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“anti-art” and “a state-of-mind.”

Man Ray and Duchamp were pioneers of Dada, the exuberant artistic movement that burst into prominence
in the 1910s and 1920s, first in Zurich, at a night club called the Cabaret Voltaire, and then spread to Paris,
Berlin, and New York.

Dadaists used found objects, newspaper clippings, cutouts, bits of string and textiles, dust, nails, all sorts of
seemingly random or castaway objects, and they delighted in employing chance in composing their works.
Duchamp exhibited a signed urinal as Fountain;

To art historians, Dada is the enfant terrible of their discipline, an anar chic movement typically dubbed in art
historical introductions as nihilistic, or called an iconoclastic attack on bourgeois aesthetics, or considered a
pathological reenactment of the trauma of World War I

Dada certainly did not create objects of contemplative beauty or aim at the perfection of artistic technique or
craft. It subverted the traditional notion of authorship with its use of found objects and aleatoric practices.

Dadaists insisted that they were not engaged in the production of art, but “anti-art.” “But what was Dada?
‘Dada,’ came the answer, ‘ne signifie rien’ [Dada means nothing—ed.].”

The self confessed purposelessness of the original Dadaists scandalized the art world, and
the notion of “anti-art” fuelled the nihilistic and politically aggressive portrayal of Dada. F

Much of the nihilistic or pathological interpretation of Dada stems from the notion that art serves an
expressive function, a tradition with origins in the nineteenth century, when painting’s imitative and
representational purpose was cast into an existential crisis by the invention of photography.

Dada was not a style, not an artistic movement, not a political protest, but a mode of being. “Duchamp
functioned as a living myth, the personification of Dada’s refusal to distinguish between ‘art’ and ‘life

Our capacity for play

Yet we have imposed a cultural barrier between playful youth and earnest adulthood that has become so
engrained we perceive it as biological. Consequently, “the biggest roadblock to play for adults is the worry
that they will look silly, undignified, or dumb

Brown observes It is precisely this mental block that Dada tried to dislodge.

Dressing up in a cubist costume and recit ing sound poems devoid of semantic value, as Hugo Ball did at the
Cabaret Voltaire in 1916, would certainly have made an effective shame-attacking exercise in cognitive-
behavioral therapy.
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Dada became an artistic and literary movement associated with proclaiming the death of all established
traditions.

the Dada art movement grew out of an anger with European society during First World War.

“Dada rebelled against the cultural and intellectual conformity – in art and more broadly in society – that
corresponded to the war

Dada ignored aesthetics. If art was to appeal to sensibilities, Dada was intended to offend”

protest

“Dada means nothing

“[beauty] exists only subjectively, for each man separately, without the slightest character of universality”

“Entr’acte respects nothing except the desire to roar with laughter”

a form of liberation

Dada was born of a need for independence. A distrust toward unity. Those who are with us preserve their
freedom”

He points out that the Dadaists wanted nothing to do with any kind of structure.

Dada is not the creation of a new structure but freedom from all structures.
dada, suprarealism 177 182 (pe foaie)

Hofmann

"were not the beginnings of art, but of disgust."

SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, bywhich one proposes to express—verbally, by means
of the written word, or in any other manner—the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by thought, in the
absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern

Under Breton's leadership, however, Surrealism sought productive, rather than anarchic, responses to the
group's convictions. Exploring the subconscious, dream interpretation, and automatic writing were just some
of the the Surrealists' interests

Huelsenbeck_Richard_1920_1981_En_Avant_Dada_A_History_of_Dadaism

Everyone ca n be a Dadaist. Dada is not limited to any art. The bartender in the Manhattan Ba r, who pours
out with one hand and gathers up h is gonor Cura ~ao rhea wi th the other, is a Dad aist

non-objective, abstract art.

Kuenzli_Rudolf_E_ed_Dada_and_Surrealist_Film_1996

pg 8
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13

Pg 16

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25
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the Dadaist reaction was to "humiliate" art

The beginnings of Dada, Tzara recalled, were not the beginnings of art, but of disgust. 5

At the heart of Dada lay the "gratuitous act," the paradoxical, spontaneous gesture aimed at revealing the
inconsistency and inanity of conventional beliefs

Picabia made drawings that Breton erased as Picabia went along.

All Dadaists called for a tabula rasa

Surrealist goal of self-knowledge was to be achieved through a variety of methods —automatism and dream
interpreta tion foremost among them—and art would be of interest insofar as it provided revelations by such
means.

The "anti-art" created by Dada pioneers such as Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia seemed to reject out of
hand the premises of modern paint ing as they stood on the eve of World War I.

It struck them as escapist, hermetically isolated in its aestheticism.

Duchamp's most famous painting, the Nude Descending a Staircase

Picabia wanted an art that would proceed wholly from fantasy; "We wanted to make something new," he
later 3 recounted, "something that nobody had ever seen before."-'
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art and literature have been the tools in the hands of the most powerful and wealthiest.

art and literature have been the tools in the hands of the most powerful and wealthiest.
DaDa is anti-DaDa

belief and rationality which were dominant in Europe after Renaissance, have sunk human in the abyss of
humanitarian disasters and fall

But this very paradox and contrast in ''DaDa '' led to their annihilation. There were aware of their temporary
destruction and felt that they needed new horizons. Therefore, a group of DaDa led by Andre Breton believed
that something else should be replaced and renovated after destruction, then a specific goal shout be set. As
a result, the bases of “Surrealism” were built on the tomb of DaDa. It is narrated that after a DaDa group
exhibition, DaDas put all their manifests in a box in a sarcastic play then left it in “Seine” river , took off their
hat and DaDa funeral was done.

DaDaistic cinema was manifested much later than DaDa presence in other arts

DaDaistic cinema was anti-fairytale even anti-narration.

Optical technique (Dissolve, Fade in, Fade out, Wipe, Superimpose, Iris) were used a lot.

"Man Ray" who was an American photographer brought and linked his experiences to cinema by joining
DaDa. He sprouted some needles and buttons on the film negative to show its impact on the negative
emulsion in the film "The return to wisdom" (1923).

Another film of Man Ray called (1927) “Emak-Bakia” in which forms and abstract shapes along with
chessmen are played pictorially. (Bordwell, 2012)

“Ballet Mécanique” movie (1924) which was made by "Fernand Leger" is full of images of bowls, frying
pans and faces dancing and amongst them, an old woman is panting, going up the stairs one by one.
(Geregour, 1989)

"Anemic Cinema".
Rodica ilie

Forma practica de scriitura aplicata în mod voluntar si afirmata programatic de catre suprarealisti prin care se
urmarea notarea fluxului spontan al gândirii, nemediate rational

ca reactie la modul de scriitura modernist

nasterii poeziei prin triumful irationalului

un nou praxis literar

poezia viitorului va depasi ideea deprimanta a divortului ireparabil dintre actiune si vis

Între vis si realitate nu mai exista bariere, conform viziunii suprarealiste, poezia trebuie sa renunte la
reprezentare, la notatia descriptiva, si sa dezvaluie adevarata existenta, suprarealitatea:

recuperarii limbajului primordial (primar, apartinând eului subconstient

involuntara a imaginilor;