session 8- dadaism

Dada

Reform against all conventions aesthetically and morally. Founded in Zurich in 1916 and rapidly spread to other countries. Main centers were Zurich, Berlin, Cologne, New York, Paris. As many pacifists took refuge in switzerland during war. Was followed by surrealism that was born out of Dada.

Dada Zürich

Cabaret Voltaire: founded by Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings in Feb 1916- marks the birth of Dada. closed early July 1916. Creators too poor to purchase art to decorate asked artist friends to create. Became a lieu for young zurich artists to meet. Artists like: Jean Arp, Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Richar Huelsenbeck, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco, etc.

End of WWI in 1918 meant Dada Zurich ends bc everyone went back home.

what characterizes Dada in Zurich?

• Forms of expression that are liberated from a society they rejected

• great interest in “primitive art”, especially african

• use simplified plastic languages.

law of chance

Jean Arp and fellow Dadaist artists were profoundly affected by trauma of modern warfare and the expansion of print media.They sought to radically rethink the very nature of art. Held reason and rationalitiy responsible for WW1, and in response employed new antirational aesthetic strategies: including abstraction, collage and the use of chance procedures.

Jean arp and the law of Chance

In his Untitled (Collage with squares arranged according to the law of chance), 1916-1917, Arp, like for other of his work, teared paper and let it fall to the floor and pasted each scrap wherever it landed. Instead of arranging the elements like he desired, he let the hand of gravity take control.

Dada Berlin

• First meeting in 1918.

• Between 1st and 2nd WW there was a strong rise of militarism

• beginning of weimar republich when the Kaiser abdicates.

• in 1919, violent confrontations between official forces and communists of the Spartacus league.

• Rosa Luxemburg was a leader of this group and was assasinated.

International Dada Fair Berlin 1920

• during events they insulted the public- wanted people to engage in a political and social way.

• an exhibition which showed artworks either 2 or 3 dimensional but also displayed psoters dealing with art and politics.

• birth of mixed media installations

• this mix of artworks and slogans- really states the fact that art and politics are inseparable.

Tristan Tzara’s “Dada Manifesto 1918”

“and so Dada was born of a need for independence, of a distrust towards unity. Those who are with us preserve their freedom. We recognize no theory. We have enough cubist and futurist academies: laboraories of formal ideas. Is the aim of art to make money and cagole the nice bourgeois?”

John Heartfield and Rudolf Schlichters “Prussian Archangel”

• Sign mocks the military

• manifest against the rise of militarism.

• most avant-garde artists claimed that art existed for itself with no reference to the external world- here they say if you don’t understand lfie and society you don’t understand the art

• you have to live an experience with your own body in order to experience the art.

Hannah Höch

through her works like Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer Belly and Das Schöne Mädchen she ofen brough up topics of women’s rights/condition.

• women were allowed to vote in Germany since 1919

• metaphor of the title is the female knife which purges this beer belly (masculine conception of Germany)

• attack on western society’s ideal image of women and shattering her traditional representation.

• denouncement of the woman being depicted as a consumer good.

John Heartfield

Real name was Helmut but changed it t sound english since he hated Germany at the time.

• art is not made for the bourgeois anymore but for everyone to see

• Use photography as a weapon- art is a weapon

• pro-revolutionary spirit

Merz

Kurt Schwitters movement, he wanted to join Berlin Dada group but they rejected him and created his own movement of which he is the only member.

• term used to describe all his work

Ben (Ben Vautier) living in the Gallery One, London, 1962

• work consisted of him living in the gallery window for 2 weeks

• People would watch him living- that was the art

• early performance art before the name existed

• continuation of what Schwitters initiated with Merzbau- merged architecture with visual arts, poetry and theatre- operated the merging of art and life.

Dada New York and Paris

Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp met Man Ray- the three of them were the core group of Dada NY

• Duchamp and Man Ray moved to Paris in 1921 where Dada Paris became active

• Max Ernst also part of it.

• NY and Paris less overtly political than Germany but they pushed subversive spirit of Dada even further and questioned definition of art.

• Continued idea of desacrilization of art.

• Said to be nihilistic but this is untrue, as they aren’t anti-art but were against conventional forms of art.

• Reason was because they thought conventional forms didn’t engage the brain enough and that it limited art too much- they had a high idea of what art could be.

Francis Picabia- l’oeil cacodylate

• Made while he was recovering from an illness, as his friens would visit him, started with the eye drawn by him and he wrote his name, then asked his friends to leave a mark on the canvas.

• is it a collaborative work or his work?

• signature was very important at the time as it gave the artwork its financial value

• the joke is that there are over 50 signatures on this work mostly of avant garde artists, famous musicians, dancers and writers.

• is the work therefore more valuable?

Marcel Duchamp and Readymades

• In advance of the broken Arm 1915- first work that he called a Ready Made which he invented

• Art now is a purely intellectual operation, not about making it anymore. HE removed the object of its original context and deprives it of its use and signs it. It is unchanged in any ways and is tranformed into art solely by the choice of the artist.

• Questions the values attributed to art- “readymades are chosen based on the reaction of visual indifference with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste”

• when the original ready made was destroyed it didn’t matter as the object itself had no value, only the concept.

Ready made is a rejection of…

• Retinal art- refers to an art which is intended only to please the eye- Duchamp wanted to impose the intellectual instead of the retinal as the first criteria of art.

Several types of ready mades

• pure readymades are unaltered objects

• assited readymade are made of two or several objects combined together completely taking away their use.

• rectified ready made- object taken as such but altered in some way.

Marcel Duchamp- Nu descendant un escalier n°2, 1912

• Marcel Duchamp was a cubist painter for a short period

• wanted to present wiht his cubist friends at the Salon d’Automne but his friends refused because they thought it wasn’t cubist enough

• With this rejection came the beginning of the question of the criteria for judging and defining art—> who decides of the painting is a good cubist painting or not—> who decides if its art?

Marel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917

• member of new society inspired by group in Paris— the Society of INdependent Artists

• Exhibition of contemporary art with no selecting jury, any work submited would be exhibited and there was no prize.

• Duchamp had idea to send a urinal, went to a bathroom factory, bought one, signs it with a different name and sends it in (R. Mutt)

• work was not exhibited even if it could not be rejected.

• Tried to discuss the reason why this work was rejected, the rather disgusting object was part of the provocation.

Duchamp’s Fountain was a strategy revealing the very conditions for legitimising an object as art.

1. an object

2. someone who first says its art (the artist)

3. Someone who repeats “its art” (photographer, art critic)

4. a context in which this situation can be institutionalized ( the magazine, the museum)

readymade and why its so improtant

1. abolishes idea of artist as a skilled creator

2. it is the viewer who completes the work

3. Readymade denounces conventions that make objects signed by an artist or legitimized by an institution.

4. subverts the notion of “the original” the idea that a work of art is a unique individual production

Ready made and why its important: abolishes the idea of an artist as a skilled creator

• art is not the making anymore but in the idea and the thinking (the intellectual)

• Has no visual interest for the artist, art with readymade has no aesthetic function but its an intellectual operation.

• Duchamp stopped with readymades as he thought people would one day find them beautiful.

Ready made and why its important: It is the viewer who completes the work

• It is partly made by artist and partly by viewer - it relies on intellectual acitivity of beholder/viewer as well as the gesture of the artist

Ready made and why its important: denounces convdentions that make any objects signed by an artists or legitmised by an institution

• Renounces the autority of the institutions

• It doesnt follow rules,

• Following the spirit of Dada it questions the notion of the work of art and the status of the artis

Readymade and why its important: Subverts the notion of “The Original” the idea that a work of art is a unique and individual production

• The concept of appropriation: Object is turned into a work of art - it already exists but changes its status

• The concept of duplication/copy - Duchamp has allowed many replicas of his readymades - he allowed an addition of 8 of his 7 ready mades, they exist in multiple copies which are all the same - no original anymore (Fountain esp. was destroyed)

• Appropriation can be seen as dismantling the traditional notion of art

• Elaine Sturtevant took Duchamps ideas, made her own copies of his copies and claims these copies as her works → “Appropriation art”