1. An artistic and literary movement from about 1916-1923 started by artists and writers who were disgusted by the values of materialism and rationalism and other "isms" of Western society.
2. They were horrified by WW1, and were repelled by all aspects of Western culture. Their works attacked the laws of beauty and social organization.
3. They believed that a society that creates the hideousness of war doesn't deserve beauty in art.
4. They attacked society by creating ugliness so the public would have to react, but instead of offending, the bourgeosie accepted the rebellious artists and their works as "art."
5. Their philosophy was to be deliberately irrational, promote anarchy, be cynical.
6. The name "Dada" is reputed to have been chosen by sliding a paper knife into a French dictionary where it landed on the word. "Dada" is a childs word for rocking horse.
7. "Dada" had to happen for there to be contemporary art of all kinds.
ARTISTS: Open the link, click on "Movements" in the left column, scroll down to DADA. Olga's Gallery
George Grosz: "Pillars of Society"
1. Founded by the French poet Andre Breton who wrote The Surrealist Manifesto in 1924.
2. After WW1, Surrealists were artists and writers who asked how they could be free to express their true, individual nature.
3. Influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud and Karl Jung on the subconscious mind, where they believed that the imagination is in a primitive state.
4. They celebrated the purity of children's art, mad people and primitive art because none of these were affected by Western cultural traditions or expectations about what art really is.
5. They tried to reach this state of inner reality through trances, dreams, starvation, automatic writing and painting - all ways to create without thinking about it first.
6. They used ordinary objects and made art out of them because of the way these things made them feel.
ARTISTS: Open the link, click on "Movements" in the left column, scroll down to SURREALISM. Olga's Gallery
Girogio de Chirico, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Rene Magritte, Yves Tanguy
Salvador Dali: Dali Gallery
Class projects: Arrange yourselves into groups of four or five for an exercise in Surrealist art and poetry. The Exquisite Corpse