Dada & Surrealism For Beginners
128
Dada & Surrealism For Beginners
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Overview
Dadas!
And what happens in such a movement? With Dada, many of the artists declared their own “Pope” and continued their journey (with no destination) into Surrealism, creating burning giraffes, “amoebic” dogs, and lobster telephones – some of the most imaginative and intense works of art of the 20th Century. In Dada & Surrealism For Beginners, you’ll get a colorful overview of these two movements, and develop a sense of the turbulent, wild, and unapologetically mad mood and tone of the Dada and Surrealist movements. Whether you’re an artist, would-be artist, or someone seeking the marvelous, you’ll find the courage and originality of the movements inspiring, and you’ll gain an understanding of their long-term (and current) influences on contemporary art and culture – everything from performance art to pop art to the abandoned train ticket you find in the street.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781939994028 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | For Beginners |
| Publication date: | 08/21/2007 |
| Series: | For Beginners |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 128 |
| File size: | 17 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Peter Bethanis is an artist, essayist, and poet whose work has appeared widely in literary journals, including Poetry, Lullwater Review, and Tar River Poetry.
Joe Lee is an illustrator, cartoonist, writer, and clown. With a degree from Indiana University centering on Medieval History, Joe is also a graduate of Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey’s Clown College. He worked for some years as a circus clown. He is the illustrator of a baker’s dozen of For Beginners books including, Barack Obama, [Howard] Zinn, Shakespeare, Postmodernism, Deconstruction, Eastern Philosophy, and Global Warming among others. Joe lives in Bloomington, Indiana with his wife Mary Bess, son Brandon, cat George, and the terriers (or rather terrors) Max and Jack.
Read an Excerpt
DADA & SURREALISM FOR BEGINNERS
By ELSA BETHANIS, PETER BETHANIS, JOSEPH LEE
For Beginners LLC
Copyright © 2006 Elsa & Peter BethanisAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-939994-02-8
CHAPTER 1
DADA ERUPTS
Then you may be ready to be a Dada or Surrealist.
To get started, let's assume the right mood, which requires some adjustment of your modern approach. So we will head to Zurich, Switzerland, in 1916.
WHAT' HAPPENING?
Elsewhere in Europe, World War I is raging and Europe is a mess. So Zurich is filled with soldiers, refugees and revolutionaries, and people are frightened. Devastation of the war surrounds Switzerland, as does unimaginable suffering, and though it is safe for now, Zurich is terribly tense.
Now let's head down the street to the Dada's hangout,
JUST WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?
The Dadas may or may not introduce themselves, depending on how bourgeois they find us, so here's an introduction:
HUGO BALL (German), the founder of the Cabaret Voltaire. A former theater director, he's seen the war (although he did not fight; he was rejected from military service on medical grounds), and hates it. A conscientious objector, he's an idealist and doesn't stay with the group long.
TRISTAN TZARA (Romanian), a student of literature and philosophy, whose adopted name means "sad in country."
EMMY HENNINGS (German), actress, dancer, cabaret singer, expert forger, and Ball's companion.
RICHARD HUELSENBECK (German), a medical student who was drafted and fled to Switzerland to study medicine.
HANS ARP (Alsatian) a painter, sculptor, and poet who later became a Surrealist. The author Gale writes that Arp gained some notoriety for a painting at a girls' school that was considered corrupting to the students.
MARCEL JANCO (Romanian). Friend of Tzara and a student of architecture, he becomes known for his Dada masks.
And that's the original group. This is Ball's venue, and he's promoting a Dada happening for this evening.
The Dadas enjoyed hijinx, irony, and paradox—they posed the question of whether Dada is art or fire insurance, nothing or everything, art or anti-art?
Ball's the one who's set up the cabaret, which has been going on for about three months now.
The Dadas claimed to know all about Enlightenment ideas—Reason. Rationality. Morality. The arts ennoble people—the arts are supposed to make people better human beings, right? But the Dadas looked around Europe and saw death, destruction, and inventions designed for the purposes of death and destruction.
Tzara's reaction is a state of mind that was common: many international youths and artists recognized this irrational response to the turbulent politics and war of the time.
The Dadas are young, passionate, and angry. They have a point: all this reasonable rational talk from the nice normal middle class buzzes around them while people are hung, hurting and still dying horrible deaths. The middle class is talking about God and country, flags and churches, while the devastation rages around them. It's crazy. But the middle class, if they know anything about Dada, think it's nonsense.
So, if a group of clearly irrational people have decided that YOU are the one with a problem, maybe it's better not to be like them at all. The Dadas prefer at this point to form their own identity, preferably as different from the middle class as possible. Maybe the irrational is better than the rational, given what's happening around Europe. That's what the Dadas are talking about. They're sad and angry. They have resorted to tactics of shock and irony, and the irrational has become a frame of mind set in opposition to the "devil machinery" of World War I.
Futurism was founded in Italy and had its heyday from about 1909 to 1916. Futurists saw art in machines and had a fascination with movement, motion, energy, and dynamics. And war. The Dadas were intrigued by Futurism but didn't subscribe to it.
Ball wanted to dispense with a language that he claimed had been made stale and obsolete by journalism. Ball preferred to use "sound poems" to be performed by Dada stage artists. The key to the sound poem is to estrange language from its traditional use. In the sound poem, words are spliced into individual phonetic symbols that rely on repetition and rhythm to create what the Dadas called "sound pictures."
Then there is the question of what IS Dada? What does it mean?
The Dadas disagreed with one another about art, politics, and general Dada events, but at times these disagreements seemed to spur greater creativity. Arp inspired the role of chance in art in his work, "Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance)."
At the same time, Arp celebrated the harmony of organic structures by the Poet-Impressionist Cezanne. Arp continues Cezanne's legacy in his painted wood object entitled Relief Dada.
At times, critics like to pigeonhole certain artists as part of one movement or another. When viewing any group of artists it is important not to get too caught up in the "isms" of art, and recognize each artist is an individual working within the context of a group. Many Dadas wanted to blow up these "isms" while paradoxically being inspired by them.
(The Dadas loved to tease and tantalize their audiences in such ways....)
It is important to realize that this book is not Dada. This book is telling you about Dada.
The Dadas wouldn't like that. They wanted Dada to be about:
The Dadas don't like nice bourgeois writers writing about their movement, and they certainly wouldn't like nice bourgeois readers "getting" it.
Throw the book away, they might say. And be Dada.
HANS RICHTER was one of the Dadas. He documented many Dada events in his book, Dada: Art and Anti-Art.
This book will focus less on dates and facts, since the Dadas wouldn't be too excited about them anyway, and more on helping you understand TONE and MOOD and SPIRIT of the movement.
The Dadas didn't want their work to be documented. To their way of thinking, work that's documented becomes too stale and too easily claimed by the bourgeois, where it not only becomes acceptable but also loses its spontaneity and vibracy–qualities that made it Dada in the first place.
The Dadas did indeed have wildly differing accounts of "what really happened" regarding various significant events in the movement, but seemed to make little effort to clarify the matters–and, in fact, seemed to enjoy making their stories MORE puzzling at times.
In Dada: Art and Anti-Art, Richter writes how the Dadas delighted in torturing the public with false news stories. He describes one newspaper story where the Dadas claimed to have had a pistol duel with a popular poet the Dadas did not like or respect. Of course, this duel had never really happened and was meant to provoke the poet. When the poet angrily wrote in disclaiming this story, the Dadas promptly published a disclaimer of his disclaimer, stating that of course the poet didn't want to be associated with their quarrels and, not that it mattered, but they had fired away from each other.
So what was Dada's TONE, MOOD, and SPIRIT?
It's hard to talk about any flavor of Dada without mentioning geography. While Dada was an international movement, its most well-known adherents were concentrated in Zurich, Berlin, New York, and, later, Paris.
Zurich seemed too passive for some Dadas, many of whom eventually wound up in Berlin where the movement had reached a pitch because of inflamed sentiments about the war as well as the continuing political upheaval. Paris was initially a center of attraction for the Dadas, but many say that's where Dada eventually died. And New York bred its own version of Dada.
You already met the main cast of characters in Zurich. Who were the main players in Berlin, Paris, and New York?
BERLIN DADA
CAST OF MAIN CHARACTERS
Berlin Dada was the angriest of the Dada movements–small wonder, though, considering that life in Berlin was defined by rampant inflation, a destabilized government, and revolutionary movements.
RICHARD HUELSENBECK, who returned to Berlin from relatively peaceful Zurich, wrote:
A question that was likely on the mind of many a person in Berlin.
With the end of WWI came new struggles with new regimes, new controversies, and new concerns with the weak Weimar Republic. American Matthew Josephson, who participated in many Dada events, wrote: "The German Dadas, in contrast with those of France, had been highly 'political' and acted in sympathy with the Spartacist and Communist insurrectionists of 1919".
The Berlin Dadas included:
RICHARD HUELSENBECK, our friend from Zurich, returned to spread Dada to Berlin. He eventually became a doctor and left Germany.
RAOUL HAUSMANN, "the other 'RH.'"
RICHTER: [Hausmann's] versatility was inexhaustible.... On one day he was a photomonteur, on the next a painter, on the third a pamphleteer, on the fourth a fashion designer....
JOHANNES BAADER, who called himself the "OberDada" or "SuperDada" (and whose sanity is still a matter of contention).
GEORGE GROSZ, another veteran and a caricaturist who, writes Josephson, was well known for his drawings "of the famished standing before ... shop windows filled with hams, sausages, cheese, and wine, while policemen came to drive them away with clubs".
As did John Heartfield. Hannah Hoch, and many more.
PARIS DADA
CAST OF CHARACTERS
I FIRST USED THE WORD "SURREALIST," NOT ANDRE BRETON.
Dada came to Paris later. The Paris Dadas emerged from a different tradition than the Zurich or Berlin Dadas. They were interested in the French Symbolists and writers such as Guillaume Apollinaire and Stéphane Mallarme. (It is little wonder that it was this group that eventually broke away to become Surrealists.)
The Paris Dadas were aware of the goings-on in Zurich and were curious about events there. In Paris, the Dadas were:
ANDRÉ BRETON, who began as a Dada, but gradually drifted to Surrealism and became a major figure within that movement. His medical training led him to experiments with the subconscious that later influenced the Surrealist artists.
PHILIPPE SOUPAULT, poet, novelist, and essayist who also had medical training, followed Breton into Surrealism but gradually drifted away from Breton's group.
LOUIS ARAGON, poet, novelist, and essayist who, like the others, had some medical training, and whose later departure from the Surrealist movement became known as "The Aragon Affair."
NEW YORK DADA
CAST OF MAIN CHARACTERS
New York Dada didn't call itself Dada at first, even though this version of Dada started as early as the Zurich Dadas. Some of the members of the New York group returned to Europe to see what their contemporaries were up to. Even then, some New York Dadas did not want to be called Dadas.
The New York Dadas, along with many other artists, comprised what came to be known as the "Arensberg Circle." This group met at the apartment of patrons/collectors, the Arensbergs.
The New York Dadas are:
ALFRED STIEGLITZ: Founder of the 291 Gallery, where many of the New York Dadas exhibited their work, as well as founder of 291 and editor of Camera Work, two influential little magazines.
MARCEL DUCHAMP: A Frenchmen who arrived in New York in 1915. He declared that he came to New York because he didn't have anyone to talk to. He greatly admires New York architecture, especially the skyscrapers.
Duchamp emerges as one of the better-known Dada artists.
FRANCIS PICABA: Although he traveled between the U.S. and Europe and was simultaneously influenced by and communicating with multiple artists of the time, he exhibited his paintings in the United States and collaborated with Duchamp. He founded 391, the successor to Stieglitz's magazine.
MAN RAY: Invented his name (his real name was Emanuel Rabinovitch). One of the few Americans to play a part in the Dada movement, Man Ray is best known for his influential photography; particularly his "rayographs," objects placed over photographic paper and exposed to light, leaving intriguing images of light and shadow.
And a comparatively minor-but-too-interesting-to-avoid-mentioning character:
ARTHUR CRAVAN: An American who boasted that he was the nephew of Oscar Wilde, yet had never met him face to face. He also claimed to be a boxer and went so far as to challenge the world champion to a fight and was knocked out in the first round. It's said that one highlight of New York Dada was when Cravan read his poems to an audience while naked.
So now, what did all these Dadas do and where)?
1913, NEW YORK CITY 69TH REGIMENT ARMORY ART SHOW
Think of nudes (in art) and some phrases to describe them.
So what does a Dada nude look like?
The French artist Marcel Duchamp painted Nude Descending a Staircase and exhibited it at this show.
THE AMERICAN PUBLIC WAS SHOCKED!
Meanwhile, back in Switzerland....
1916, ZURICH CABARET VOLTAIRE OPENS
So what kinds of shows were the Dadas performing at the Cabaret Voltaire? The shows started off with poetry readings and musical performances of a more traditional bend, but they began to change....
The Dadas were forced to abandon the Cabaret Voltaire about a year after it opened and started a second gallery called Galerie Dada. Their ideas spread throughout Europe, particularly through a little magazine called Dada, edited by Tzara, who emerged as the leader of Dada. While the idea of having a "leader" seems contradictory to the spirit of Dada, it was–yet the Dadas had few problems with contradictions.
Meanwhile in Paris and around the world, other artists were beginning to take note of the little magazine.
The word "Dada" is also supposedly invented, or chosen this year. The Dadas bitterly disputed who came up with the word, when, and how. Perhaps it shouldn't have mattered to them, yet it remained a controversy.
and back over in Berlin....
1917, BERLIN THE REPUBLIC AND "CHURCH OF DADA"?
Johannes Baader is not one of today's better-known Dadas, but nonetheless he made some statements that were admired among Dadas and that perhaps show Dada in a way the other artists' statements don't.
Baader later went on to disturb church services with declarations against the church. (Accounts on what he actually said vary, but it wasn't very nice.)
The Dadas admired the unconventionality of the mad, and didn't seem to disturb themselves too much with the question of whether Baader maybe actually was mad.
Even though Baader cast himself as Dada president, Richter describes Baader as "removed from normality" and "in a permanent state of euphoria." Richter wasn't the only Dada to note Baader's peculiarities, which seemed to stretch beyond those of the rest of the group.
Duchamp was dabbling in Dada early. Known for his "ready-mades," he selected random objects and simply placed them together in ways he found aesthetically pleasing. Perhaps his best known "ready-made" is a bicycle wheel attached to a stool, called simply Bicycle Wheel.
1917, NEW YORK DUCHAMP EXHIBITS LA FONTAINE
In 1917, Duchamp submitted his piece La Fontaine to an exhibition. Any paying artist was supposed to be able to exhibit. But a urinal? As art? That was Duchamp's idea. Turn it upside down. And sign it with the fake name of R. Mutt.
A fellow Dada named Beatrice Wood defended the work:
Duchamp was making a bold statement: Art didn't have to come from the academy or be part of an academic study, it didn't have to be "pretty," and it did not have to represent anything. The artist's eye, choosing something, made it art.
(Duchamp eventually became a professional chess player. Such a logical game seems out of character for a Dada, but this is just another example of a Dada contradiction.)
And back we go to Zurich....
1918, ZURICH TZARA'S DADA MANIFESTO
Anyone asking that question will be fuether perplexed by Tristan Tzara's manifesto. The tone is one of great anger and frustration, as Tzara lashes out at everything and nothing:
(The Dadas seemed to be fond of manifestos.)
Perhaps the most famous Dada work is Marcel Duchamp's replica of the Mona Lisa with an added moustache called LHOOQ.
1919, PARIS – LITERATURE APPEARS
A small group of temporary Dadas emerges in Paris: Louis Aragon, Philippe Soupault, and André Breton. Literature was a small magazine edited by Aragon and Breton, with a sarcastically dull and pompous title. Literature was the way that Breton gradually overtook the Dada movement, using it as his main vehicle for publication.
1920, BERLIN FIRST INTERNATIONAL DADA FAIR
Political upheaval helped make Berlin Dada particularly controversial and uproarious. The Berlin Dadas joined together to viciously protest Authority in its many guises.
The Berlin Dadas in particular were noted for having events that were interrupted by riots and the police.
1920, PARIS VARIOUS EXHIBITIONS
At the Dada exhibitions in Paris, the theater-going audience was lured in under various pretenses (such as promising the appearance of Charlie Chaplin or the Dadas shaving their heads on stage) and then subjected to direct insults like Picabia's Manifeste Cannibale:
The more the newspapers reported on the Dada performances, the more audiences seemed to attend. But as the audiences caught on to the Dada's antics, they began to bring vegetables and steaks with which they pelted the Dadas.
At this point, some of the Paris Dadas were becoming disillusioned and a new leader was starting to take Tzara's place.
1921, PARIS – DADA CRACKS
By 1921, the infighting among Dadas had become intense.
In other words, the movement that was fighting staleness in art was becoming ... stale.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from DADA & SURREALISM FOR BEGINNERS by ELSA BETHANIS, PETER BETHANIS, JOSEPH LEE. Copyright © 2006 Elsa & Peter Bethanis. Excerpted by permission of For Beginners LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
1. Dada Erupts,2. The True Dadas Are Separate From Dada,
3. The Sun, the Egg and 391 Attitudes,
4. Pure Surrealist Joy,
5. Madmen, Magritte, Moods, and Surrealist Glows in the Eyes of Women,
6. Dada and Surrealism Today,
Bibliography,