2023-02-01
"For me, watching the decay of modern man is entertainment, the only thing that interests me". These words by Tristan Tzara perfectly demonstrate the Dadaists' attitude to their art. They experienced the tragedy of the First World War and chose to respond to it with a break with all artistic tradition, a rejection of canons and a joke.
The Dadaist movement took shape in Europe and the United States around 1915. Artists such as Hans Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Francis Picabia created their art and used absurdity, playfulness and wit. Inventiveness was important to them, they combined old techniques and invented new ones. They wanted to shock and show the bizarre. Art was therefore reduced to a game that reflected a world order based on absurdity.
Techniques worth remembering, in the context of Dadaist art, are collage, photomontage and ready-made. The name of the movement came from the word 'dada', which in French means a small wooden toy or the chattering of a small child. The term was drawn from the dictionary by the movement's chief theorist and legislator, Tristan Tzara.
Ready-made were everyday objects elevated to the status of works of art. The originator of the idea was Pablo Picasso, but it was Marcel Duchamp who perfected it. He is the author of the "Fountain" from 1917, a urinal common at the time, which Duchamp signed with his name and placed on a pedestal. He also led the presentation of a bottle dryer and a bicycle wheel at the art exhibition. To this day, the presentation of "The Fountain" in a gallery exhibition is considered one of the more radical breakthroughs in art.
Interestingly, it is now considered that ready-made contributed to the development of Pop Art, a movement in which mass-produced everyday objects were just as important. Furthermore, they laid the foundations for conceptual art, in which the highest value was the idea for the work, not the material object itself.