Sunday 20 April 2014

Dadism. 1916-1923.

Dadism is a cultural movement, this movement began in Zurich, Switzerland. The movement started in 1961, becoming more popular up until 1922.

The Dada movement was mainly an anti-war art movement, it involved visual artists with the themes of literature, poetry, theory, theater and graphic design.
They had a nature that would rebel against politics, making a fool of what was considered meaninglessness of the modern world. The Dadists were interested in a wide range of culture. Artists such as Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings and Tristan Tzara would have public gatherings, showing demonstrations of their art. On performance in the Cabaret Voltaire it spread to europe and america as a highly influencial art movement.

The Dadists were fed up with war, and how everything seemed to be meaningless,  therefore they created a 'non-artistic' movement, considering everything else in the world had no meaning anyway. They rebelled against everything. Some say the word 'Dada' means 'Hobby horse' in french. The group beleived that the word 'Dada' made no sense, therefore they used it.

Using their humor they used everyday objects and basically just wrote a name on the object and called it art. As if they were almost mocking art. Marcel Duchamp became famous for simply drawing a mustache on a copy of the Mona Lisa. He also wrote a fake name on a Urinal naming it 'Fountain', proudly displaying it as his own sculpture.
Dada was made to typically get the reaction of outrage/shock from the viewer, it was very easily noticed and became very popular.


The Dadists did not like the idea of their 'non-art' to become accepted, therefore they 'self-destructed' it.

Tristan Tzara is well known for writing the Dada manifesto, He wrote about how the word Dada is basically meaningless, like the War, and how War was basically made from boredom of the human race.

The four main types of art that the dadaists used were; Abstraction, Expressionism, Cubism, and Futurism. Their only rule was to not follow any known rules.

I think the Dadists were right about War, it was created because of boredom, and it was completely pointless, hundreds of people dying to fight for a country for no reason.

I like how they graffited on the Mona Lisa,  to make people laugh, it slightly reminds me of my own work, I use human clothes and hairstyles and collage them onto pictures of my pets for the humor of it.


Work by Hannah hooch. i don't really like this piece as it is just lots of pictures mashed together, like a collage, Collage's don't interest me as I find them boring.