Art Movements: Dada

In my uninformed estimate, Dada seems like its probably the most widely recognized – if not necessarily identifiable – early 20^th century art movement. People can look at Impressionist paintings reaching into the early years of the 1900s or even any work by Picasso and not be able to place it in context. That’s not really the case with Dada.

Salvador Dali had more than a bit to do with that as he eventually worked his renown into an ill fated partnership with Walt Disney yielding one of the most shocking cartoons of all time, though, not released at the time of its completion.

Recognizing something as coming from the Dada camp, as opposed to saying what it is, reaches back to the movement’s inception. Anyone even vaguely interested in art is familiar with that toilet Marcel Duchamp fooled everyone with. But levying the word ready-made in casual conversation is going to frequently be met with confusion.

Duchamp’s work, apart from being iconic to a wide spectrum of people, also serves to point out the fact that Dada was determined to work in any number of various art practices – some even figure the Ubu plays by Alfred Jarry as being a considerable influence on those that would coalesce around Dada.

Part of what made the movement unique – apart from the fact that it didn’t seem like the most serious endeavor on the face of the earth – was a desire to juxtapose any two (or more) things or ideas that would be jarring to a viewer, i.e. a toilet displayed alongside ‘proper’ art.

Using the idea of multiple perspectives, aped from the Cubists, artists associated with Dada moved to incorporate collage ideas, concurrently being practiced by more than a few people connected to the Futurist movement. What’s interesting about that connection is that Dada comes across as free of care, where Futurism might make some uneasy – all that movement towards an unknown future.

But in noting the similarities between all of these disparate (in space and time) art movements is odd commonalities each shared. It didn’t seem that each was backed by a different philosophy or practiced for a different reason. The results, independent of history, are all engaging. When set next to each other, though, a weird narrative forms that engulfs politics, pop culture, high art and an idle populace being shown any number of works that confound or please. Whatever the result of Dada or any other movement was, it’s all still being played out in studios and classrooms across the world. Weird.