ダダ完結編。

前にね、書き直すっつって、結局、途中までアップしてやめてたやつを一応有言実行ってことで終わらせたのでね、あのダダの自主的なやり直しのやつね。で、完結編ってことで、まぁ最初から終わりまでまとめてアップするわ。まぁアップする意味ってのは無いんだけど、まぁこれについては前に書いたからいいか。「これについては前に書いたからいいか」って多いよね。ここで。ってことで今日はこれで。

The Birth of Dada

World War 1 was raging and making a pessimistic mood, when the Romanian poet Tristan Tzara, committed to the development of an anti-art movement, which expressed hatred of rationality, unintentionally stabbed knife into dictionary, the point of a knife has stabbed the word of “Dada” which is meaning in French, “a wooden horse” and meaning in the Slavic languages “chime in”. Since Tzara decided “Dada” as an anti-movement name, Tzara started Dada movement with Hugo Ball a d Hans Arp without any clear and rational meaning. The movement eventually included Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp and Kurt Schwitters, and they designed various art forms such as assemblage, collage, and photomontage under the inference of Dada. From the two main places of Dada, Zurich and Berlin, Dada spread to Paris in 1920, and also extended to Barcelona, New York, Holland, and Tokyo. Dada played an astonishing role in the global network of free artists escaping from the dominant ideology. In addition, some of artists who participated in the Dada movement evolved in to Surrealism.

The Concepts of Dada

The concepts of Dada are indefinable, however, it is very clear that Dada claimed the emancipation from existing ideas such as reason, rationality, morality and so on. Dadaists thought that the arts should make people better human beings, in other words, Dada shouldn’t simply regarded as an expression of chaos, nonsense or jokes. As Tzara asserted in the 1918 Dada Manifest, “Dada had a human purpose, an extremely ethical purpose!” it indicates that the very idea of Dadaism is familiar with anarchism as a political philosophy, which means that both of them are usually regarded as a symbol of chaos or aggressive radicalism. Needless to say, that is a complete misunderstanding. From the perspective of individual emancipation, Dada or anarchism asserted that every individual should be free from existing ideas, especially ideas that authority imposed upon people, including politics, arts, morality, rationality and so on. It is easy to assume that since Dada was created by very oppressive situation, the First World War, this oppressive situation ignited the very idea of emancipation. Political philosopher Ernesto Laclau says “There is no emancipation without oppression, and there is no oppression without the presence of something which is impeded in its free development by oppressive forces” which indirectly illustrates that the condition of emergence of radical ideas or expressions. The movement of Dada is not engaged with some specific political movement or agenda; in other words, they wanted to negate that engagement of specific political ideas or philosophies.

The representative artists of Dada

Mercel Duchamp

One of the biggest provocative artists who was committed to Dada was Marcel Duchamp. His first readymade opus, which is Bicycle wheel, and Bottle Rack exemplifies the spirit of Dada. This is an object that is already complete and the artist presented it as his work of art. They imply a question of the meaning of a work of art and the systematic dynamics of the recognition of art. For example, when people see it as a work of art, they can’t recognize it as a work of art, if artist who made it didn’t assert it as a work of art, however, Duchamp asks what is a work of art? And how can we define a work of art? Also his readymade opus ironically functioned as an exhibit venue, which means that when his readymade opus situate museum, they automatically function as works of art. His readymade opuses betray people’s commonsense and expectation, which people’s desire of being impressed by art. People might think about “What is the expression of art?”. Duchamp’s aim is lucid, which he wants to make confusion in the notional level, which was generated by his concept of the disposition of the anti-aesthetic sense. His idea of ready made has a great meaning in terms of the isolation of aesthetic and putting readymade in the position of art. The creativity of the readymade only exists in a notional level and the readymade it self is still itself. In my opinion, Duchamp’s provocative attitude well represents the one side of Dada’s idea, which is a subversive one.

Kurt Schwitters

One of the other important dada artists was Kurt Schwitters. His idea of creation he himself called “Merz”. He says “Merz aims at freedom from anything that stands in the way of forming artistically” which strongly represents the very idea of Dada. In a Germany in ruins, he collected all kinds of scrap material in order to express the decadent situation of Germany in this time. Schwitters was capable of making something with a technique of assemblage and collage, and as a result, he had become one of the great masters of collage. His works can be characterized by accumulation of a lot of meaningless things such as scrap material, pieces of printed text and so on. He also developed a new type of work, which could not be shown in a museum. He called it Merzbau(Merz construction), Schwitters expressed his idea into three-dimensional big objects which he made his home in Hanover, but, unfortunately, the first Merzbaw was destroyed in a bombardment, It only remains in photographs, therefore, it became a legendary work of art as one of his representative works.

Raoul Hausmann

Raoul Hausmann is the inventor of the photomontage, which he felt official great propaganda potential in a contemporary world. Hausmann had many talents such as painting, drawing, photography, photomontage, concrete visual poetry, and sound poetry. About photomontage, it allowed the multiple usages of both photography and printed texts, which together turned into a static film. For example, the combination of different photography and printed texts would generate very different meanings from the original photography and printed texts. In these days, we can easily see this method, however, in the 1910’-20’, the invention of photomontage was a revolutionary thing. In addition, one of the great advantages of photomontage is that it did not require highly technical skills. Hausmann had many skills from photography to painting, but if we see photomontage as a method, it has a great accessibility of creation, which means that if we have some idea about collage or photomontage, we can do it without an academic art education. Hausmann says “They were the first to use photography as a material with which very different structure, often heterogeneous and with conflicting meaning, could be mixed to create a new entity that drew from the chaos of the war and revolution an intentionally new optical image” In my opinion, it is deconstructionism in the methodology of optical images. When we see some pictures in a different perspective, the meaning of pictures could be interpreted by our mind and especially, photomontage is a great method of deconstruction, it means when printed texts and photography which both have some contextual meaning combined by some artist such as Hausmann, the printed texts and photography themselves still retain their form, however, the meaning of them are totally different from the original context of both photography and printed texts. This is the artistic production of empty signifiers, which is a signifier without signified or generative signifiers, which arbitrary interpreted by a subject. I’m not sure that people intentionally know the fact that the importance of invention of photomontage by Hausmann, however, his great revolutionary idea of photomontage surely succeeds to the present intentionally or unintentionally.

Hans Arp

Hans Arp was a painter, sculptor, and later became a Surrealist. For him, Dada was a crucial moment. He had exhibited with the Blaue Reiter group in Munich in 1912. He created biomorphic works, such as “The Tears of Enoch”, “The Brual of the Birds and Butterflies” or “Portrait of Tristan Tzara” and paper collages, and also torn-up pieces of paper arranged “according to the laws of chance” which later influenced the American composer John Cage. His famous method of “chance operations” is a means of escaping from the “intentional” is based on Arp’s idea which Arp called “dream”. It is easy to understand why he later became a Surrealist in terms of dealing with unconsciousness. Also he had attempted automatic drawings in india ink on paper, which methodology is familiar with automatic writing which Andre Breton advised practicing it in his “First Surrealist Manifest” Arp said “all things and man must be like nature, without measure” His laws of chance suggested that the challenge to the tyranny of the ideologies of artistic creation in the sense of emancipation, by undeniable success of the results. In my opinion, his methodology of “laws of chance” is ultimate idea of the ideology of freedom, which means that his idea suggested that human beings could transcend our subjective consciousness.

Man Ray

Man Ray, whose real name was Emanuel Rabinovitch, was one of the few Americans to play a part in Dada movement. He got American anarchist influences from Hnery David Thoreau who was the author of “Walden or Life in the Woods and Woods” and Walt Whitman who was the author of “Leaves of Grass” He was living in the artist’ community of Ridgefield, New Jersey and he created the ten plates for his album of collages, ”Revolving Doors” and became a photographer almost by accident. Later, he also created movies: “The Return to Reason”, “Emak Bakia”, “The Star of the Sea”, and “The mysteries of the Chateau of Dice”, some of these are contained in the DVD “Avant-Garde Experimental cinema of the 1920s and ‘30s” from Kino on Video. Tzara had admired one of his remarkable films, which is “Champs Delicieus”, as he says “It is the purest dada,” and he said to Man Ray, “and much better than the similar attempts.” Man Ray was a multiply talented artist who made various works of art including paintings, sculptures, photography, and so on. Also he made a portrait, which subjects of portrait were mainly artists of same generation of him. In addition, he had played a important role in the movement of New York Dada with Marcel Duch Amps.

Conclusion

Dada as an anti-art movement died a long time ago, however, the spirit of Dada never died and it re-emerged in various art forms such as Fluxus, beatniks and even now, we can see the artist who has dada spirit such as noise artist Masami Akita, multimedia artist Negativeland, a sound collage artist People like us and so on. Dada also made a great foundation in Surrealism and manifestation of the revolt of art, which still has a great relevance to art in terms of spontaneous human expression.

The Groove Improver