Dada Movement

Dada was a literary and artistic movement that came about when World War I was engulfing most of Europe.  Many of the European artists and writers congregated in Zurich, Switzerland because of its neutrality in the war.  The group of artists protested through their art.  They used any public forum to get their message out that they did not agree with this war.  I was very interested in this form of art because as we have discussed in class, can something simply be art just because one person decided to put a urinal on a pedestal and call it a fountain?  It was said that this “art” form simply came about as a way to protest the war.  If this is art can we not call any man made thing art, because it is left up to the individual’s perception to decide what it is to them. 

I see this as a recurring theme in a lot of the different forms of humanities.  In the play Pirandello wrote, when the father discussed how each individual has a world inside of themselves, which allows them to interpret what people say or write in different ways.  A good majority of poems or literature can be left up to the reader to see what they want or choose to see in each work.  In art as for the discussion of Norman Rockwell as an artist and not an illustrator, I think that he was an artist.  He may not have been an innovator in the field, but he did have his own world inside him that allowed for him to create his works of art in his own way that was very distinguishable, which again was because of how I perceived his work.

As for the Dada movement, I suppose that this work can be considered art.  The majorities of art enthusiasts do not want to look at a piece of art and simply move on.  They want to think about the piece and find a deeper meaning, or try to see if the artist is portraying a thought or feeling in an unusual way.  This is exactly what the Dada movement accomplished in Europe in 1916.  This movement took the everyday simple objects, gave them a slight change or twist, and displayed them for everyone to enjoy.  Therefore I believe it follows the definition of art.  Dada was also responsible for the creation of surrealism which the book discusses in more detail in our next reading.  I believe Dada was a form of art although I am sure it has its fair share of opposition to this thought.  But for me if you are questioning whether or not this is art, then it becomes an argument about the definition of art.  Which I believe will always be debated.