Dadaism Case Study

Hello everybody! I have been on holiday for the past two weeks, so I didn't get around to doing this blog post until right about now, because now is a good enough time to start doing my case study on an art movement known as Dadaism.

Dadaism was an art and literary movement that peaked in Zurich, Switzerland between 1916-1922, before the Second World War began in 1939. The movement was considered to rebel against the war, politics and the government. This movement would soon spread around internationally, even after WWII was over in 1945, to places from Europe to New York City. Dadaism more often than not, overlaps quite well into surrealism, because sometimes the art and literature can have a sort of surrealistic feeling from time to time. It should be noted that Dadaism had actually influenced Surrealism as the artists had to think up ideas for artwork by trying not to think and let their imagination speak for itself. The surrealists had intended to continue the idea of a stream of the human conscience.

The key people that both pioneered and involved themselves with this movement were Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Hans Arp, Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Hoch, Johannes Baader, George Grosz, Tristan Tzara, Richard Huelsenbeck, Beatrice Wood, Hans Richter, (who considered Dadaism 'anti-art'.) Marcel Duchamp (who's work were highly influential towards the development of conceptual art.) and several others. They had wanted this 'anti-art' form to be rather abstract, similar to Cubism, but they had wanted to do something new, while borrowing a lot of it's main influences from Abstraction and Expressionism, with Cubism becoming a part of it's influence later on (and to a lesser extent, 'Futurism'.) Dadaism can come in different forms of art including 2D and 3D collage (assemblage), photo-montage, (which are satirical collages that are created by using photographs.) and ready-mades (which are basically objects that the artists would purchase, modify it into something new and declare that object as art.) The public was at first disgusted by how the artwork was displayed-which was what the artists were initially encouraging at the time. This was due to the artists wanting to provoke the public on purpose, and then it got people into a huge debate of questioning what art really was.

Here are some famous examples of Dadaist "artwork".
This piece is a 'Readymade'

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917, Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz

This "fountain" has had a lot of influence in the world of art, because it was actually a urinal that the artist had just bought so that he could sign his own name onto the urinal and call it art. It caused a lot of critics and observers to question if this was truly art or not, but at the same it change almost everybody's perspective of what art really was. This urinal was intended as a conceptual piece of art were Duchamp took an object that had a specific context and changed it's meaning and gave it a new context. This piece of work had pretty much introduced the idea of conceptual art into the art universe.

"It has become the work that removed art to the cerebral realm from the physical – or the “retinal” as Duchamp liked to call it – enabling Minimalism, Conceptualism, Performance Art and just about every other significant development of the past half century. It is the work, in short, that got art where it is today." 
(Quote from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/9842887/Marcel-Duchamp-His-influence-is-still-everywhere-in-contemporary-art.html)

In other words, every art movement that was developed in the early twentieth century has been influenced by Duchamp's idea that art comes from the mind, and through physical means.

This another Readymade'

Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q. 1919, original "Mona Lisa" by Leonardo Da Vinci, 1517

This another iconic picture that had further influenced the concept of art. It is the famous painting of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci, but this piece was altered by having facial hair added in by Duchamp. What would normally be considered vandalism if it were done illegally, is actually just an example of artists altering well known pieces of work and putting them into their own image just for their own benefit. The bigger meaning behind this piece was that the artist himself was basically telling the public that they have no resect for art anymore.

This an assemblage'

Raoul Hausmann, Mechanical Head, assemblage, circa 1920

With this piece of art made by Raoul Hausmann, whom was the leader of the Dadaist group in Berlin, "Mechanical Head" is an assemblage piece that represents the artist's fear of technology advancing. The work was created by using a wooden mannequin that he had bought from a shop, with a few things attached to it, such as a wooden ruler, a piece of metal, a tape measure, a tin cup and a spectacles case. These random objects are a visual reference to how the human mind basically works, the watch symbolizes our perception of time, and the tape measure symbolizes how we use our rational thought to quantify the world, because the Dadaists believe that the human worshiping of logical thinking is took us into war.

This a photomontage'

Raoul Hausmann, ABCD (self portrait), photomontage  from 1923-24

Within this photo-montage poster, the artist is trying to convey a some social commentary about how authority rules our lives and how we as a society are all expected to conform to the standards of the capitalist government, what with all the resources that we use every day to survive in our world. Like most photo-montages, this was created using some actual photographs and cards and posters that were more than likely to have been made for propaganda in the media.

So in conclusion, Dadaism is an art form that not only encourages people to create artwork by mashing up various sources through different media, (even though the original intention was to satirize political agendas and the war,) it is also a basically fun method to express yourself through art, even if it were for more controversial reasons to other artists.

And now this it is time for me to move on towards my FMP, so see you in the next blog post.