The era of Dada
The artistic and literary movement, Dada were looked upon as a reaction from the artists against the madness they saw in the raging World War I around them. The anti-war and anti-art Dada movement began in Europe1, and the Dada artists were seen to embrace chaos and nonsense, questioning the traditional aesthetics and the cultural values. The objective was to expose the empty modern world. The expression of the new movement was seen in not only in art but other mediums as well such as photography, sculpture, and poetry. Dada art made a mockery of materialistic and nationalistic attitudes, leaving a powerful influence on artists in many cities actors the world. Dada artists of the international movement were scattered in different cities such as Paris, Berlin, Zurich, New York, Hannover, Cologne, etc. Dada was broken into multiple manifestations that emerged as different philosophy among each group of artists 2 However; these artists remained linked by their approach to art making. The undercurrent of humor and whimsy in Dada has often been looked upon with negation. Dada art has been spoken as anti-art, rejecting logic and tradition. The conceptual art movement focused on making works that forced to society to look inside and anger difficult questions related to the society and the purpose of art. The art was not at all about creating aesthetically pleasing objects, but more intent on opposing all models of bourgeois culture. Dada artists used readymade everyday objects that could be presented as art with a little manipulation.
______________1"Muente, Tamera Lenz. 2011. A singular woman: The only female member of the berlin dada movement, hannah hoch created thought-provoking watercolors and pioneered the photomontage F+W Media, Inc.2 Lochmann, Erin Megan. 2011. The Art Of Nothingness: Dada,Taoism, And Zen. University of Kentucky 11 (1): 1-52.
Questions were raised on the artistic creativity and the logic behind Dada art, as many people thought them to be bizarre and defying all logic. Dada was like a battle cry of the artists who felt that the nationalist authorities had failed society and the endless slaughter all around showed a failure of the society. Dadaism was their united protest and attracted many different artists. The confrontation and provocation in their art were their weapons. Irrational attitudes in their work attacked traditional art and provoked conservative contentment with offensive actions. Dada artists saw the art world as part of the corrupt system that they considered equally culpable as the war. Dada questioned art, its existence, and value. It was considered to be anti-art, and yet the art was very much alive even amidst the restrictions of traditional values. Dadaists asked for the transformation of the social and political conditions of the workers. The traditional work of art according to them was a biased work was ruled by cynical politics. The aim of Dadaism was to shift the so-called art from the narrow and arrogant scene 3. It was successful in asserting an effective equivalence in the face of hunger and violence.“Fountain” - Marcel Duchamp Marcel Duchamp used a urinal to create “Fountain” (1917). His artwork was guaranteed to challenge other artists. The urinal was turned upside-down and titled Fountain. Duchamp showed the urinal an art context and in the attempt questions its purpose and compares it to famous fountains designed by Renaissance artists 4. The boldness of work shows the iconic mockery that the Dada movement and its artists were famous for. The white porcelain urinal was rotated and signed "R. Mutt 1917" on its upper side. Till date, the Fountain has become one of the most recognizable icons of modern art.
______________3"Doherty, Brigid. 2003. The work of art and the problem of politics in berlin dada. October 105 : 73-92.
The white and shiny porcelain turns a urinal into something artistic. It also sparked a colossal historical scandal in the art world. The bizarrely lovely visual form looks oddly ethereal. Duchamp is considered one of the cleverest artists who mocked history with his inimitable work. The meaning of Fountain appears from the combination of four inputs, art, Fountain, R. Mutt and the urinal. “Fountain” creates elegant proportions while displaying an intimate interior with a humor 4. Cross-domain mappings can be seen between art and the other domains. Still, there is a clash between art and urinal as the latter is seen as a utilitarian object rather than stimulating human creativity. However, at the same time, “Fountain” halts its observer and user just like any other work of art. The work shows how the artist could take everyday objects out of their usual context and presented them as artworks. His work carries a tongue-in-cheek humor and is made to enjoy. The artists conveyed puns out of everyday expressions through visual means and the linguistic dimension of his work. “Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany” - Hannah Höch Hannah Hoch, another Dadaist is known for her collage works. Her piece exemplifies the Dada attitude towards war and what one sees is chaos in the collage, that stands for the war, and its craziness is destroying the humanity. Hoch, the prominent female artist from the Dada movement, reflects her views on the political and social issues in her photomontage. She is one of the few women in the movement that was too much of a feminist and was not constrained by the strict Dadaist theory.
______________4"Prager, Phillip Andrew. 2012. Making an art of creativity: The cognitive science of duchamp and dada. Creativity Research Journal 24 (4): 266.
The title of Hoch’s work shows her criticism for the male dominated Republic5. She certainly contributed to the doctrines of art that broke free of the traditions of fine art. Her photomontages show her huge enthusiasm and her abstractly arranged works and one can find a feminine sensibility in her work. In “Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly”, the artist has cut out images and text from newspapers, advertisements, magazines and journals in order to create the collage. She has placed those images and text together so as to make sense. Her collage is made of different images, figures, and text that seem to be very different and disconnected with each other, and yet seem to get together to tell a story and pretty a common meaning Although the movement was male-dominated, Hoch found herself in the middle of the Berlin circle with her unusual style and abstract artwork that was surreal 6. She helped pioneer the art of photomontage. Dada ushered in whole new a range of radical techniques and media that ranged from collages, montages, and assemblages. The rebellion of traditional aesthetics was seen as a political attack on bourgeois culture. The meaninglessness anti-art was an attack on materialism and the combinatorial techniques externalized the combinatorial nature of creativity7. Dada movement was initiated by a small group of artists and writers who got together during World War I in neutral Zurich, and took under its influence other cities such as Zagreb, Berlin, Bucharest, New York by the mid-1920s8. Some of the well-known Dadaists were Marcel Duchamp,
______________5"Doherty, Brigid. 2003. The work of art and the problem of politics in berlin dada. October 105 : 73-92.6"Muente, Tamera Lenz. 2011. A singular woman: The only female member of the berlin dada movement, hannah hoch created thought-provoking watercolors and pioneered the photomontage F+W Media, Inc.7"Prager, Phillip Andrew. 2012. Making an art of creativity: The cognitive science of duchamp and dada. Creativity Research Journal 24 (4): 266.8" The magazine as strategy: Tristan tzara's Dada and the seminal role of dada art journals in the dada movement. 2011.Journal of Modern Periodical Studies 2 (1): 33-53.
Hannah Höch, Max Ernst, Dragan Aleksic and more. What made Dada distinct from other artistic groups was the keen manipulation of expressionism, cubism, and futurism with complex artistic movements.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Muente, Tamera Lenz. 2011. A singular woman: The only female member of the berlin dada movement, hannah hoch created thought-provoking watercolors and pioneered the photomontage F+W Media, Inc.
Lochmann, Erin Megan. 2011. The Art Of Nothingness: Dada,Taoism, And Zen. University of Kentucky 11 (1): 1-52.
Doherty, Brigid. 2003. The work of art and the problem of politics in berlin dada. October 105 : 73-92.
Prager, Phillip Andrew. 2012. Making an art of creativity: The cognitive science of duchamp and dada. Creativity Research Journal 24 (4): 266.
Muente, Tamera Lenz. 2011. A singular woman: The only female member of the berlin dada movement, hannah hoch created thought-provoking watercolors and pioneered the photomontage F+W Media, Inc.
The magazine as strategy: Tristan tzara's Dada and the seminal role of dada art journals in the dada movement. 2011.Journal of Modern Periodical Studies 2 (1): 33-53.
