Name That Dada
Wait. What's Going On?
Manifestos & Movement Politics
Name That Dude
100
The artists in this iteration of Dada — centered around the Cabaret Voltaire during World War I [1916-19] — were connected to or influenced by German Expressionism, Futurism, "plastic art," and abstract art.
Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Head (1920).
What is Zurich Dada [1916-1919]?
[Source: Richard Huelsenbeck, from En Avant Dada: A History of Dadaism (1920)]
100
This theory of management, named after its founder and developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, centered around the analysis and synthesis of workflows to increase efficiency.
What is Taylorism?
[Named after Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915).]
[Key tenets: logic; rationality; empiricism; work ethic; efficiency and elimination of waste; standardization of best practices; the transformation of craft production into mass production]
100
"Down with art
Down with bourgeois intellectualism
Art is dead"
What is Berlin Dada?
[Source: Theories of Modern Art, 376 (1919)].
100
This dude was a "prankster king" who connected the Dadaist circles in New York and Paris.
Air de Paris (50cc of Paris Air) (1919).
Who is Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)?
200
This schematized drawing by Francis Picabia (1879-1953) depicts Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), photographer, husband to Georgia O'Keefe, and proprietor of experimental galleries that promoted avant-garde European artists in this cultural milieu.
Francis Picabia, Here, This Is Stieglitz Here (1915).
What is New York Dada?
200
This concept describes something that is both "familiar" and "unfamiliar," such as, for example, dolls or "something repressed which recurs."
Hans Bellmer, Untitled from La Poupée (1936).
What is "the uncanny"?
[A psychoanalytic concept theorized in 1919 by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)]
An example of how this concept has been applied outside of the humanities is in the roboticist Masahiro Mori's 1970 theorization of "the uncanny valley," which proposes a relationship between the degree of an object's resemblance to a human being and the emotional response a human has to such an object.
200
"By contrast, the realistic attitude, inspired by positivism, from Saint Thomas Aquinas to Anatole France, clearly seems to me to be hostile to any intellectual and moral advancement. I loathe it, for it is made up of mediocrity, hate, and dull conceit. [...] We are still living under the reign of logic: this, of course, is what I have been driving at. But in this day and age logical methods are applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest."
What is Surrealism?
[Source: André Breton, Manifesto of Surrealism (excerpt), 1924]
200
This dude — whose work is seen here — was "an aggressive, peripatetic interloper whose fantastic sartorial displays and sexualized comportment ruffled the feathers of the [other] avant-gardists at the time" (12).
God (1917).
Who is the Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven (1874-1927)?
300
According to art historian Amelia Jones, Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven (1874-1927) — despite being a living embodiment of this movement — critiqued it as being limited by the presence of "male avant-gardists [who made] radical art in their free time, while living more or less bourgeois lives" (8).
(c.1920-1922)
What is New York Dada [1916-1919]?
300
This now-defunct U.S. agency hired millions of people during the Great Depression to complete public works projects ranging from construction to visual art to collecting oral histories.
What is the Works Progress/Projects Administration (1935-1943)?
["In one project, "Federal Project Number One," the WPA employed musicians, artists, writers, actors and directors in large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects. The five projects dedicated to these were: the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP), the Historical Records Survey (HRS), the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), the Federal Music Project (FMP), and the Federal Art Project (FAP). In the Historical Records Survey, for instance, many former enslaved people in the South were interviewed. Theater and music groups toured throughout America, and gave more than 225,000 performances. Archaeological investigations under the WPA were influential in the rediscovery of pre-Columbian indigenous cultures and the development of professional archaeology in the US.]
300
"We were agreed that the war had been contrived by the various governments for the most autocratic, sordid, and materialistic reasons [...]"
What is Zurich Dada?
[Source: Richard Huelsenbeck, from En Avant Dada: A History of Dadaism (1920)]
300
This dude said, "Art has not the celestial and universal value that people like to attribute to it. Life is far more interesting. [...] It is not the new technique that interests us, but the spirit. Why do you want us to be preoccupied with a pictorial, moral, poetic, literary, political, or social renewal? We are well aware that these renewals of means are merely the successive cloaks of various epochs of history, uninteresting questions of fashion and facade" (1920).
Though influenced by Symbolism in his youth, this dude — pictured here as rendered by Marcel Janko — was both the "president of Dada" and an instrumental figure in the development of Surrealism.
Who is Tristan Tzara [born Samuel Rosenstock; 1896-1963]?
[Zurich/Paris Dada + Surrealism]
[Source: Tristan Tzara, "Lecture on Dada" (1924)]
400
"Workers! By presenting to you the ideas of the Christian churches, they wish to disarm you, in order to deliver you more easily to the state machine.
Workers! By representing things in their paintings that the bourgeois cling to, things that give you a reflection of beauty and happiness, they sabotage your class consciousness, your will to power.
By directing you to art with the cry: 'Art to the People,' they wish to seduce you into believing in a common possession that you share with your oppressors [...]
A swindle! A swindle!
The vilest betrayal!"
Hannah Hoch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife (1919-20).
What is Berlin Dada [1917-1926]?
[Source: John Heartfield and George Grosz, "The Art Scab" (1920)]
400
Named for a noted American industrialist/anti-semite, the key tenets of this ideology of mass production and consumption necessitate:
(1) The standardization of the product (nothing is handmade, but everything is made through machines and molds by unskilled workers).
(2) The employment of assembly lines, which use special-purpose tools and/or equipment to allow unskilled workers to contribute to the finished product
(3) That workers are paid higher "living" wages so that they can afford to purchase the products they make.
What is Fordism?
[Named after Henry Ford (1863-1947).]
400
Created and sold when she was 23, this prolific artist's Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure) was the first Surrealist work purchased by Alfred Barr for MoMA's nascent permanent collection.
Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure) (1936).
Who is Méret Oppenheim (1913-1985)?
["Among those impressed was Alfred J. Barr Jr., the young director of New York's newly established Museum of Modern Art. When Oppenheim expressed a willingness to sell the work for a thousand French francs, he offered roughly half that amount, $50, and she agreed. Since this was the first work by a woman the museum acquired, Oppenheim is playfully called the First Lady of MoMA" (NPR, 2016).]
400
This dude's was connected to both Dada and Surrealism, though some consider his ties to be informal.
Noire et Blanche (1926).
Who is Man Ray (1890-1976)?
[Born Emmanuel Radnitzky.]
500
This movement utilized a variety of techniques that attempted to tap into an "unconscious" process of creation. Strategies included "automatic" writing, drawing, and painting — which might entail, for instance, allowing the hand to move a pen around a piece of paper without thought.
André Masson, Automatic Drawing (1924).
What is Surrealism?
[This is a trick question!! Dadaists would sometimes incorporate chance into their creative processes, but that didn't incorporate a psychoanalytic framework the way Surrealists did.]
500
This historiographical term describes the era that started with the French Revolution and ended just as Dada comes into being, with the start of World War I.
What is "the long 19th century"?
500
"Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express — verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner — the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern. [...] The mind which plunges into [this] relives with glowing excitement the best part of its childhood."
What is Surrealism?
[Source: André Breton, Manifesto of Surrealism (excerpt), 1924]
500
This dude was a photographer, painter, and poet affiliated with Surrealism.
Untitled (1940).
Who is Dora Maar (1907-1997]?
[Born Henriette Theodora Markovitch]