MoMA & Dada

Questions from the article

1. Dada is a unique form of art that originated during the World War II era.  This type of art is special because it used many types of unconventional art that kept people talking about it.  Originally, a ton of people hated this movement because they just didn't get it, and they didn't understand how these pieces could be considered art.  Dada came into existence to give true criticism and perception of that time period.

2. Marcel Duchamp's "Readymades" were pieces of art that challenged the perception of art in that time period because people were used to art being handcrafted, beautiful creations.  These pieces were not exactly pretty to look at, and they were quite ordinary.  The Readymades change your expectation of what art can be because they "defy the notion that art must be beautiful".  Duchamp's pieces led to the creation of conceptual art (art in service of the mind).

Duchamp's "In Advance of the Broken Arm"
 

3. Dada artists turned to non-art making strategies and embraced chance, accident, and improvisation.  This led to many forms of abstract art.  The artists used these new techniques in order to rebel from the perception that art must be controlled and intentional.  They also used the techniques to criticize the mechanized and violent world that they were living in at that time.

Man Ray's "The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Shadows"

4. The value of art made by Dadaists was NOT in the work that they produced, but the act of working with other artists to create new visions of the cruel world that they were living in.

5. Dada artists worked with words because they liked the idea of "destroying words and disrupting syntax".  They wanted to undermine rational and ordered society by creating more unconventional pieces of art.  This time, they did it by turning words into abstract and illegible forms.  Also, they used the techniques of chance and fragmentation again.

van Doesburg and Schwitter's "Kleine Dada Soiree"