Dada
Dada is a word randomly chosen due to the group’s focus on nonsense and
rejection of the bourgeois institutions. The origins of the word are unclear (In
German the term signifies baby talk; in French it means hobby horse in
Romanian and Russian it means yes, yes… therefore, the name and the
movement was intended to be defined as the individual chose to interpret it.
When: during World War I
Why: A group of artists came together to protest the decadent bourgeois culture,
which they blamed for the war and its vast destruction.
What:
 They created nonsense poetry: Hugo Ball was the first to create nonsense
poems. They would cut words from pages and drop them on the table. They
placed them together in their random manner to create nonsense poems.
Why?
1. Retreat into sounds alone and reject “the language devastated and made
impossible by journalism” (in Stokstad 1100).
2. To amuse the audience by introducing the healthy play of children instead
of the restrained adult lives
 In Berlin, Dadaists created a lot of visual art, while elsewhere it tended to be
more literary. The visual artists created anti-art: They created spontaneous
artworks and often juxtaposed found objects.
Result: chaos in the art world, among the public and even amongst its members
Jean (Hans) Arp (1887-1966) born in Strasbourg, Germany
He made collages by cutting bits of paper and letting them float to the floor. He
would glue them to a sheet of paper to create his artwork.
Why? Protest against emphasis on design and emotional expression.
Collage of Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance, 1916-17
He further developed this concept by cutting random pieces of wood, gluing them
together and painting them to create sculptures.
Birds in an Aquarium, 1920
Once his biomorphic (stylized and organic shapes) pieces of wood were placed
together they would suggest to him a visual image such as birds in an aquarium and
he would paint the sculpture as such.
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Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)
He was influential in spreading Dada to North America when he moved to NYC in
1915 to escape WWI.
 While in Paris, Duchamp had successfully experimented with Cubism as seen
in his highly regarded painting Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2, 1912.
However, he abandoned painting, which he grew to consider mindless.
 In NYC, Duchamp believed that art should have more to do with intellect than
the senses.
In NYC his first great work was The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even
(The Large Glass), 1915-23. Oil, varnish, lead foil, lead wire, and dust on two
sheets on glass panels.
They are two large panes of glass to which things were applied. Dust that had settled
was carefully fixed to the glass.
It is most commonly described as pessimistic statement of the insoluble frustrations
of male-female relations.
“The tubular elements encased in the top half o the glass represent the bride. She
releases a large romantic sigh, which stimulates the bachelors below, represented
by nine different moldlike forms attached to a waterwheel. The wheel resembles
and is attached to a chocolate grinder, a reference to a French euphemism for
masturbation. A bar separates the males from the female, preventing the fulfilment
of their respective sexual desires. Duchamp reverses the conventional power roles
of men and women by placing the female in the dominant position; the males merely
react to her.” (Stokstad 1102)
Duchamp later wrote “notes” on his artwork:
“The stripping of the bride is an allegory of courtly love”
“The stripping is a kind of alchemical purification - base matter turning into
spirit.”
“The stripping is our access to the fourth dimension”
He created readymades: ordinary objects that were already manufactured
(“already made”) which he found and turned into artworks.
His first readymade was a bicycle wheel set upside down on a stool,
Bicycle Wheel, 1913
Fountain, 1917
 This is his most famous and notorious readymade.
 It is a porcelain urinal turned 90 degrees and signed with pseudonym R. Mutt
(play on words of the manufacturer’s name J. L. Mott Iron Works.)
 Duchamp, who was head of the hanging committee, submitted it
anonymously to the first annual exhibition of the American Society of
Independent Artists to test how open society was. It was rejected from the
art show because wasn’t considered art, plagiarism (pre-manufactured) and
indecent. Duchamp was not shocked by the decision but he resigned from the
committee.
 He wrote, “Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not
has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it
so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of
view--created a new thought for that object.” (Stokstad 1102).
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