Art History: Dada to Pop 1915-1956

(AHIS 216-Winter)

Thursdays, 2 pm to 5 pm

Instructor, Danielle Hogan

Email: hogan_danielle @shaw.ca

The Roots of AbstractionThe Roots of Abstraction

Piet Mondrian said in a statement c 1943, ‘The intention of Cubism – in any case I the beginning- was to express volume. Three-dimensional space – natural space – thus remained. Cubism therefore remained basically a naturalistic expression and was only an abstraction – not true abstract art.’

Paul Cézanne, The Bather, oil on canvas, 1885-86 (MoMA)

Primitivism and CubismPrimitivism and Cubism

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, oil on canvas, 1907 (MoMA)

Primitivism and CubismPrimitivism and Cubism

Left: Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (detail), oil on canvas, 1907 (MoMA)Right: Mask from the African continent, artist unknown.

Piet Mondrian said in a statement c 1943, ‘The intention of Cubism – in any case I the beginning- was to express volume. Three-dimensional space – natural space – thus remained. Cubism therefore remained basically a naturalistic expression and was only an abstraction – not true abstract art.’

World War IA major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918.

It involved all the world's great powers.

Early Influences

To evoke a "before", that is to try and establish Dada’s ancestry so as to better describe its history would be against the tenets of a movement that turned its back on all artistic, literary and cultural heritages. Dada considered itself as "born without a mother," or as Tristan Tzara’s said: "I don’t even want to know if there have been men before me." [Tristan Tzara, Manifeste Dada [»] 1918, cover]. The Dadaists, who wanted to make a tabula rasa of history, nevertheless maintained an ambiguous relationship with their recent past. Even though they admired certain figures such as Apollinaire, they rejected previous influences, especially those of the Futurists, to whom they owed much in the realm of typography.

TEXT CREDITS Jeanne Brun, 'Avant Dada', translated from the French text, published in the catalogue Dada (Editions du Centre Pompidou : Paris 2005) 122-123. The translation was part of the Press Kit, published by MNAM Centre Pompidou 2005, p. 53-55 [Press Kit. Courtesy MNAM Centre Pompidou].

DADA

You cannot defineelectricity. The same

can be said of art. It isa kind of inner currentin a human being, or

something which needsno definition.

Marcel Duchamp

DadaResponding to the disasters of World War 1 and to the an emerging modern media and machine culture, Dada artists led a creative revolution that boldly embraced and caustically criticized modernity itself. Proposing innovative strategies of art making, including collage, photomontage, chance, Readymades, performances and media pranks, the movement created an abiding artistic legacy for the century to come. Defiantly international relative to the pervasive nationalism of its day, Dada- active in Berlin, Cologne, Hannover, New York, Paris and Zurich- was the first avant-garde movement to self consciously position itself as a international network crossing countries and continents.

-MoMA

Cabaret VoltaireSpiegelgasse 1, Zurichphotographed in 1935

Hugo Ball

Sound Poem

Hugo Ball

Proof sheet for the projected anthology Dadaco, edited by George Grosz, John Heartfield, et al, 1919.

Jean Arp

Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance)1916-17Jean Arp

Tristan Tzara

CalligrammeTristan Tzara

Marcel Duchamp 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968

To Be Looked at (from the Other Side of the Glass) with One Eye, Close to, for Almost an HourMarcel Duchamp1918Oil, silver leaf, lead wire, and magnifying lens on glass (cracked), mounted between panes of glass in a standing metal frame, 20 1/8 x 16 1/4 x 1 1/2" (51 x 41.2 x 3.7 cm), on painted wood base, 1 7/8 x 17 7/8 x 4 1/2" (4.8 x 45.3 x 11.4 cm), Overall 22" (55.8 cm) high

LHOOQ1919Marcel Duchamp

Rrose Sélavy (Marcel Duchamp)Photograph by Man Ray1921Marcel Duchamp

READYMADESReadymades are everyday manufactured goods that are deemed to be art merely by virtue of the artist's selection of them as such. They were invented by Marcel Duchamp who wanted to test the limits of what qualifies as a work of art. Although he had collected manufactured objects in his studio in Paris, it was not until he came to New York in 1915 that he identified these objects as a category of art, giving the English name "readymade" to any object purchased "as a sculpture already made." To common household goods, he added signatures and titles, converting them into works of art. When he modified these objects, for example by penning mustache and goatee on the color reproduction of the Mona Lisa, he called them "assisted" or "rectified readymades." Duchamp's most scandalous readymade was the porcelain urinal that he turned on its back, titled Fountain, signed R. Mutt (a pun on the German word Armut, or poverty), and submitted to the supposedly jury-free exhibition at the Society of Independent Artists. When it was rejected, the dadaists launched a publicity campaign and defense of the work.

-National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Fountain1917readymade porcelain urinal on its back63 x 48 x 35 cmMarcel Duchamp

Bottlerack1914Marcel Duchamp

The Readymade/AssemblageAssemblage is an artistic process. In the visual arts, it consists of making three-dimensional or two-dimensional artistic compositions by putting together found objects.

Man Ray

Fernand Léger1922

Ballet mécaniqueFernand Léger1924Black and white version. French intertitles. 12 min.

Raoul Hausmann

Assemblage

Raoul Hausmann(Mechanical Head [The Spirit of Our Age])c. 1920

Raoul HausmannABCD1923-1924

Hannah Höch self-portrait, c.1926

Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in GermanyHannah Höch1919collage of pasted papers, 90x144 cm

The Machine Aesthetic‘progress, progress, progress…’

Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 1912. Oil on canvas. 57 7/8" x 35 1/8"

The Russian RevolutionOn 3 March 1917, a strike occurred in a factory in the capital Petrograd (formerly Saint Petersburg). On 23 February (8 March) 1917, International Women's Day, thousands of women textile workers in Petrograd walked out of their factories protesting the lack of food and calling on other workers to join them. Within days, nearly all the workers in the city were idle, and street fighting broke out. When the tsar ordered the Duma to disband, ordered strikers to return to work, and ordered troops to shoot at demonstrators in the streets, his orders triggered the February Revolution, especially when soldiers openly sided with the strikers. On 2 March (15), Nicholas II abdicated. To fill the vacuum of authority, the Duma declared a Provisional Government, headed by Prince Lvov. Meanwhile, the socialists in Petrograd organized elections among workers and soldiers to form a soviet (council) of workers' and soldiers' deputies, as an organ of popular power that could pressure the "bourgeois" Provisional Government.In July, following a series of crises that undermined their authority with the public, the head of the Provisional Government resigned and was succeeded by Alexander Kerensky, who was more progressive than his predecessor but not radical enough for the Bolsheviks or many Russians discontented with the deepening economic crisis and the continuation of the war. While Kerensky's government marked time, the socialist-led soviet in Petrograd joined with soviets that formed throughout the country to create a national movement.Lenin returned to Russia from exile in Switzerland with the help of Germany, which hoped that widespread strife would cause Russia to withdraw from the war. After many behind-the-scenes maneuvers, the soviets seized control of the government in November 1917, and drove Kerensky and his moderate provisional government into exile, in the events that would become known as the October Revolution.When the national Constituent Assembly, elected in December 1917 and meeting in January 1918, refused to become a rubber-stamp of the Bolsheviks, it was dissolved by Lenin's troops. With the dissolution of the constituent assembly, all vestiges of bourgeois democracy were removed. With the handicap of the moderate opposition removed, Lenin was able to free his regime from the war problem by the harsh Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918) with Germany, in which Russia lost the territories of Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, the parts of the territories of Latvia and Belarus (line Riga-Dvinsk-Druia-Drisvyaty-Mikhalishki-Dzevalishki-Dokudova-r.Neman-r.Yelvyanka-Pruzhany-Vidoml), and the territories captured from the Ottoman Empire during World War I. On 13 November 1918 the Soviet government cancelled the Treaty of Brest.-Wikipedia

Self-Portrait in the Green Bugatti, 1925Tamara De Lempicka

Models wearing Sonia Delaunay fashions

Paris Bohemia1920’S

“The Jazz Age”

Jazz Age1920’S Paris

Josephine Baker