1 Dada Origins 1 2 Marcel Duchamp 18 3 Höch and Hausmann 28 4 Kurt

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GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / DADA / Overview i / lxiv

Dada

1 Dada Origins 1

2 Marcel Duchamp 18

3 Höch and Hausmann 28

4 Kurt Schwitters 40

5 Dada’s Women 59

Dada Origins

1916–1922 Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I.

“Dada’s rejection of art and tradition enabled it to enrich the visual vocabulary started by Futurism.”

MEGGS

1916–1922 Dada Philosophy

Rejecting all tradition, they sought complete freedom.

They bitterly rebelled against the horrors of war, the decadence of European society, the shallowness of blind faith in technological progress, and the inadequacy of religion and conventional moral codes in a continent in upheaval.

–MEGGS

· © Kevin Woodland, 2019 · GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / DADA / Origins 4 / 64

Dada doubts everything.

TRISTAN TZARA

Born in a Zürich nightclub in 1916 as an all-out mutiny against World War I and the social and political climate that fueled it, Dada remains one of the most anarchistic cultural movements of all time.

MEREDITH MENDELSOHN

Dada does not mean anything.

TRISTAN TZARA

The magic of a word — DADA — which for journalists has opened the door to an unforeseen world, has for us not the slightest importance.

TRISTAN TZARA

1916–1922 Dada Philosophy • Reaction to the carnage of World War I • Claimed to be anti-art • Had a negative and destructive element

1916–1922 Dada Philosophy • Literature • Poetry • Visual Arts • Manifestoes • Theatre • Graphic design • Art theory

1916–1922 Dada Activities Dada writers and artists were concerned with:

• Shock • Protest • Nonsense • Obsurdity • Confrontation

© Kevin Woodland, 2019 Dadaists at the First International Dada Fair in Berlin in 1920. A mannequin of a German officer with the head of a pig hangs from the ceiling. GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / DADA / Origins 12 / 64

1916–1922 Dada Activities • Public gatherings • Demonstrations • Publication of art/literary journals • Art and political criticism

1918 Dada Activities Raoul Hausmann starts the publication of Der Dada

1916–1922 Dada Aesthetics • Spontaneous chance • Planned decisions Dada’s rejection of art and tradition enabled it to enrich the visual vocabulary started by Futurism.

– MEGGS

1916–1922 Dada Aesthetics • Dada started as a literary movement • Aesthetic was forged by poets crafting sound poetry • Nonsense poetry • Chance poetry • Chance placement, absurd titles

Tristan Tzara

1920 To make a Dadaist poem 1. Take a newspaper. 2. Take a pair of scissors. 3. Choose an article as long as you are planning to make your poem. 4. Cut out the article. 5. Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a bag. 6. Shake it gently. 7. Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag. 8. Copy conscientiously. 9. The poem will be like you. 10. And here you are a writer, infinitely original and endowed with a sensibility that is charming though beyond the understanding of the vulgar.

Marcel Duchamp

1887–1968 The French painter Marcel Duchamp joined the Dada movement and became its most prominent visual artist.

1908-1915 Visual Artist • Cubism influenced his analysis of subjects as geometric planes • Futurism inspired him to convey time and motion

© Kevin Woodland, 2019 Marcel Duchamp, Nude (Study), Sad Young Man on a Train, 1911; Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1912 GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / DADA / Marcel Duchamp 22 / 64

By World War I, he had rejected the work of many of his fellow artists (like Henri Matisse) as “retinal” art, intended only to please the eye. Instead, Duchamp wanted to put art back in the service of the mind.

– MEGGS

1913 Ready-Made Sculpture • Philosophy of absolute freedom • Art and life were processes of random chance and willful choice • Artistic acts became matters of individual decision and selection • Bicycle Wheel is said to be the first kinetic sculpture

1917 Ready-Made Sculpture • Philosophy of absolute freedom • Art and life were processes of random chance and willful choice • Artistic acts became matters of individual decision and selection

Duchamp described his intent with the piece was to shift the focus of art from physical craft to intellectual interpretation.

–WIKIPEDIA

1917 “Whether Mr. Mutt made the fountain with his own hands or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view—created a new thought for that object.

– BEATRICE WOOD

1919 The public was outraged when Duchamp painted a mustache on a reproduction of the Mona Lisa.

1919 Rose Sélavy was one of the pseudonyms of artist Marcel Duchamp.

The name, a pun, sounds like the French phrase “Eros, c’est la vie”, which translates to English as “Eros, that’s life”. It has also been read as “arroser la vie” (“to make a toast to life”).

Höch and Hausmann

1918–1928 Hannah Höch and Raoul Hausmann were creating outstanding work in the medium of photomontage as early as 1918.

1889 – 1978 Hannah Höch After meeting artist and writer Raoul Hausmann in 1917, Höch became associated with the Berlin Dada group, a circle of mostly male artists who satirized and critiqued German culture and society following World War I.

MOMA

1889 – 1978 Hannah Höch “Most of our male colleagues continued for a long while to look upon us as charming and gifted amateurs, denying us implicitly any real professional status.”

HANNAH HÖCH

1886 – 1971 Raoul Hausmann

Kurt Schwitters

1887–1948 Kurt Schwitters of Hanover, Germany, created a nonpolitical offshoot of Dada that he named Merz, coined from the word Kommerz (commerce) in one of his collages.

1919 Schwitters gave Merz meaning as the title of a one-person art movement.

1919–1923 Merz • Collage compositions • Printed ephemera • Rubbish • Found materials • Composition explorations • Color against color • Form against form • Texture against texture

1919–1923 Merz

According to Schwitters, Merz “denotes essentially the combination of all conceivable materials for artistic purposes.”

1919–1923 Merz

According to Schwitters, Merz “denotes essentially the combination of all conceivable materials for artistic purposes.”

1919–1923 Merz

According to Schwitters, Merz “denotes essentially the combination of all conceivable materials for artistic purposes.”

1919-1923 Poetry • Dada poets separated the word from its language context • Played sense against nonsense • Pure visual form, pure sound • Redefined poetry as the interaction of elements: letters, syllables, words, sentences

1923-1932 Merz Publication • Schwitters sporadically published 22 issues of Merz • The third issue comprises a portfolio of six unbound lithographs

1923-1932 Merz Publication • Schwitters sporadically published 22 issues of Merz • The third issue comprises a portfolio of six unbound lithographs • His complex designs combined Dada’s elements of nonsense, surprise, and chance with strong design properties.

1923-1937 Merzbau

Schwitters also dramatically altered the interiors of a number of spaces throughout his life.

The most famous was the Merzbau, the transformation of six (or possibly more) rooms of the family house in Hanover, Germany.

1923-1937 Merzbau • Started in 1923 • First room finished in 1933 • Schwitters flees to Norway in 1937 • Destroyed in an Allied bombing raid in 1943

Kurt Schwitters, Merzbau, Hannover, germany © Kevin Woodland, 2019 · GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / DADA / Kurt Schwitters 56 / 64

1981-1983 Merzbau Reconstruction • Dr Harald Szeemann • Exhibition “Tendencies Toward the Total Work of Art,” • The MERZ Building represented an “indispensible central work” • Commissioned Peter Bissegger, (Switzerland) to reconstruct Merzbau • Installed in the Sprengel Museum Hanover

Dada’s contribution to the visual arts outlasted its founding practitioners and continues to emerge in artistic movements in the present day.

The movement influenced later styles like the Russian Avant-Garde, Surrealism, Pop Art, Fluxus, Post-Modernism and even Punk Rock.

– MEGGS

2009 Dada’s Women

An important research effort, Ruth Hemus’s Dada’s Women uncovers numerous important female figures omitted from historical accounts recorded by Dada’s male practitioners.

“Women do not fare well in Dada histories. Often, where their names appear, they are accompanied by nothing more than few scant details. Frequently, these biographical points of interest, with little or even no information provided about the nature and reach of the work.”

RUTH HEMUS

“Many women, including each of the five discussed in the study, were involved in personal relationships with men in the group and they are generally referred to in relation to their more famous male counterparts. One often reads about an individual as the wife of, the girlfriend of, the lover of, the mistress of, or the sister of a better- known protagonist.”

RUTH HEMUS

Suzanne Duchamp To give one acute example, the Paris-based artist Suzanne Duchamp was not only the wife of another artist, Jean Crotti, but also the sister of three brothers, all artists: Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp- Villon, and Jacques Villon.

RUTH HEMUS

Suzanne Duchamp She is frequently referred to in these terms and yet none of the four men is generally referred to as a husband or brother of Suzanne Duchamp.

RUTH HEMUS

Active in Europe Active in America • Céline Arnauld • Margaret Anderson • Alice Bailly • Louise Stevens Arensberg • Marguerite Buffet • Djuna Barnes • Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia • Katherine S. Dreier • Nelly van Doesburg • Baroness Elsa von Freytag- “Yet women did participate • Suzanne Duchamp Loringhoven in Dada and the names of • Jane Heap these women add up.” • Renée Dunan • Germaine Everline • Mina Loy RUTH HEMUS • Emmy Hennings • Agnes Ernst Meyer • Hannah Höch • Katharine Nash Rhoades • Angelika Hoerle • Juliette Roche • Maja Kruscek • Clara Tice • Adon Lacroix • Louise Norton Varèse • Adrienne Monnier • Beatrice Wood • Suzanne Perrottet • Carrie Stettheimer • Aday van Rees-Dutilh • Ettie Stettheimer • Käte Steinitz • Florine Stettheimer • Sophie Taeuber • Maria Vanselow • Mary Wigman • Käthe Wulff