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@ Bashno
2024-07-14 22:44:46In 1917, a public call was made by a group of "Independent Artists" stating: "Any person with $6 can send in a work to be exhibited." On the day of the exhibition, everyone was surprised to find a urinal signed "R.mutt" among the entries, presented under the title "Fountain". The contributor of the urinal paid the $6 fee but their name was not included in the list of participants; the urinal was rejected by the exhibition. However, this urinal, known as "Fountain," became one of the pivotal points in art history.
Within the pages of art history, amidst the beauty of paintings and artworks, there is a disturbing page featuring a photograph of a ready-made urinal. It is known that the piece was submitted to an exhibition by Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), who was part of the Independent Artists, but the exhibition committee found it disagreeable. Duchamp decided to play with them and handed in his work titled "Fountain" under a pseudonym.
At that time, World War I had destroyed everything, leaving Europe suffering from the bitter aftermath. It was a period of violent change, where many artists viewed the decision to go to war as an expression of rationalism—believing that reason had led to the decision to wage war under the pretense that it would bring about positive societal change in Europe. However, after the devastation, destruction, and massacres, everything became clear: artists came to detest everything associated with that period dominated by rationalistic thought and material culture. Various strange and divergent movements began to emerge in art and literature circles, equating their followers between the war that ravaged and the conviction that values associated with pre-war art were largely corrupt.
$$The Dada movement... art against art$$
A photograph of the urinal submitted by Marcel Duchamp in 1917
On an evening in 1916, in the one country that had not directly fallen into the grips of war, Switzerland, which served as a refuge for many artists and intellectuals, the Dada movement was born in a café in Zurich on February 8th. Their presence in Zurich was due to Switzerland's neutral stance during a time when their homelands were engulfed in the turmoil of World War I. A group of artists and poets, all around their twenties, decided to choose a name that reflected their approach to literature, art, music, and thought. They randomly opened a linguistic dictionary, Larousse, and the first word that caught their eye was "Dada," which meant nothing and was just a linguistic root. They chose it as the name for their movement.
The Dada movement quickly spread across Europe and America. A French literary historian said, "There has never been an intellectual movement more difficult to attribute to a specific country than Dadaism. It was a movement whose circumstances were inherently global, and all conditions were ripe for its reception, which explains its rapid spread." Tristan Tzara, one of the movement's founders, remarked, "To understand Dadaism, and how it came to be, one must imagine the mental state of a group of young people in that prison that was Switzerland during World War I, while also considering the level that art and literature had reached during that period.
"In the years 1916 and 1917, it seemed to us that the war would continue forever, and we saw no end to it... Our desire for life was immense, and our rejection and lack of taste for all the colors of civilization called modern, even at its core... To logic and to language... Our rejection took the form of mockery and contempt... And we mustn't forget that the real human essence in literature was covered by a false emotional layer, and that taste, or bourgeois taste, dominated all artistic and literary fields."
Dadaism specifically saw itself concerned with reenacting the psychological disorder caused by World War I. - David Hopkins
Marcel Duchamp's work titled "L.H.O.O.Q." (1921/1964), manufactured ready-made, consists of 152 marble cubes shaped like sugar cubes + a thermometer + a cuttlefish bone in a birdcage.The Dada movement was born in this manner, deliberately concerned with mocking the very notion of meaning itself and rejecting all fixed interpretations of things. As one Dada poet put it:
Dada does not speak and has no fixed ideas
Dada does not catch flies
Dada has existed since the beginning
And the Virgin Mary was a Dadaist
Dada against the high cost of living
Dada against the future
Dada is dead
Dada is foolish
Dada doubts everything
Do not trust in Dada
Dada is the greatest trickster of this age
Dada has no meaning
Dada is a state within a state
This poem rejects the confinement of meaning to anything specific, reflecting the Dadaists' principle. Marcel Duchamp, one of the foremost pioneers of the Dada movement, allowed for all interpretations of his art, even those considered far-fetched. Their philosophy was that to confront the chaos and destruction that had befallen the world, they needed to create art that contradicted art itself, hence they coined the motto "art against art." They famously proclaimed, "everything is equal, therefore nothing is everything."
Exhibition of the First International Dada Fair, Berlin, June 1920David Hopkins says about Dadaism: "It sought to undermine traditional bourgeois ideas in art. Mostly, the movement boldly opposed art, and more importantly, its participants like Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, Kurt Schwitters, Raoul Hausmann, expressed their love for irony and audacity in response to the world's madness, while World War I raged in Europe."
"They strongly disliked bourgeois values and the professional tint of art: 'If oil painting and bronze casting are synonyms for the opulent houses of the aristocratic class, then Dada followers would collect new forms of paper cutouts or existing items. If poetry is synonymous with polished awareness, they will pull their arms and dismantle them and redirect them into forms of chatter and spells. They were a united group in their hatred of professional artistry, seeing themselves as cultural saboteurs, but not necessarily rejecting art itself, but rather the manner in which art served as a particular perspective on human nature.'"
When we felt disgusted by the brutality of World War I, which erupted in 1914, we devoted ourselves to the arts in Zurich. While the sounds of cannons echoed in the distance, we sang, painted collages, and wrote poetry with all our might. We were searching for an art based on foundations to heal the madness of this era. We were looking for a new system of things that would restore balance between heaven and hell.
(Arp)
$$Marcel Duchamp.. Ideas are more important than craftsmanship.$$
Ready-made works by Marcel Duchamp, on the right "Bottle Rack" 1914-1964, and on the left "Bicycle Wheel" 1913.Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain," which he exhibited, shook established art values and caused a significant shock—not just because it was a urinal, but because it was ready-made and not made by Duchamp himself. This meant the artwork could be easily reproduced, diminishing its uniqueness. Duchamp intended exactly this, aiming to sever craftsmanship from visual art and emphasizing that ideas should replace manual skill as the fundamental components of artworks. David Hopkins states:
"Duchamp formulated what he termed an anti-visual stance in relation to the visual innovations introduced into French art by Matisse on the one hand and Cubism on the other. Duchamp's antipathy to art that appeals to the eye alone, to the exclusion of the mind, was a satire on the effects of the machine age on the human psyche"... "Duchamp's aversion to craftsmanship's association with visual art and his belief that ideas should replace manual skill as the essential components of artworks led him to select ready-made objects as artistic propositions."
Duchamp's work raised fundamental questions about the nature of art—what constitutes art and what can lie beyond its boundaries? These questions sparked extensive debates challenging previous definitions of art. Duchamp shifted focus away from the artwork itself to highlight the concepts and ideas it conveys. Consequently, critics view all art post-Duchamp as conceptual art; he shattered the concept of the uniqueness of an artwork, as his works do not need to be physically exhibited and can be reproduced anywhere with ease.