Dada Responds To The Horrors Of War
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Dada was an Art movement with its peak in 1916-1920s. This movement was established as a position against the War, and particularly World War I. They saw all the negativity of the war. They also were against the Art. It was a protest against beauty, because Art didn't save civilization from wars. The members of that movement organized demonstrations, propagandas, wrote brochures, manifestos against the cruelty of war using ideas of Arthur Rimbaund in poetry, and critical ideas of Max Jacob (who later died in the Nazi concentration camp) and Guillaume Apollinaire. They established the new Journal where they wrote anti-war and anti-terror articles sometimes by using satire. Also the group made different absurd theatrical performances highly criticizing the first World War in Cabaret Voltaire. Tzara, one of the leader, of that group, wrote a lot of articles to different European newspapers, trying to emphasize the whole horror of war.
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As Dada movement Surrealism was also under against terror thoughts about World War I . This was one of the predominant facts for both movements to create something irrational and surreal. Surrealism inherited pessimistic and revolutionary mood because of Dada movement . Dada's main artistic idea was to make various activities and theories, instead of producing actual representational art. The follower of Dada came up with the ideas of irrationality and "accidentalness." The Law of Chances created by both Jean Arp (he threw pieces of paper on the floor, and where the paper fell down, he glue it to the background) and, of course, Marcel Duchamp. Dadaists made a lot of experiments by avoiding all kind of artistic laws and orders that were established by the masters in Art before them.
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Surrealism inherited ideas from Dada about anti-consciousness, anti-controlled way of thinking in the process of creating pictures. They preferred to use subconscious mind and feelings. They believed in the power of dreaming (Dali), in intuitive associations, and in the idea of chances (Ernst). Some Dadaists Surrealists used a lot of ideas of absurd and illogic. One of the facts that Dada was a precursor of Surrealism is that some Dadaist artists and poets became Surrealists in their future artistic careers, such as a painter- Max Ernst, a photographer- Man Ray, and the poet - Tristan Tzara.
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Dada Lives!
Dada: Merz ("something cast-off, as in junk")
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Wednesday, May 27, 2009 3:36 PM
c>log art music pop culture wrote:
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Wednesday, May 27, 2009 3:49 PM
c>log art music pop culture wrote:
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Wednesday, May 27, 2009 3:52 PM
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I am a Dadaist who has gone from its art to the art of its politics. From its exculpatory past to its pedantic future.
Dada issued many a screed against war, but that was not its raison d'etre. Dada abandoned the relics of historical assesment and its complex history of manipulation and interpretation. This reversal of critical polemics contributed to the interdiction of dadaist works and its authors. Dadaist ideals, its ideological philosophy even its ability to incite revolution replaced the political/commercial subjectivization of all artistic expression.
Dada has been defined as belonging to a regime of conflict and obsfucation. This, of course, is not true. Dada does not have an aesthetic dimension. It is merely an uncommon landscape that both signifies and defines our capacity for change. In iconic form, it is a purposed construction of our present circumstance.
The very idea of Dada was born in the "outsider" hierarchies of the day. It was Art defined by the "equality" of its labours, a stand-alone neutralization of the philistine, inventing a criteria that would allow art, in and of itself, to be carried forward from the wall-paintings of dark caves to the psyco-babble of the well-lit museum. Dada's "language" was created to push forward from the past, into the present and eventually - the future.
Let's be clear. Dada does not speak to any particular forum. Dada exists only to deconstruct the definitions the infirm elite have constructed to define their own taste and perception. Dada was born to encourage all who are trying to tear down these boundaries of definition. Born to redefine what the cognoscenti promotes. It exists for all those who define art by the absence of definition ... the erasure of bias and its influence as a measurement of "greatness". Dada exists to define the paradox where by art is a common experience that can only be appreciated when what it is and what it isn't, is erased and the artificial adjudication impossed on artists and their art is ignored.
Jacques Ranciere said, "I am neither a historian of art nor a philosopher of politics, but I work on this question: What landscape can one describe as the meeting place between artistic and political landscape?". Dada acknowledges the existential dilema between what is considered "Art" and what is considered "not Art". This question suggests a long overdue examination of Dada's reconstruction of the present and all those who create within it.
Stephen Boyling
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