Art, Because the Artist Says It's

Read and listen. Dada Art, because the artist says it’s art

Can a toilet be a work of art? What about putting a bicycle on a stool? Is that art? Anyone can do it. What is art? Dada art makes people think.

Bicycle wheel

Dada was an art movement which was started by a group of artists during the First World War. The origin of the name Dada isn’t certain, but the objectives of the movement were clear: through art and literature they protested against the war and against conservative ideas. They rejected traditions and traditional art because for them, everything was boring. They wanted to start something new.

Dada was sometimes fun, often provocative and always original and you can see all of these characteristics in the work of the French artist Marcel Duchamp. In his opinion, art was usually created for the eyes, but he wanted to create art for the mind.

Motivate 3 Unit 8 pp.80–81 © Oxford University Press PHOTOCOPIABLE Mona Lisa with moustache

When he added a moustache to a copy of the Mona Lisa in 1919, it was an anti-art joke and with his Bicycle Wheel (1913) he was saying, ‘this is art because the artist says it’s art’. For Duchamp, everyday objects could be art. In 1917, he inverted a urinal, signed it with a false name, called it Fountain and sent it to an exhibition. It was rejected.

Fountain

In fact Dada works of art were rejected by most critics. Their everyday objects, which they called ‘readymades’, were completely different from the traditional world of paintings and sculptures. One critic said that Dada was the ‘sickest and most destructive thing’ invented by man.

But opinions change and eighty-seven years later a group of five hundred British critics voted Fountain ‘the most influential work of modern art’. In fact, if you look at some of the stranger pieces of art today you can see the influence of Dada. Thanks to Dada, everything can be art now. There are no rules.