dada
TRANSCRIPT
Art 109: Renaissance to Modern
Westchester Community College
Prof. M. Hall
Spring 2015
The End of Utopia: Dadaism and WWI
The Great War: 1914-
1918
World War I is ironically still called
“the Great War”
It lasted from 1914-1918
It had a devastating impact on
European society
The Great War
It was the first modern
technological war
Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WW1_TitlePicture_For_Wikipedia_Article.jpg
The Great War
The technology included machine
guns, Howitzers, wireless
communication, and aviation
Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:15in_howitzer_Menin_Rd_5_October_1917.jpg
The Great War
The machines that were supposed
to create a perfect world made it
possible to slaughter on an
unprecedented scale
Film still from Verdun, Visions d’Histoire, 1928
Image source: http://www.greatwar.nl/frames/default-weekpictures.html
The Great War
World War I was promoted as
something noble and great
It was called “the war to end all
wars,” and a battle for civilization
itself
British recruitment poster, World War I
Image source: http://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/exhibitions/guerre/enemy-aliens-e.aspx
The Great War
When it was over nobody knew
what it was for
Alfred Leete, Lord Kitchener poster, WWI
Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:YourCountryNeedsYou.jpg
The Great War
Governments had lied to their
people
Alfred Leete, Lord Kitchener poster, WWI
Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:YourCountryNeedsYou.jpg
The Great War
Soldiers had died for nothing
C.R.W. Nevinson, Paths of Glory, 1917
Imperial War Museum
Dada
Dada was a reaction to the insanity
of World War I
It began in Zurich during the war,
and spread to Berlin, Cologne,
Paris, and New York
Image source: http://contemporaryartetc.wordpress.com/2007/03/09/fact-of-the-day-26/
Dada
Theo van Doesberg and Kurth Schwitters, Kleine Dada Soirée (Small Dada Evening). 1922
Museum of Modern Art
“Dada thought that reason
and logic had led people
into the horrors of war, so
the only route to salvation
was to reject logic and
embrace anarchy and
irrationality.”http://www.ikono.org/2011/12/the-abcs-
of-dada-2/
Nihilism
The Dadaists were against
everything
“According to its proponents, Dada was not art – it was “anti-art”. It
was anti-art in the sense that Dadaists protested against the
contemporary academic and cultured values of art. For everything that
art stood for, Dada was to represent the opposite. Where art was
concerned with aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. If art were to
have at least an implicit or latent message, Dada strove to have no
meaning – interpretation of Dada is dependent entirely on the viewer.”http://www.ikono.org/2011/12/the-abcs-of-dada-2/
Zurich Dada
Zurich Dada centered on the
Cabaret Voltaire, where ex-patriot
artists gathered to share ideas
The site of Hugo Ball's nightclub Cabaret Voltaire as photographed in 1935 Courtesy Baugeschichtliches
Tate Gallery
Zurich Dada
Leading members of the Zurich
group included Hugo Ball, Tristan
Tzara, Hans Arp and Sophie
Tauber-Arp
Sophie Tauber Arp, Costume designs, 1922
Image source: http://www.theredmenmovie.com/2010/01/soft-to-touch.html
Zurich Dada
They staged Dada performances
that challenged accepted
conventions of “theater” and
“entertainment”
Performance of Tristan Tzara’s The Gas Heart, 1921
Image source: http://prism.palatine.ac.uk/resources/view/49
Zurich Dada
In this performance, Hugo Ball
came on stage wearing an absurd
cardboard costume, and began
reciting his nonsense sound-poem
Karawane
Hugo Ball reciting Karawane in a Cubist costume at the Cabaret Voltaire, Zürich, 1916
Tate Gallery
Zurich Dada
Hugo Ball reciting Karawane in a Cubist costume at the Cabaret Voltaire, Zürich, 1916
Tate Gallery
Berlin Dada
Berlin Dada was more politically
oriented
First International Dada Fair, Room 1, Berlin, 1920
Image source: http://www.dada-companion.com/dada-messe/
“Berlin . . . Artists tore into the German
establishment with reckless abandon,
eviscerating the system they believed
responsible for the war.”
National Gallery of Art
Berlin Dada
First International Dada Fair, Room 1, Berlin, 1920
Image source: http://www.dada-companion.com/dada-messe/John Heartfield and Rudolf Schlichter's Prussian Archangel,
(reconstruction of lost 1920 original)
Image source:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/iconoclasst1/2245171626/
MOMA Audio
Otto Dix, Kriegskrüppel (War-Cripples), 1920
The painting was donated to the Stadtmuseum Dresden, and confiscated by Nazis in 1937 as degenerate. It was exhibited of the
Entartete Kunst exhibition of degenerate art held in Munich in 1937, and later destroyed by the Nazis.
Berlin Dada
George Grosz portrayed the grim
social and economic devastation of
Weimar Germany
George Grosz, Gray Day, 1921
Staatliche Museum, Berlin
Berlin Dada
He satirized the ruling elite and the
newly emerging Nazi party
George Grosz, Pillars of Society, 1926
Staatliche Museum, Berlin
In this picture, a Nazi
holds a beer mug and
sword, while his head
flips open to reveal a
heroic soldier on
horseback (the noble
tradition of warfare that
had become obsolete
in World War I).
Surrounding him are fat
members of the
bourgeoisie, one holding
newspapers and a blood-
stained palm, while the
other waves the German
flag as his head flips open
to reveal a steaming pile of
excrement.
In the background,
German soldiers
terrorize the city as it
goes up in flames,
while a pro-Nazi priest
welcomes them with
open arms:
Georges Grosz, Republican Automatons, 1920
Museum of Modern Art
Automatons and
Dysfunctional
Machines
Automatons and dysfunctional
machines were a common theme in
Dada art
Autmatons and
Dysfunctional
Machines
Raul Haussmann’s The Spirit of
Our Time is a caricature of the
mindless bourgeois citizens who
followed their leaders into war
Raoul Haussmann, The Spirit of Our Time, 1919
Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris
“Hausmann said that the average
German ‘has no more capabilities
than those which chance has glued
on the outside of his skull; his brain
remains empty’.”Jonathan Jones, “The Spirit of Our Time,”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2003/sep/27/art
Nihilism
Dada artists no longer believed in
machines
John Heartfield, Conquest of the Machines, 1934
Image source: http://www.towson.edu/heartfield/script/9_2.html
Photomontage
Berlin Dadaist John Heartfield
explored a new medium –
photomontage
Photographs are pasted together to
form a new image
John Heartfield, War and Corpses: The Last Hope of the Rich, 1932
Research Library, The Getty Research Institute
Photomontage was a response to
the deceitful use of the media by
governments during the war
Photomontage
John Heartfield, Whoever Reads Bourgeois Newspapers Becomes Blind and
Deaf: Away with These Stultifying Bandages!, 1930
“Photomontage allowed Heartfield
to create loaded and politically
contentious images. To compose his
works, he chose recognizable press
photographs of politicians or events
from the mainstream illustrated
press. He then disassembled and
rearranged these images to
radically alter their meaning.”http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/heartfi
eld/
John Heartfield, The Meaning of the Hitler Salute: Little Man Asks for
Big Gifts, 1932 Metropolitan Museum
Marcel Duchamp
The artist that had the most lasting
influence on contemporary art was
Marcel Duchamp
He was the center of Paris and
New York Dada
Allan Grant, Marcel Duchamp, 1953
LIFE
Marcel Duchamp
In his early work Duchamp was
influenced by Cubism and Futurism
Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Marcel Duchamp
Nude Descending a Staircase was
based on one of Muybridge’s
studies of motion
Eadward Muybridge, Woman descending a staircase, from Studies in Animal Locomotion
Image source: http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~wakefield/amv/theory-animation.htm
Eliot Elisofon, Artist Marcel Duchamp walking down a flight of stairs in a
multiple exposure image, 1952
LIFE
Marcel Duchamp
The picture was rejected by Cubist
members of the annual Salon des
Independents because it was too
Futurist, and too literal
“A nude never descends” they
complained, “a nude reclines”
Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Marcel Duchamp
This cemented Duchamp’s
disenchantment with the art world
Avante garde artists could be just
as doctrinaire and tyrannical as the
official academy
Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Conceptual Art
Duchamp eventually renounced
what he called “retinal” art
He explored an approach to art that
focused more on the idea
This is called conceptualism
Ewald Wildtraut, Ready Steady Made a Tribute to Marcel Duchamp, 2009
Image source: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/ready-steady-made-a-tribute-to-marcel-
duchamp-ewald-wildtraut.html
Conceptual Art
In conceptual art, the idea of the
work is more important than what it
looks like
Eliot Elisofon, Marcel Duchamp, 1952 LIFE
Anti-Art
In this work, Duchamp drew a
mustache and goatee on a picture
postcard of the Mona Lisa
The letters L.H.O.O.Q. are a pun on
the French phrase “Elle a chaud
aux cus” -- or, “She has a hot
bottom”
Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q., 1919
Image source: http://blogs.cornell.edu/cuaear225/2011/02/15/smile-for-the-camera-baby/
Is the Mona Lisa really a “great” work of art, or do we believe this only because we
have been told it is true?
The Readymade
Duchamp’s most innovative
invention was the readymade
The first readymade consisted of a
bicycle wheel turned upside down
on a common kitchen stool
Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1951 (third version, after lost original of 1913)
Museum of Modern Art
“The readymades are experiments in provocation, the products
of a conscious effort to break every rule of artistic tradition, in
order to create a new kind of art – one that engages the mind
instead of the eye, in ways that provoke the observer to
participate and think.”
Andrew Stafford, Making Sense of Duchamp
<http://www.understandingduchamp.com/>
The Readymade
This work – consisting of a snow
shovel bought at a hardware store
– activates a narrative in the mind
of the viewer
Marcel Duchamp, In Advance of a Broken Arm, August 1964 (fourth version, after lost original of
November 1915)
Museum of Modern Art
“All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the
spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by
deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds
his contribution to the creative act.”
Marcel Duchamp, “The Creative Act,” 1957
The Readymade
“Fountain” consisted of a urinal
This common (even vulgar) mass
produced object became art simply
by the act of placing it on a
pedestal
Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917/1964
“Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He
CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance
disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that
object.”Marcel Duchamp
“The artist is a not great creator—Duchamp went shopping at a plumbing store. The
artwork is not a special object—it was mass-produced in a factory. The experience of
art is not exciting and ennobling—at best it is puzzling and mostly leaves one with a
sense of distaste. But over and above that, Duchamp did not select just any ready-
made object to display. In selecting the urinal, his message was clear: Art is something
you piss on.”Stephen Hicks
Vincent Van Gogh, Shoes, 1888
Metropolitan Museum
Walter de Maria, Lightning Field, 1977
Long-term installation in Western New Mexico
Thomas Cole, Schroon Mountain, Adirondacks, 1838
Cleveland Museum of Art