Task 2 – Dada and Sophie Arp Research

The Dada Movement

The dad movement was cultural and artistic movement which began in Zürich, Switzerland and was focused on anti-war politics. Dada rose post world war 1 as a reaction to nationalism, war and violence.Hans Richter, one of the original Dadaists, said:“Our provocations were only a means of arousing the bourgeoisie to rage, and through rage to a shamefaced self-awareness. Dada was an artistic revolt against art.”During WWI, many artists left their homes and fled to neutral Switzerland, and in 1916, the poet Hugo Ball made a deal with a Zurich bar owner, that he would increase the beer and sausage sales, if he would let Ball transform his establishment into a literary cafe called the Cabaret Voltaire., Soon, artists both foreign and local would gather at Cabaret Voltaire, forming the collection of independent, like-minded thinkers, and this is where Dada begins to form. Influenced by other movement which were avant-garde Dada's output was diverse ranging from performance art to photography, painting, sculpture, and collage. Dada's aesthetic proved a powerful influence on artists in cities such as Berlin, Hanover, Paris, New York, and Cologne.

Dada was one of the first conceptual art movements which did not focus on crafting aesthetically pleasing objects but on making art that are often upended bourgeois sensibilities and also generated questions about society, the artist and the purpose of the art. Artists in Dada are mostly known for their use of objects that are ready made or everyday objects that can be bought and presented as art with slight manipulation by the artist. The use of these objects forced questions about the creativity of the artists in the movement and about the very definition of art and it's purpose.

          Duchamp - Fountain.

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Some more famous Dada art pieces includes: Noise concerts, Mona lisa with a mustache, and reciting gibberish poems while wearing cardboard tubes. Dada was designed to be misunderstood, it defied expectations the world had for art and it promoted confusion. It was basically the representation the exact opposite of everything Which art stood for. And they liked it that way. Where art was concerned with traditional aesthetics, Dada completely ignored them. If art was to appeal to sensibilities, Dada was intended to offend and provoke. Dada rejected reason and logic, prizing nonsense, irrationality and intuition. In fact, one of the important features of Dada is the idea of chance. For them, art reflect life, and in life, there’s chance. And chance is something that you can’t, and maybe shouldn’t, control. They believed that chance was an outlet for their unconscious minds, so you get pieces and performances like Tristian Tzara’s, who would cut out single words from a newspaper, toss them in a paper bag, and then spill the words out into a poem. Perhaps the artists willed themselves into the playfulness of childhood, while the adult world was busy destroying itself during World War I. Hans Richter, one of the original Dadaists, said: “Our provocations were only a means of arousing the bourgeoisie to rage, and through rage to a shamefaced self-awareness Dada was a storm that broke over the world of art as the war did over the nations.. it was an artistic revolt against art.”

 

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Sophie Taeuber-Arp

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Sophie Arp was born in Davos, Switzerland in 1889. Her birth name was Sophie Henriette Gertrude Taeuber. She is now recognised as one main artists in the Dada movement although when she was alive she fought for her less figurative art style to be recognized. She studied Art in school in Munich before leaving for Zurich in 1915. She produced non-representational art, which she called “concrete” paintings. The art was influenced by her training in textile design. At the same time, she met Jean Arp, who was a frequent artistic collaborator and later her husband.

Taeuber-Arp taught textile design at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts. Taeuber-Arp was active in Zurich’s Dada group between 1916 and 1919; she danced in avant-garde performances at the Cabaret Voltaire, an important center of Dada activity.

After World War I, many of Taeuber-Arp’s friends and colleagues moved to Paris. She continued teaching in Zurich until 1928 when she and Jean Arp moved to Meudon, near Paris. Together with her husband and artist Theo van Doesburg, Taeuber-Arp received a commission to design the interior Café de l’Aubette (now destroyed), one of the first modernist spaces to unify form and function, in Strasbourg, France.

The café commission marked the beginning of the most productive period in the artist’s life. She joined several artists’ organizations, edited and wrote for radical publications, and exhibited her work throughout Europe.

Sources:
http://nmwa.org/explore/artist-profiles/sophie-taeuber-arp
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/google-doodle/12106374/Who-was-Sophie-Taeuber-Arp-One-of-the-most-important-female-artists-youve-never-heard-of.html
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/who-sophie-taeuber-arp-commemorated-7201393

http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/history.htm

http://www.theartstory.org/movement-dada.htm (Dada movement)