DaDa Movement

Hey Everyone,

Sorry I missed out on the presenting last week. Following is the information that I would have presented, had i been there, plus some that probably got covered during the presentation.


Dada Movement Overview:

DaDa was officially not a movement, its art not art. The movement started in Zurich, Switzerland, coinciding with the beginning of World War One, or 1916. DaDaist set out to create "non-art," or art that went directly against all conventional ideas of what art should be. Dadaists created art that was meant to confuse or anger, art with "no meaning" according to them.
The dada movement, though focused on the visual arts, included performing arts, literature, and art theory as well. It was, at heart, a political and social movement aimed against the contemporary society that was allowing World War One to happen.

According to Marc Lowenthal, dadaism was "the groundwork to abstact art and sound poetry, a starting point for perfomance art, a prelude to postmodernism, an influence on pop art, a celebration of antiart to be later embraced for anarcho-political uses in the 1960's and the movement that lay the foundation for surrelism."


Characteristics of dada art:
- dada only had one true rule: Do not follow any known rules.
-dada work was intented to provoke an emotional reaction from the viewer (usually shock or outrage, sometimes even anger or disgust)
-dada art is nonesensical and cluttered, sometimes whimsical.
-abstraction and expressionism influenced dada work.
-the assemblage, collage, and photomontage were used heavily in dada art, though found objects, tapestries, glass and plaster can also be found in the work of dada artists.
-dada strove to be un-acceptable. when it started to become acceptable in the art community, it self destructed.
-dada art was not supposed to have any real "meaning."


Noted Dada artists:
- Hans Arp
-Marcel Duchamp
-Max Ernst
-Hannah Hoch
-Man Ray
-Alfred Stieglitz
-Hans Richter
-Johannes Baader
-George Grosz


I think I have covered the basics. Dada as a movement, though it did not last very long, was actually quite broad, and varied over different parts of the world. Zurich was only the beginning, as the movement spread to Berlin, Paris, and as far as New York and other parts of the United States. The art from different parts of the world was widely varied, though it all shared the same characteristics in the early years. Over the years, dada melted away, and artists in each part of the world moved on to other movement, including surrealism, modernism and the early post modern art.