Can you call Dada art? A lot of Dada art was comprised of already made pieces, or a destruction of already famous pieces of traditional
art. Famous examples of this are Marcel Duchamp’s Mona Lisa with mustache drawing, and the "bicycle wheel". Dadaism
challenged everything art stood for at that time.
In 1916, in response to violence
and trauma of WWI, people started expressing their feelings through Dadaism.
Instead of using other forms of Art to escape life, the people would, “make visible
the violence, chaos, and hypocrisies of contemporary life”. Dadaism included
performances, publicity stunts, and manipulation of mass media. Overall it
blurred the boundaries between art and life. It originally emerged in Zurich, a
neutral territory between the countries at war. The introduction took place at
a café called, “Cabaret Voltaire”, where free thinking was indefinitely encouraged.
It was a way for people to express their offenses toward the war in social,
cultural, and political aspects. They took modern art and turned it into
abstractions, creating primitive art through expressing their unconscious. The café closed after 6 months, but the Dada movement survived and
spread to other countries through the “intellectual leader… the media-savvy
Tzara” (Tristan Tzara). He spread Dada activities outside Zurich through
exhibition, performances, and manifestos. The art movement popularly prevailed in several major cities including Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, Paris, and New York. It was commonly said, “everybody can Dada”.
A significant amount of people
would say Dada redefined art. They would argue that the Dada movement paved the
way to many other forms of art we see today.
It, “set the stage for many avant-garde movements- including surrealism,
pop art, and performance art”. Without the invention and the practicing of
Dadaism who knows where modern art would be today.
Paul
Gauguin defines art as, “either plagiarism or revolution”. Georges Braque says,
“art is meant to disturb”. Jean Sibelius defines art as, “the signature of
civilizations”. Federico Fellini defined art as, “autobiographical”. Andy
Warhol defines art as, “what you can get away with”. To Ad Reinhardt, “art is
art. Everything else is everything else”. Art is one of those words where one
definition doesn’t do it justice. Art’s meaning is different to every person
who views it. Therefore, Dada is art to many but not to all.
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