists are:– Giorgio de Chirico– Man Ray– René Magritte– Max Ernst– Salvador Dali

• Surrealists wanted to free the imagination by tapping into the unconscious mind

Max Ernst

• First experienced hallucinations as a child• Through the writings of Sigmund Freud, he

became interested in the unconscious and the art of mental patients

Max Ernst, Ubu Imperator, 1922

An anthropomorphic top dances in a vast, empty landscape. Such works captured early on the surrealist notion of estrangement and commitment to the subconscious. A spinning top, a red carcass with iron reinforcement, and human hands express an image of the Ubu Father, a grotesque symbol of authority invented by Alfred Jarry.

Salvador Dali, Soft Construction With Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War), 1936

Depicts a gigantic agonized body at war with itself. The body represents Spain. On the ground are a handful of beans.

Salvador DaliThe Dream, 1931

Salvador DaliThe Dream, 1932

Georgio De ChiricoSong of Love

Max Ernst. The Equivocal Woman (also known as The Teetering

Woman). 1923

Rene Magritte

• Belgian, born 1898• Explores a dream-like irrationality, in which

positive becomes negative, different realities collide

Rene Magritte – This is not a Pipe, 1928-29

Rene MagritteGalconde, 1953

Rene MagritteThe Human Condition, 1935

Joan MiroNocturne

Much of Miro’s Work is an example of surrealist automatic drawing – to set on paper the unconscious workings of the mind

Joan Miro, Carnival of Harlequin, 1924

Legacy of the Surrealists

• Dreamlike paintings – the importance of dreams

• Influence of psychoanalysis, psychiatry on art• Automatic drawing and painting – working

improvisationally from the unconscious

Meret Oppenheim – Object, 1936

Salvador Dali – Lobster Telephone, 1936