Dada (pt. 5)

These would not be the last ludicrous work of Dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp.  He later pulled the stunt of turning his entire career into a sort of mock-performance piece with the creation of his female "alter ego," Rrose Sélavy—a sound-alike for another somewhat lewd sentence in French: "Eros, c'est la vie" ("Eros/eroticism, that's life").  By the 1930s, however, Duchamp would remove himself from the art world and pass on to different areas of social interest, particularly playing chess.

Having effectively accomplished the deconstruction of art, Dada slowly receded, and the movement itself ended by about 1922.  The spirit of the movement, however, continues on to this day, and in the progression of art history, Western art could now delve deeper into the abstracts.  After the devastating conclusion of the First World War, the art world did plunge headlong into a new pool of possibilities and practices, foregoing the orthodox traditions of the previous styles and techniques.  Dadaism had meant it for social criticism, but these artists would treat their art seriously and honestly assess the situation of creative expression in the 20^th century.

Ever the humorist to the last, Marcel Duchamp died of a heart attack in 1968 and was buried under the epitaph of his own choosing: "D'ailleurs c'est toujours les autres qui meurent" ("After all, it's only always other people who die").

Dada (pt. 4)

Two years later, Marcel Duchamp submitted yet another ridiculous and controversial work of art that criticized the art institution of the time.  The artist submitted this photograph print of the Mona Lisa with a carefully drawn moustache and drew at the bottom the letters "L. H. O. O. Q."

Duchamp visited a museum and did what all tourists do: he spent a lot of time in the gift shop.  It was there that he noticed all of the nice postcards and replica prints that people were buying.  He purchased this print of the Mona Lisa, took it home, and drew a moustache on it in pencil.  That year, in 1919, he submitted it to the salon with the absurd (and offensive) title, L.H.O.O.Q.  These letters, though harmless of themselves in their apparently random sequence, form a sentence when spoken out loud.  When said in French, the title resembles the sounds in the sentence, "Elle a chaud au cul," which translates into an obscene sentence.  This again was met by understandable incredulity on the part of the board of art critics, and Duchamp's defense this time was that he had found the item initially as part of an art gallery and had added his own "addition" to the creative input; therefore why should it not be viewed as art?

…So, it's hard to take this seriously, and I don't think it's meant to be taken seriously.  However, once again, this "print" has become a certified and famous work of art now.  And perhaps it is accredited with such a high status in the art world now for the ideas which it conveys: the notions that art can be anything and that it should never be strictly limited or narrowed down to a singularly definitive institution.  The rebellious spirit expressed in works like L.H.O.O.Q. says something about the nature of art (or at least, art as it has come to be made manifest today).  Works like this are emblematic of art as an entity; that this work says something "about art."  What is art?  Can anything be art?  What should the goal of art be?  And who can be an artist?  All these and other questions arose from the Dada criticism of the art world in the late 1910s and early 1920s, and they are (despite the humorous approach taken to them) relevant questions which still influence our notions of art today.  Drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa is funny, but it accomplishes something, too, at the same time.  It's making a statement to submit such a thing to a prestigious art salon.  What do you think?  Is this art?

Dada (pt. 3)

During the height of the Dada movement in Germany and France, Marcel Duchamp joined the satirical farce and turned his artistic focus to social critique and artistic rebellion from previous styles.  His notions of demolishing the customary regulations within the art world led him to extremes, and in 1917, to prove his point, he submitted a urinal into the art salon exhibition that year under the title "Fountain."

This was an ordinary urinal which he signed "R. Mutt," an absurd name which the artist found funny.  Technically, this was supposed to be submitted as a sculpture, but Duchamp did not make this.  He purchased the urinal from a plumbing company and, at his house, signed it and dated it.  Upon submitting this ridiculous item to the salon, the artist was naturally met with skepticism that such an object could be at all considered as art.  Duchamp's defense was that he had signed it, and that therefore it was to be considered art.

Okay, for those of us with senses of humor, let's be honest; this is pretty ridiculous.  It's a urinal, and that's clearly a joke—and it's funny.  Marcel Duchamp's Dadaist theories of art can here be seen as simply that: a joke.  This is a mockery of the high-brow institution that bastioned itself in high-minded academia and intellectualism; art was growing into a lavish and refined cultural echelon of its own.  But not even the more humbly realistic Ashcan School artists could suffice to adequately disassemble this institutionalized mechanization of art (as it had so become, at least, in Duchamp's opinion).  A radical example was needed to shake the foundations of the art world and awaken people to an honest criticism of themselves.  If you can't laugh at art, you can at least laugh at a urinal.

But people take this work very seriously now as a definitive work of art conveying the ideas of boundless expression and creative freedom within the medium.  The Fountain's original intent appears to have been satire and social criticism, but perhaps today we can have the debate in a more sober-minded attitude than shocked critics would have had back then.  Today, this urinal is considered an actual work of art.  (Lol)—You can go see reproductions of it to this day in one of several different art museums.  I'm not kidding.  So, the question we ask ourselves at this point is: Why?  Why is a urinal considered art?  Should it be considered art?  Do you consider it art?

Duchamp's idea of signature license reigns supreme in most contemporary discussions of his Dadaist artwork.  I've heard the argument countless times: He signed it; he dated it; he submitted it—therefore, it's a work of art.  I'll open this one up to you guys, my readers.  Do you think that an artist's signature on a work automatically classifies that object as a work of art?  It's a valid question, and it's one which we perhaps can debate more fully after we've finished covering the material.  For now, I'll move on.

Dada (pt. 2)

Marcel Duchamp did not start out as a Dadaist of course.  His early work focused on a form of Cubism, as demonstrated by his Nude Descending a Staircase series, of which this is No. 2.

Paying serious attention to subject matter and the complete dismantling of visual appearances, the artist depicted an innovative vision of what an object in motion could look like in a stop-motion universe, the flat canvas of the painter, and did so with reference to cinematic film cameras of the time.  Motion picture film captured moving objects frame by frame and shows the intricate stages of motion.  Since prior Cubist works had only focused on stationary sitters or collage-like still lifes, this subject was revolutionary to the movement and presented the artist with no small obstacles to overcome in his painting of it.  A Cubist, after all, breaks down the subject geometrically to show all sides at once.  With movement, this is a far trickier task to undertake.  Mathematics, optics, and physics all play a part in this intricate construction; the artist has gone to no small lengths to study his subject in exhaustive depth as well as think through his artwork in detailed analysis, breaking down each movement, each still frame of a camera shot, and each visual reception processed in the eyes of the viewer.  If we look closely at this painting we can perhaps see the nude descending the staircase, but it's been convoluted, as though all the frames of a motion picture camera have been overlapped on top of one another, giving us a foggy picture of blurred lines and indiscernible subject matter.  This is Duchamp's picture of objects in motion and the inefficiency of art, the still medium, to convey the non-stationary.  To be sure, the subject has been dumbed down here to the bare minimum of lines and shapes, but even so, this painting is incredibly complex.  It catalogues under Cubist art, but Cubism would not be enough to satisfy Marcel Duchamp.  Soon after this painting was completed (in 1912), he pushed his art forward to drastically rebellious and revolutionary levels.  He would become infamous for exhibiting the most ordinary and absurd objects in salons as works of art, and we're about to look at some.

Dada (pt. 1)

Back in Europe, art techniques turned increasingly abstract and surreal.  With the onset of World War I the Western world plunged itself into the nadir of 20^th century Modernism.  The world was an increasingly different place.  The radio, the airplane, the Theory of Relativity, Model T Fords, motion pictures, and the helicopter appear during the early 1900s, among other things, and the public conception of the world we live in is changing around this time.  Science, culture, and geopolitics were all evolving rapidly, and artists also questioned the functions and role of art in this new, Modern world.  While some painters wanted to return to uncomplicated realism, such as the Ashcan School, others wanted to push art further—in fact, to its utmost limits.

Near the beginning of the war, a group of artists assembled (it is debated when the movement actually started and where it was first launched; but its epicenter largely coalesced around Zurich).  Friends, colleagues, fellow artists—these men mutually agreed to rebel against the constructs of art up to this point in out-and-out rebellion against their generation and the past cultures before them.  They believed that European culture had lost all meaning and purpose, ravaged by the Modern "waste land" of the early 20^th century.  So, art needed to be deconstructed, pushed to its limits, and, in a way, put to death.  To title their new movement, these artists selected a word at random from the dictionary.  Their name needed to make no sense because they believed that their world had lost all of its sense and meaning.  The story goes that somebody dropped a dictionary, and they chose the first word that they saw; it was Dada.  Thereafter all members of the group called themselves Dadaists.  (It's a funny word, and don't feel bad if you don't know how to pronounce it—it's supposed to be silly.)

Dada art constitutes an artistic movement that ridiculed contemporary culture and traditional art forms.  Social satire, intellectual criticism, and sometimes total farce, Dada intentionally pushed the envelope of art in a blatantly provocative way.  Although this in-your-face tone established the greater part of the movement's itinerary towards mere criticism and satire, these were at the same time actual artists who took their work seriously—just, they took it seriously through being ridiculous…if that makes sense.