Cubism & Dadaism

1. Art Movement
Cubism & Dadaism
By
Vishnu Achutha Menon
Department of Media and
Communication
Central University of Tamil Nadu

2. CUBISM

3. Origin
The movement was created by picasso and braque in
paris from 1907 to 1914.
● Braque and Picasso were the major artists
throughout the majority of the cubist movement.
● the term Cubisim was first coined by Louis
Vauxcelles after seeing the landscapes braque
painted at L’estaque, in 1908, calling the
geometric figures in the paintings “cubes”.

5. Influences of Cubism
● Primitive and non western sources
● Oceanic and iberian sculpture
● African art in case of Picasso’s Les
Demoiselles d’ Avignon
● Colonialism/imperialism
● World war 1
● Post impressionism
● Science- Bohr, Einstien

6. Cubism consists of two stages
Analytical : Very abstract; mostly made up of overlapping planes
and geometrical figures.
Synthetic: Tended to use new mediums, such as clips from
newspaper, on top of paint canvas; took away all three dimensional
aspects left from analytical.

7. Philosophy
The cubists were more intrigued by form than colour.
They wanted to develop a new seeing entirely. They were
interested in changing viewpoint as it was affected by
space or time. The point of cubism was to show all
viewpoints simultaneously.

8. Overall characteristics
● Rejects that art should copy nature
● Rejects use of traditional techniques
● Emphasizes two-dimensionality
● Reduces objects to geometric shapes and puts these within a shallow
space.
● Multiple vantage points
● Overlapping planes ( passage)
● Exploration of the fourth dimension.

9. Influence on Art

10. Artists
● Pablo Picasso
● Georges Barque
● Jean Metzinger
● Fernand Leger
● Juan Giris

11. Paintings
The Girl with the Mandolin
-Pablo Picasso
Mandora
Georges Barque-

12. Paintings
The Woman in Blue
-Fernand Leger
Fantomas
Juan Giris-

13. Sculptures
Le Cheval Majeur
-Raymond Deuchenal

14. Architecture
● Cubism has
influenced the
Architecture around
the world.
● So called Modern
Architecture has
been highly
influenced by
Cubism.

15. Jewellery

16. Literature
● Cubism in literature means shifting the literary
perspective – that is, the points of view.
● It involves writing about events and people as they
appear to one character, then repeating through the eyes
of another, and then moving to yet another.
● It involves using different narrators for different chapters
or even different paragraphs, so as to describe how each
character views the others, put in the words, thoughts
and feelings of the characters themselves.

17. Literature- Examples
● A Game of Thrones (R.R. Martin, 1996) - Book One of A
Song of Fire and Ice
Every one of the books in the series has a small cast of
“POV characters,” and it is through these characters’
perspectives that we see the story unfold… This also means
that villains who seem very one-dimensional can begin to be
much more sympathetic once we get their point of view
● The Imperfectionists - Tom Rachman
● Getrude Stein

18. Music
● Cubism in music also exists: sound and time can be perceived from
various viewpoints and centers of gravity. Combinations of natural
elements (wood, metal, skin); music tradition (African, Indian, Middle
Eastern); metric structures and unusual subdivisions can open music in
all its sides for the listener. New angles in composition and arrangement
unfold.
● Music can even be represented using geometric shapes: as vectors of
sound in motion, as particles of musical thought. In South India the
rhythm yatis are derived from the curl of a cow's tail, the barrel shaped
mridangam drum, an hourglass of the damaru drum. North Indian rhythm
cycles, math concepts of tihai and ginti, and African bell cycles can be
realized as a compass, circles, flowing waves.

19. Films
● Lot of films used concept of cubism to show
different attributes to a character or the film in
itself
● The Charlie Chaplin series also used the
concept in there visuala

20. DADAISM

21. History of Dadaism
● Dadaism was an art movement of the European
avant-garde in the early 20th century. Dada in
Zurich, Switzerland, began in 1916, spreading
to Berlin shortly thereafter, but the height of
New York Dada was the year before, in 1915.
The term anti-art, a precursor to Dada, was
coined by Marcel Duchamp around 1913 when
he created his first readymades.

22. History of Dadaism
Dada, in addition to being anti-war, had political
affinities with the radical left and was also anti-
bourgeois
● Dada was an informal international movement,
with participants in Europe and North America.
The beginnings of Dada correspond to the
outbreak of World War I.

23. History of Dadaism
Dada, in addition to being anti-war, had political
affinities with the radical left and was also anti-
bourgeois
● Dada was an informal international movement,
For many participants, the movement was a
protest against the bourgeois nationalist and
colonialist interests.

24. History of Dadaism
Many Dadaists believed these were the root
cause of the war, and against the cultural and
intellectual conformity in art and more broadly in
society—that corresponded to the war.

25. Origin of Term-Dadaism
The origin of the name Dada is unclear; some
believe that it is a nonsensical word. Others
maintain that it originates from the Romanian
artists Tristan Tzara's and Marcel Janco's frequent
use of the words "da, da," meaning "yes, yes" in
the Romanian language.

26. Origin of Term-Dadaism
Another theory says that the name "Dada" came
during a meeting of the group when a paper knife
stuck into a French-German dictionary happened
to point to 'dada', a French word for 'hobbyhorse'.

27. Why Dadaism?
● Dadaism came up after the World War I as a
protest to the killings and bloodshed.
● Since it was nonsensical art, it did not have any
aesthetic appeal.
● The main aim of the movement was to ridicule
and destroy the aesthetic importance of original
art forms and make a spoof out of it.

28. Influence on Paintings
The Fountain [Marcel Duchamps]
The Readymades of Marcel Duchamps are
ordinary manufactured objects that the artist
selected and modified, as an antidote to what he
called "retinal art".
[1] By simply choosing the object (or objects) and
repositioning or joining, titling and signing it, the
object became art.

29. Influence on Paintings
The creation of Fountain began when,
accompanied by artist Joseph Stella and art
collector Walter Arsenberg, he purchased a
standard Bedfordshire model urinal from the J. L.
Mott Iron Works, 118 Fifth Avenue.
The artist brought the urinal to his studio at 33
West 67th Street, reoriented it to a position 90
degrees from its normal position of use, and wrote

31. Collage
Untitled(Squares Arranged according to the Laws of
Chance)
Hans Arp made a series of collages based on chance,
where he would stand above a sheet of paper,
dropping squares of contrasting colored paper on the
larger sheet's surface, and then gluing the squares
wherever they fell onto the page.The Dadaists imitated
the techniques developed during the cubist movement

32. Collage
through the pasting of cut pieces of paper items, but
extended their art to encompass items such as
transportation tickets, maps, plastic wrappers, etc. to
portray aspects of life, rather than representing objects
viewed as still life.

34. Photomontages
The Dadaists – the "monteurs" (mechanics) – used
scissors and glue rather than paintbrushes and
paints to express their views of modern life through
images presented by the media.
A variation on the collage technique,
photomontage utilized actual or reproductions of
real photographs printed in the press.

35. Photomontages
In Cologne, Max Ernst used images from the First
World War to illustrate messages of the
destruction of war

37. Assemblages
The assemblages were three-dimensional variations of
the collage – the assembly of everyday objects to
produce meaningful or meaningless (relative to the
war) pieces of work including war objects and trash.
Objects were nailed, screwed or fastened together in
different fashions. Assemblages could be seen in the
round or could be hung on a wall.

39. Dada Artists
Key figures in the movement included Hugo Ball,
Emmy Hennings, Hans Arp, Raoul Hausmann,
Hannah Höch, Johannes Baader, Tristan Tzara,
Francis Picabia, Richard Huelsenbeck, George Grosz,
John Heartfield, Marcel Duchamp, Beatrice Wood,
Kurt Schwitters, Hans Richter, and Max Ernst, among
others.

40. Philosophy
● Dadaism may be one of the slipperiest and most
deliberately annoying movements of modern art. It’s the
sort of”art” that draws the rolled eyes, shaking heads,.It
began in Zurich during the first World War as a
collaborative effort among painters, writers and dramatists
as well as other types of artists.

41. Philosophy
● Dada actually invented a number of experimental art
forms and techniques, which have contributed in several
ways to the development of that tradition. This was by no
means apparent at the time, as the Dada activists began
to produce meetings designed to provoke controversy
and even riots in support of their subversive agenda. The
description of Dada as more of an "attitude" than a
movement.

42. Characteristics
● Dada began in Zurich and became an international movement.
● ›Dada had only one rule: Never follow any known rules.
● ›Dada art is whimsy. Almost all of the people who created it were ferociously serious,
though.
● Abstraction and Expressionism were the main influences on Dada, followed by Cubism.
● There was no predominant medium in Dadaist art. All things from geometric tapestries to
glass to plaster and wooden reliefs were fair game. It's worth noting, though collage, and the
use of ready made objects all gained wide acceptance due to their use in Dada
● Dada self-destructed when it was in danger of becoming "acceptable
● 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.
● Dada embraced the irrational in a number of ways It adopted the Freudian idea of free
association as a method for freeing the unconscious from the censoring mechanisms of
consciousness.. Another approach to subvert conscious control of the the art work was to
incorporate chance and randomness in the creation of the art work.

43. Characteristics
● Dada began in Zurich and became an international movement.
● ›Dada had only one rule: Never follow any known rules.
● ›Dada art is whimsy. Almost all of the people who created it
were ferociously serious, though.
● Abstraction and Expressionism were the main influences on
Dada, followed by Cubism.
● There was no predominant medium in Dadaist art. All things
from geometric tapestries to glass to plaster and wooden reliefs
were fair game. It's worth noting, though collage, and the use of
ready made objects all gained wide acceptance due to their use
in Dada.

44. References
A life of Picasso : The Cubist rebel 1907-
1016 ( BOOK)
Cubism - the Leonard A. Launder
Collection.
Google
betterthanarobot.wordpress.com

45. THANK YOU