Art After The Great War

Before the war, art commonly featured the Victorian era. The paintings look very realistic before the war. After the war, the Dada movement swung in. Introducing styles of art like cubism, surrealism, and abstract art. A common theme between surrealism and cubism is that both types of art are about distorted reality. This is an effect that World War 1 had on art and people. World War 1 made people question many things (a reason why they called themselves “The Lost Generation”) about their life and what was real. Their reality became distorted, which transferred to their art. This is a major difference between before the war and after. Because before the war, ballets and new innovations were being created. During the war, people were dying or getting amputations. As the war continued lives were ended for no particular cause. Another death was another statistic. This really messed people up, twisting their sense of reality and sanity. Because art is a form of expression, artwork had a drastic change due to the events of World War

Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain People often ask what constitutes good art. Who decides whether or not a piece is art and whether it is good art or not? Marcel Duchamp challenged popular notions of his day about what art actually is. Duchamp, a French artist living in New York at the turn of the century, believed that it was up to the artist to determine what art is. Duchamp is most famous for a type of sculpture he created called “readymades”1. Readymades are ordinary functional household objects that have either been joined to other objects, or chosen to stand alone as sculpture. Examples of his readymades include a coat hanger nailed to the floor of his studio, a hat

The transition between the 19th and 20th century has brought further development of modernistic ideas, concepts and techniques in art. Inspired by Cezanne’s idea, saying that all nature objects can be illustrated with just three geometrical figures: cube, sphere and cone, Pablo Picasso created his first paintings, which became the icons of modern art and cubism movement in

Impactful across the globe, both Dada and Surrealism were artistic movements created in the early 20th century that were significant in redefining modern art today. The Dada movement came about in 1916 through the performance of Hugo Ball’s sound poem “Karawane” at the Cabaret Voltaire that he opened with his partner, nightclub singer Emmy Hennings, in Zurich, Switzerland. The poem made absolutely no sense, purposely, and it didn’t have to. Ball would also dress in wild costumes for his performances as seen below:

World War 1 art was first introduced when world leaders felt they would benefit by having artists on the front lines sketching and painting the scenes of warfare. They gathered eight daring artists determined to bring the aspects and details of war effort home. The artists sketched all from allied powers and central powers to the prisoners of war.

“collages employing quasi-Dadaist ideas and techniques. By utilizing a commonplace object to have more than its conventional meaning, Rand actually antedated the satire of the “objet trouvé” art movement that arose at least two decades later.” ("Art director club”)

Ernst was not only the primary pioneer of Surrealism but also the pioneer of the Dada movement. He was a German painter, poet, sculptor, and graphic artist whose work still remains influential. Max Ernst’s vision of the modern world as irrational became the basis of his artwork. He mocked social conventions and highly criticized the western culture. Among the most famous of Ernst’s works are Celebes (1921), Here Everything is Still Floating (1920), Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale (1924), and The Fireside Angel (1937) among

“Dada was the first conceptual art movement where the focus of the artists was not on crafting aesthetically pleasing objects. Dada artists are known for their use of readymade objects - everyday objects that could be bought and presented as art with little manipulation by the artist. The use of the readymade forced questions about artistic creativity and the very definition of art and its purpose in society.” Dada art depicts common everyday objects and nontraditional things in an artistic way.

Dada was an artistic and literary movement, this arose as a reaction to World War one. Many citizens believed that Dada was actually the cause of World War one, this movement likes to take the form of ‘anti-art’. Therefore, how you can claim everything is art but in reality, nothing is art. For example, take the painting ‘Fountain’ by a Dadaist painter Marcel Duchamp it is a readymade painting of an unused urinal. Which is basically implying that he rejected art and thought that we should focus on the artist 's idea more rather than it being crafted. Therefore, using a urinal and labelling it as ‘art’, get’s Duchamp’s point across that a work of art should be the artists idea instead of it being crafted. When looking at Dadaism by Tristan Tzara, there were some interesting quotes. For example, “Like everything in life, Dada is useless. Dada is without pretension, as life should be.” (Tzara, 1918). This quote intrigues me, as Tzara is stating that all art is useless and that Dada is pretension and that is how life should be. This can be used as an example of how Dadaism was inspired by

During the period of World War I (1914-1918), Duchamp became associated with a group of Parisian artists known as the Dadaists. Dada was an art movement that was characterized by a “spirit of anarchic nihilism.” The Dadaists were reacting to the madness of the European culture that had found itself engaged in a bloody, devastating war. In the words of Tomkins, “dada’s organized insanity was a direct response to the nightmare of unending, meaningless slaughter in the trenches.” Another writer, Sarane Alexandrian, describes Dada as “a detonation of anger which showed itself in insults and buffoonery.” The Dadaists also attacked the traditional values of art. As claimed by Hans Richter in his book on the Dada movement, these attacks were meant to mock the pretensions of European culture and the traditional obsession of artists, art critics and art lovers with “all that is holy.”

Dada art was a radical and cynical artistic movement, which arose in reaction to the failings of society that led to the First World War. Dada revolted against the recognized tropes of the art world it sought to escape. It dismantled the image of art as the heightened, unique object by contradicting the established traditions and forms of western art to that time. This essay will discuss four of the ways Dada artists pursued this goal, namely through the use of everyday objects, eliminating meaning and function, the use of chance and a dismissal of art history. This essay will then argue that through these means, Dada artists successfully undermined the solemnity with which the art world regarded itself. Dada’s combination of wit and venomous sarcasm presented to the early 20th century a pointed re-articulation of its own reflection, making apparent the absurdity and meaninglessness Dada artists saw in the modern world. In the face of WWI’s atrocities, and the complex, ego-driven politics that had delivered it to the world, Dada rose as a rebuttal. This essay will conclude with observations of the influence of this short-lived but pervasive polemic on contemporary art practice.

Francis Picabia (1879 – 1953), was a distinguished French art personality of the late nineteenth and middle twentieth centuries, showcased his multiple talents as a painter, illustrator, designer, writer, and editor. His paintings reflected abstract expressions, landscapes, machinery, nudes, people, and other subjects. His works are currently on exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The exhibition runs from November 17th 2016 through March 19th 2017. The exhibit is titled “Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round So Our Thoughts Can Change Direction,” which is a compilation of 241 artwork examples. Smith argues that the focus of the exhibition is Picabia’s workmanship in Cubism and Dada art movements (Smith para 3).

One of the greatest cultural trends began in Zurich and it is known as Dadaism. During World War I a group of individuals created Dada in reaction to what they perceived to be negative and opposite of the

What elements of dada and surrealism suggest the influence of Freud? The 20th Century marked a changed in how people viewed the known world. Since its beginning art has played a major role in how people were able to express themselves. The early 20th century brought rise to new and exciting art forms. These were types of writings, paintings and, documentaries that no one had ever seen before. From expressionism to Dadaism types of work ranged by all means of the artist. About the 1920's a new wave of art would soon be seen worlds over. This art form introduced psychology in a new way to look at the conscious and subconscious minds. From the beginning Dadaism and surrealism showed true signs of influence from

What is dadaism? Dada is a creative arts movement inspired after the unfortunate events of World War One. Dadaism was basically art that created difficult questions for society to answer, the whole movement was made to be confusing. Three prime examples of the artists of dadaism are Johannes Theodor Baargeld, Theo Van Doesburg, and Francis Picabia. These artists work and how their life influenced their work, will be covered throughout this paper.