Art In the Interwar Period

Dada and Surrealism 1920-1940

Dada-When was it popular?

>Toward the end and immediately after WWI -What does Dada mean?

>No one is sure, one possible explanation is that Dada is French for Hobby Horse, Dada may also come from Romanian where it translates into, “yeah, yeah”

-What genres did Dada encompass?>Dada was mostly a movement in the visual arts (painting, sculpture) but it also included poetry, essays, music, and plays

-What characteristics make something Dada?>Dada was a reaction against the status quo of European society—rationality, respectability, conformity, etc. which the Dada-ists blamed for causing the tragedy of WWI

Examples of Dada Visual Art

-Things to look for:>Randomness-no discernable subject matter>Statements about the subjectivity of art-Dada artists thought anything could be art, including ordinary objects that people encountered in their daily lives>Incomprehensibility-sometimes the message is that there is no message

Hannah Hoch: Cut With the Dada Kitchen Knife Through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany

Jean Arp: Untitled (Collage With Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance)

Raoul Haussmann: ABCD

Marcel Duchamp: Fountain and Bicycle Wheel

Marcel Duchamp: L.H.O.O.Q.

Dada Poetry

-Usually had no meaning, or no obvious meaning, consisted of words or sounds that sounded interesting to the ear, but might not mean anything

Examples of Dada Poetry

Hugo Ball-gadji beri bimbaglandridi lauli lonni cadori

Surrealism-When was Surrealism popular?

>In the years after WWI until the present day 1920-today, although the height of Surrealism was the 1920’s and 30’s

-What is/was the philosophy of the Surrealists? >The Surrealists believed in the power of the

unconscious over a person in their daily life. Past experiences that you might not remember or even be aware of stayed in your mind and influenced the kind of person you were. Surrealist art reflected this philosophy by portraying strange dream-like images that juxtaposed familiar objects in unfamiliar illogical relationships

Salvador Dali: The Persistence of Memory

Max Ernst: Elephant Celebes

Andre Masson: Automatic Drawing

Yves Tanguy: Indefinite Divisibility

Renee Magritte: The Treachery of Images

Grigori De Chirico: Love Song

Recap-The art of the interwar period was heavily

influenced by the experiences of WWI>the Dada-ists were so disillusioned by the war that they rejected all previous standards for art>the surrealists attempted to explain the unexplainable tragedy of the war by looking at the subconscious

-The art of the interwar period also reflected the general uncertainty of the period