Dadaism and the Beginning of Surrealism
International in scope and diverse in artistic output, both Dada and Surrealism were artistic, literary and intellectual movements of the early 20th century that were instrumental in defining Modernism.
A short-lived art movement that began in 1916 and ended in 1922. Dadaism originated as a reaction against the absurdity of war, established bourgeois rationality and morality. The movement was responding declaring itself against art, turning to absurd and primitive, nonsense combination of random words (in literature). However, in course of such struggle Dadaism created art itself with it's major centers in Zurich, Paris, Berlin, Cologne and New York City. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature, poetry, art manifestos, art theory, theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works. These various groups did not share a universal style, but rather were connected by their rejection of idealism, stale artistic and intellectual conventions and modern society’s unchecked embrace of ‘rationalism’ and ‘progress’. They condemned the nationalist and capitalist values that led to the cataclysm of the war and employed unorthodox techniques, performances and provocations to jolt the rest of society into self-awareness. The absurdity of Dada activities created a mirror of the absurdity in the world around them. Dada was anti-aesthetic, anti-rational and anti-idealistic. Dadaism explored the ideas of the context of an object. Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) created some of the most debated issues in Dadaism. These days the artist's ready-mades are regarded as high art, despite of the fact that his goal was not to turn the everyday into art and his purpose was to create a reaction of indifference in the viewer. The movement of Dadaism with it's interest in psychoanalysis and experiments in juxtaposition, Dadaism provided the basis for Surrealism in the early 1920s. |
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One more contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements was Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky, 1890-1976), an American artist that spent most of his career in Paris, France. First of all, Ray was known as an avant-garde photographer, but he considered himself a painter above all. Man Ray Surrealism painter was named one of the 25 most influential artists of the 20th century (ARTnews magazine, 1999).
Influenced by Dadaists, a new art movement – Surrealism – emerged from a literary movement at the end of World War I. Similar to Dada, Surrealism was characterized by a profound disillusionment with and condemnation of the Western emphasis on logic and reason. However, Breton wanted to create something more programmatic out of Dada’s nonsensical and seemingly unfocused activities. Other movements focused on the practice of automatic writing which allowed the author to be free from any purposeful thought and explore the subconscious. Thus, words didn't mean anything, but rather symbolized the activities of the unconscious mind. The basic principles of the surrealist movement were outlined by Breton, the leader of the movement in his Surrealist Manifesto in 1924. |
There were two types of Surrealism: Illusionistic Surrealism and Automatist Surrealism. The first one, Veristic Surrealism, includes the works of art composed of irrational content, absurd juxtapositions and metamorphoses of dreams into a higher illusionary state (Dali, Tanguy and Magritte). The second type, Automatist Surrealism, directly derived from automatic writing.