This was for our group report in Humanities under MS. Marissa Generale

2. What is Dadaism?
Dadaism or Dada is a post-World
War I cultural movement in visual
art as well as literature (mainly
poetry), theatre and graphic design.

3. A protest against the barbarism of
the War and what Dadaists
believed was an oppressive
intellectual rigidity in both art and
everyday society; its works were
characterized by a deliberate
irrationality and the rejection of the
prevailing standards of art.

4. Who Founded Dadaism?
• Richard Huelsenbeck, a poet, and painter-
musician Hugo Ball selected the word at
random from a German-French Dictionary.
• “Dada” was coined in Zurich in 1916.
• A nonsense word, it means “Yes-Yes” in
Russian, “There-There” in German (baby
talk), and “Hobby horse” in French.

5. History of Dadaism
• Dadaism was a cultural manifestation which
grew in the beginning of the 20th century, more
precisely between 1916-1923.
• Nihilism engendered by war, and the
revolutionary spirit released by Cubism (the first
revolutionary art movement) were the key
factors behind the movement’s growth and
appeal
• It employed a barrage of demonstrations and
manifestos, and exhibitions of absurdist art
which were designed to shock both the
authorities and the general public.

6. •Cabaret Voltaire was founded in
Zurich by Richard Huelsenbeck,
Hugo Ball, Jean Arp and Tristan
Tzara, as an early center of multi-
cultural Dada events and protest
shows.
•The “Fountain”, a major Dadaist
work by Marcel Duchamp, was
rejected at the exhibition of the
Society of Independent Artists,
causing an uproar among the
Dadaists.
•It influenced later modern art
movements such as Surrealism
and Pop Arts, and led to important
innovations in fine art like collage
and photo-montage.

7. Dadaism Philosophy
“The idea is more important than
the work itself”
“Art can be made of anything”

8. Characteristics of Dadaism
In general, Dada sought to undermine all
art, viewing it as part of cultural norms
and sensibilities that established
oppressive aesthetic standards and
emphasized the "reason" and "order"
that had led to the self-annihilating
destruction of World War I.
Therefore, anything that contradicted
these norms-
chaos, irrationality, impermanence, repu
gnance-was fair game for Dada's
proponents.

9. • Social Critique
 The Dadaists were inherently political in their
motivations. They rejected the modernist
conception of the autonomy of art or "art for
the art's sake.“Art in its various forms --
theater, the visual arts, literature and music -
- should present critical perspectives through
which to critique society. The Dadaists saw
World War I as a logical consequence of
bourgeois culture and civilization and its
emphasize on rationalism and nationalism.
The point of departure for Dada was the
rejection of all "isms" as well as all cultural
norms, standards and values.

10. • Anti-art
 The rejection of cultural standards and
values also implied the rejection of "art" as
well. The Dadaists saw themselves an anti-
art movement. Two of the primary
assumptions of the traditional concept of art
are that art work is original and that the truth
value of the art work is eternal.
 For everything that art stood for, Dada was
to represent the opposite. Where art was
concerned with aesthetics, Dada ignored
them. If art is to have at least an implicit or
latent message, Dada strives to have no
meaning--interpretation of Dada is
dependent entirely on the viewer. If art is to
appeal to sensibilities, Dada offends.

11. • Shock Value
One way to challenge the prevailing
cultural standards and values of
bourgeois culture is to intentionally
shock and provoke the audience. The
Dadaists used shock as a means of
challenging the public's sensibility and
complacency about the contemporary
world. In addition to challenging the
rules for art, Dada's intent was to use
art to encourage the public to think
critically about all rules.

12. • Chance
In an effort to defy the "rational"
cultural norms that Dada blamed for
the bloodshed of World War I, many
artists within this movement turned to
"chance" to create their art. For
example, Jean Arp would create
collages from scraps of paper that he
let fall onto the canvas.

13. • Nonsense and Irrational
Nonsense is the basic concept of the
Dada manifestation. The works of the
painters tried to express the confusion
felt by many people after the order of
the world they lived in was turned
around by the First World War, like
creating poems made of unrelated
words or collages comprised of
unassociated scraps or images.

14. • "Ready-Made" Objects
 Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray began using
prefabricated objects like stuffed animals,
prints of old paintings or photographs and
ticket stubs, and other artists caught on.
Creating art from mass-produced objects
undermined the assumption that art must be
(or ever is) inherently original and assaulted
the "deification" of the artist as the central
theme of art. An early example of
readymade art was Duchamp's "Bicycle
Wheel," a sculpture that consisted of a stool
with an upside-down bicycle wheel attached
to the top.

15. • Irony
The simple act of creating "art" that is
"anti-art" is itself ironic, but some
Dada works were imbued with an
additionally dark humor. Man Ray's
"Gift," an iron with spikes on the
underside, works irony into the piece
in a number of ways. The juxtaposition
of an implement of aesthetic
enhancement (an iron) with its
antithesis (the spikes) is ironic, as is
the double-meaning of the title itself.

16. Famous Dadaists and their works

17. Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968):
Avant-Garde Artist
• He was considered as one
of the most famous artists of
the 20th century. Marcel
Duchamp, as all the other
representatives of the Dada
current, managed to
completely change the
vision on art.
• He used to artistically
present different objects
surrounding him and called
them “found art”. Such a
representation is
'I have forced myself to contradict L.H.O.O.Q., an ironization of
myself in order to avoid the famous painting Mona
conforming to my own taste.’ Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.
--Marcel Duchamp Mona Lisa is rendered with
a beard and a mustache, in
black and white.
•

18. The Fountain

19. 'L.H.O.O.Q
• The title is a
typical Duchamp
witticism.
Pronouncing
those letters in
French makes the
sentence Elle a
chaud au cul, for
which the literal
translation is 'she
is hot in the ass'.

20. Max Ernst (1891-1976):
Painter, Sculptor, Graphic
Artist, Poet
• He founded a Dada
group in Cologne in
1919.
• One of his most important
works is
Celebes, realized in
1921. This work
combines over realistic
elements with those of
the Dadaism specific
collage.
• His paintings are
'Art has nothing to do with characterized by
taste. Art is not there to be spontaneity and they are
tasted.' --Max Ernst very abstract.

21. The Elephant Celebes

22. Pietá ou La revolution la nuit
realized in 1923.
It is a controversial
painting since the
critics claimed that it
is a reproduction of
the Virgin Mary
holding her baby, but
the Virgin is replaced
by the artist’s father
and Jesus by the
artist himself.

23. Francis Picabia (1879-1953):
Painter, Avant-Garde Artist
• A French painter,
Picabia is one of the
most famous
painters of Dadaism.
• He formed a group
for the supporters of
Dadaism in
Barcelona
• His most important
'Dada talks with you, it is everything, it painting is Amorous
includes everything, it belongs to all
religions, can be neither victory nor Parade.
defeat, it lives in space and not in time.' -
-Francis Picabia

24. Amorous Parade

25. Tristan Tzara (1896-1963):
Avant-Garde Artist
• A Romanian poet and
performance
artist, journalist, playwrig
ht, art critic and film
director.
• He became one of the
pioneer activists of Dada
in Zurich where his
shows at the Cabaret
Voltaire, as well as his
writings and
manifestos, were the
'Freedom: Dada, Dada, Dada, crying
open the constricted pains, swallowing
driving features of
the contrasts and all the contradictions, extremist Dadaism.
the grotesqueries and the illogicalities
of life.' --Tristan Tzara

26. Parler Seul

27. Raoul Hausmann (1886-1971):
Painter, Photographer
• He was a leading
member of the satirical
and highly political Berlin
branch of Pioneered the
technique of
photomontage – the art of
affixing and juxtaposing
photographs or other
“found” illustrative
materials onto a flat
surface, not like an
embellished type of
collage.

28. Raoul
Hausmann’s
Self-portrait of
the
Dadasopher,
collage-
photomontage
, 1920.

29. Other Examples
of Dada
Paintings

30. A Victim of
Society
(1919)
by
George Grosz

31. “Rectangles
Arranged
According to
the Laws of
Chance”
by
Jean/Hans Arp

32. The Simpsons’ “The Scream”