7.4 Dada and De Stijl

Dada

• first major anti-art movement

• revolt against the culture and values which - it was believed - had caused and supported the carnage of The First World War (1914-18)

• expressed nonsense, irrationality, and anti-bourgeois protest in their works

Jean Arp

• one of the first artists to make randomness and chance part of the work

• Collage with Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance

• Shirt Front and Fork

Marcel Duchamp

• rejected purely visual or what he dubbed "retinal pleasure," deeming it to be facile, in favor of more intellectual, concept-driven approaches to art-making and, for that matter, viewing.

• L.H.O.O.Q

Max Ernst

• questioned the sanctity of art by creating non-representational works without clear narratives, making sport of religious icons, and formulating new means of creating artworks to express the modern condition.

• The Virgin Spanking the Christ Child Before Three Witnesses: Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, and the Painter”

Man Ray

• born Emmanuel Radnitzky

• founded the American branch of the Dada movement

• best known for his black-and-white photographs designed to amuse, annoy, bewilder, mystify, and inspire reflection

• Objet à détruire (Object to be Destroyed);

• Le Violon d'Ingres (The Violin of Ingres);

• Les Larmes (Glass Tears)

De Stjl

• abstract, pared-down aesthetic centered on basic visual elements such as geometric forms and primary colors.

• reaction against the decorative excesses of Art Deco.

Neo-Plasticism

• Piet Mondrian

• juxtapose horizontal and vertical lines along with the primary colors of red, yellow, and blue against the non-colors of black, white, and grey to produce timeless balance

Elementarism

• modification of the Neo-Plastic style of geometric art invented by the Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg

• attempted to moderate and modify the strictness of this Neo-Plastic dogma

• use of diagonals and the tilting of a composition to give it an element of dynamism

Piet Mondrian

• One of the founders of De Stijl

• simplified the subjects of his paintings down to the most basic elements to reveal the essence of the mystical energy in the balance of forces that governed nature and the universe

• Pier and Ocean (Composition No. 10);

• Composition with Large Red Plane, Yellow, Black, Gray, and Blue;

• Broadway Boogie-Woogie

Theo van Doesburg

• Counter-Composition in Dissonance 16