Thesis: Both radical new looks at artwork, Dada and Surrealism made themselves very apparent during and following World War I and displayed a restlesness mainly in Europe and North America.
I. Dada
- Founded in Zurich in 1916 by a group of refugees from WWI
- Name is based on the nonsensical quality of the art
- Ironically held a no-nonsense artistic aim: to protest the madness of war without the use of artistic resaon and respect of the establishment
- Main strategy: to denounce and shock
- More serious purpose was to awaken imagination
- Jean Arp: Founder of Dada, and collagist, who believed that "everything that comes into being or is made by man is art"
- Kurt Schwitters: German collagist, created "merz" (a collage made up of a collection of non-art materials)
- Dada dissolved into anarchy in 1922
II. Surrealism
- Power of the unconscious
- Began as a literary movement in 1920's and 1930's
- Godfather of the movement: poet, Andre Breton
- Grew from Freudian free-association and dream analysis
- Experimenting with automatism (a form of creating without conscious control) to tap into "unconcious imagery"
- 2 forms: improvised art/total loss of conscious control (Miro), realistic techniques to present the hallucinatory (Dali)
- Miro - Surrealist who practiced total loss of conscious control to get the proper blurred imagery associated with this movement
- Ernst - both Dadaist and Surrealist
- Dali - realistic technique user to present the hallucinatory (paintings often disturbing)
- Magritee - Similar to Dali in how disturbing the art was --> often a result of his being terrified of many normal things on Earth
Salvador Dali's "Crucifixion" (Surrealist artwork)
