INTRODUCTION TO DADA Movement founded in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1916, during World War I Some Characteristics of Dada cynical, negative reaction to the war critical attack on traditional European cultural values rather silly, childish sort of humor interest in the absurd and the irrational interest in things that happen by chance or accident

Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912

Picasso, Ambroise Vollard, 1910 Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912 Mondrian, Tree, 1911 CUBISM

Raymond Duchamp-Villon (Marcel’s brother), The Large Horse, 1914 Picasso, Woman’s Head, 1909 Cubist Sculpture

Duchamp, Fountain (photograph of 1917 by Alfred Stieglitz) (Note: example of a “readymade” or “assisted readymade”)

Duchamp, Fountain (now lost or destroyed) One of eight signed replicas

Duchamp, Mona Lisa with a Mustache (L.H.O.O.Q.), 1919 Note the postcard-sized dimensions of the work: 7 x 5 in.

Don Martin, Mona Lisa spoof Duchamp

Tourists in the Louvre looking at the Mona Lisa Duchamp

Duchamp, Mona Lisa with a Mustache (L.H.O.O.Q.) The letters LHOOQ, when pronounced individually in French, sound like the sentence Elle a chaud au cul—“She has a hot ass,” or “She’s got the hots.” Duchamp was fond of such puns, and also fond of playing with issues of gender. He sometimes donned women’s clothing (“cross-dressing”) and adopted an alter ego, or second identity, named Rrose Sélavie. Pronounced in French, this made-up name sounds like the phrase Eros, c’est la vie—“Eros [or sexual love], that’s life”!

SURREALISM Movement begun in Paris in the mid-1920s; its leader was the poet André Breton, who wrote the “Surrealist Manifesto” in Based on Freud’s investigations into the unconscious. The word “Surrealism”—Surréalisme in French—is derived from two words: sur, meaning “on” or “above,” and réalisme, meaning “realism.” Hence Surrealism may be thought of as a realism above and beyond everyday realism.

TWO FORMS OF SURREALIST ART (1) Abstract or semi-abstract. Based on the technique of automatism, which involves working spontaneously, unconsciously, or semi-consciously; a technique with analogies to scribbling or doodling. Examples: Masson and Miró. (2) “Super”-realistic. Based on images originating in dreams, nightmares, and other unconscious fantasies, where the logic of the ordinary world is violated, and on Freud’s claim that the “royal road” to the unconscious is through dreams. Examples: Dalí and Magritte.

André Masson, Battle of Fishes, 1926

Masson, Battle of Fishes

Joan Miró (Spanish / Catalán, active in Paris), Composition, 1933

Miró’s description of his approach to painting: “Rather than setting out to paint something, I simply begin painting; and as I paint, the picture begins to assert itself under my brush.... The first stage is free, unconscious; but after that the picture is controlled throughout, in keeping with the desire for discipline....” Miró, Composition, 1933

Photographs of Salvador Dalí

Dalí, The Persistence of Memory, 1931

Dr. Z. at MoMA (smaller than you thought)

Dalí, Persistence of Memory, 1933 Redon, The Balloon Eye, 1882

Dalí, The Persistence of Memory Dalí described such paintings as “hand- painted photographs of the unconscious.”

Dalí, The Persistence of Memory Reminiscent of a famous description, by the 19th-century French poet Lautréamont, of a situation “as beautiful as the chance encounter of an umbrella and a sewing machine on a dissecting table.”

Dalí, Persistence of Memory

Dalí, Persistence of Memory

Dalí, Persistence of Memory René Magritte, The Rape, 1934

Magritte, The Rape Magritte’s image is related to the concept of “displacement”—a subconscious defense mechanism whereby the mind redirects feelings about an object deemed dangerous or unacceptable, to an object deemed safe or acceptable.

Magritte, The Rape Magritte’s image is related to the concept of “displacement”—a subconscious defense mechanism whereby the mind redirects feelings about an object deemed dangerous or unacceptable, to an object deemed safe or acceptable. Note also the “phallic” imagery.

Magritte, The Rape Meret Oppenheim, Object (Luncheon in Fur), 1936 (“colpic” vs. “phallic”?)