For a long time I believed that there were two responses to complete upheaval of everything you ever believed or loved: either you cling to it all more tightly than ever before, or you discard all of it. Recently however, it's been dawning on me that there is a third option. Keep the beliefs that are still functional while recognizing that everything is flawed on some level and then make jokes about the inevitability of everything's eventual collapse to make yourself feel better by enshrouding yourself in absurdity. You might be inclined to call this meme culture, but in 1920's Europe it was called Dadaism.
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"L.H.O.O.Q." by Marcel Duchamp.
Pencil on postcard, 1919 |
After WWI, Europe was in shambles, picking up the pieces after a conflict that had exhausted the world in every capacity.People were pushing art to new and interesting extremes with Post-Impressionism, Cubism and Surrealism. Each of these ideologies hoped to push the envelope, to challenge their viewers to see things in a new way. This was not enough for the Dada movement. Dada, or Marcel Duchamp at least, wanted to create art that served the mind. More than that, Dada's intent was to ridicule the meaninglessness of the modern world. Duchamp became one of the heroes of this movement with his "Readymades"- common objects that he made little or no modification to and presented as art.
Probably the most famous of Duchamp's work was his "Fountain", in which he submitted a urinal signed "R. Mutt 1917" to be displayed. My personal favorite is "L.H.O.O.Q." (pictured right). The title, said aloud in French, sounds a lot like the French phrase "Elle a chaud au cul", which translates roughly to "She has a hot ass". I think it's freaking hilarious. Something about the world's most famous painting rendered on a cheap postcard with a crap goatee scribbled onto it just kind of... encapsulates how relative the importance of
anything is. People get different things out of different scenarios. Out of war you could pull nationalism, or despair, or you could accept that it's all a sham anyway and decide to invent dank memes. Take your pick
I remember when one of my high school friends explained Dadaism to me and referred to it as an "anti-art movement". Knowing that Dadaism kind of mocks art makes me hate it a bit because I think art is supposed to be meaningful and emotionally impactful in a deep way. The fact that people still things like this today and call it art makes me depressed for the art community.
ReplyDeleteI can see where you're coming from, but I think you're missing the point a bit. These people were rejecting the concept that art had to be a high brow and deeply intellectual thing. Art can be found everywhere. Dadaism pushes us to reexamine what we value and why we value it. As funny as I think L.H.O.O.Q. is, it's not just a joke. It asks us deep questions that can be interpreted differently by every viewer, and isn't that what art is about at it's core?
DeleteI think that dadaism shows that is never a bad thing to take a step back and examine how ridiculous we look taking everything so seriously. That being said, I think we should find meaning out of the war, try to comprehend why it happened and make it worth while. Because we didn't understand some of the causes, and didn't realize how brutal life could be for the Germans after WW1 we ended up in another war, which could have been avoided
ReplyDeleteYou're totally right, and I think Dada agrees with that to a certain extent. I love that it points out that nothing has any inherent meaning. They say that things are only important because we GIVE them value, not because they're cosmically significant. That's not a bad thing, it's just a different way of looking at it.
DeleteThere's such value in controversy! Dadaism was a volatile, routy, and (in my thoughts) merited questioning of accepted values. I personally have a love for Dadaist music-- odd, expressive, and raucous.
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