The Revolutionary Movement Of The Late 19th And Early 20th Century

World War 1 was a gruesome point in history that led to immense carnage and anguish of millions. However, on a happier note, this dark time was followed by movements such as Cubism, Precisionism, and Expressionism. Among these movements existed Surrealism, a movement that would not have come to be without the influence of “the war to end all wars”.

Surrealism is a movement that built off of the burgeoning look into art, psychology, and the workings of the mind. Popularly associated with the works of Salvador Dali, Surrealist art takes imagery and ideology and creates correlation where there is none, creating new forms of art. In this essay I will look to explore the inception of the surrealist movement, including the Surrealist Manifesto, to stress the importance of these artists and their work in the 20th century and beyond. I also will look to films from our European Cinema course to express how films incorporate the influence of surrealism both intentionally and unintentionally.

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:

André Breton ran the Surrealist Movement with impressive discipline and rigidity, making an interesting contrast between what the Surrealists preached and the management style of its leader. An interesting story, for example, tells how Salvador Dalí, one of the most prominent members of the Surrealist movement, attended a New York costume party dressed up as Charles Lindbergh’s son, who had been recently kidnapped and murdered. New York’s society did not take the statement well and eventually made Dalí apologize for his behavior. Breton, however, almost dismissed him from Movement because he claimed that “no one should excuse himself for a Surrealist act[6].” This anecdote demonstrates the seriousness of Breton and his Movement towards its final objective: revolution and the slashing of society’s conventions in the interest of a subconscious reality.

Although there are significant distinctions between Dadaism and Surrealist movement in their focus of interest in exploring the language and the art, they also happen to have similar concept for groundbreaking the norms and sometimes makes it hard for people to differentiate them. Then, here is an artist who manage to cover and is considered to be one of the pioneers for both Dadaism and Surrealism: Max Ernst. Due to the traumatic army experience during the World War 1, Ernst became highly critical of the western culture. His experience of the brutality of the world critically influenced his later works to become quite absurd, yet interesting like those of other Dadaists. In terms of relationship between the word and the image, Ernst created the so-called fatagaga, or Fabrication de Tableaux Gasometriques Garantis, which meant the combination of the artists to create an artwork including imagery and text. These Dadaist collaborative works deemphasized the importance of individual authorship and allowed the artists’ interactions to further development of Dadaism.

Dada, known for it’s chaotic nature, indirect protesting and iconoclasm also evolved into a political movement. Rejection of artistic mastery, defying authority, overprinting, and purposeful mistakes, where all a part of what Tristain Tzara and his contemporaries were trying to succeed. Cubism, Vorticism, Orphism, Purism, and Futurism also came about because of World War I. Heavily influenced by Cubism and it’s shattered glass appearance Futurism was the most politically mind of these five movements. Somewhat akin to Dada in it’s chaotic nature Futurist’s, however, were staunchly pro war and were looking for ways to bring Italy into the present times. Purism, on the other hand, took the collage look of synthetic Cubism and modern abstract style and made

development in visual artwork and writing, thriving in Europe between World Wars I and II. Surrealism became essentially was the next step up from the dada movement, which before World War I delivered works of against artwork that defied all reasoning; yet Surrealism's accentuation was not on invalidation but rather on positive expression. The development spoke to a response against what its individuals saw as the devastation created by the "logic" that had guided European society and governmental issues in the past and that had finished in the detestations of World War I.

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

Un Chien Andalou was created by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali to be both disturbing and thought-provoking, and the effect is one that epitomises the surrealist film movement of the late 1920s and 30s. The surrealist movement was born out of a hatred for the regimes and order that, according to a group of people from all over Europe known as Dadaists, caused the First World War (Elger and Grosenick 8). This essay will discuss how this group’s refusal of all things structured and conventional is explored in the film Un Chien Andalou, and how the conventions typical of the surrealist genre have a strongly disturbing and confusing effect on the viewer.

Another piece of art by him is called “Dada Gauguin”. This piece of art shows a solid color man, without a face or clothes, standing in front of what looks like a mirror. Next to the man is what looks like a bush with the same colored man standing in it. The background appears to be the sky because of the white spots that appear as clouds. The strange man seems to be standing on a black road.

Dada embraced self-expression, impulse, spontaneity and imagination. Why were these particular qualities appealing to Dadaists as artists and social commentators?

TITLE: How do Pablo Picasso’s Guernica and Roy Lichtenstein’s Whaam! reflect the development of modes of representation in relation to conflict in twentieth century art?

In the 20th century, there were many art movements that influenced the way we produce art and design to this very day. Along with the movements, there were several artists that contributed to making these movements great. During the first World War, as a reaction to the chaos and turmoil, arose a movement called Dada. The movement started in 1916 in Zürich, Switzerland and ended in 1924 (“Dada Movement, Artists and Major Works.”). In 1922, Tristan Tarza wrote a piece called “Lecture on Dada”. It stated that “Nothing is more delightful than to confuse and upset people”. He believed that, “like everything in life, Dada is useless” (Tarza). This phrase really encapsulates what Dada was and what it stood for. There is no record of where the

I feel like DADA and dadaism have a showcase that factors a lot in their work and it's something I can learn more about by studying it, I find that Hannah Hoch work is quite interesting, I appreciate her way of using collage

Not only anti-war and anti-art, Dada mirrored society in a more comprehensive level than just political extent but entailing cultural perspective (Harrison & Wood, 2003). Dada is considered as irrationalism to reject the traditional Bourgeois rationalism (Harrison & Wood, 2003). Hopkins, in his book “Dada and surrealism”, explained this characteristic in a more detail level: Dada threw doubt on how the conservative middle-class art was created and the constructive purposes it guaranteed, the elegant, rational ideas of church and flag overwhelmed the arts while countless human being out there were suffering from loss and horrified deaths (Hopkins, 2006). Dadaism assumed that bourgeois were the one contributed to the miserable so that their perspective had to