Dada and Surrealism

DADA AND SURREALISM Rethinking ReasonStudying the Art Object: Materials and Methods The devastation wrought by World War I gave rise to a virulent critique of certain grand ideas such as reason, progress, and a kind of nationalism that had led to use of technology for destructive ends. International Dada movements during the War of Dada, before dissociating themselves from its and, afterward, Surrealism were central to these anarchism. From about 1921 on, they appear to critiques. Freewheeling and anarchistic, Dada have seen a different type of light, internal and often generated a wide range of heterogeneous hidden from most people and accessible only artistic reactions against earlier aesthetics. By through a use of several new techniques. These Artworks selected for contrast, Surrealism, headed by its so-called “Pope” included “automatic” writing and drawing and Dada and Surreal- André Breton, was frequently characterized by other unstructured collaborations, intended to open ism: Rethinking more unified, programmatic, or positive actions. doors onto the unconscious. Automatism was a key Reason are drawn Partly owing to this contrast in purposes, it is procedure for André Masson, who used it to liberate from the collections of not surprising to find, both in this exhibition artistic form from conscious control, as in his later Washington Univer- and throughout the intellectual history of the Composition (1967). Max Ernst, having emerged sity’s Mildred Lane twentieth century, a slight imbalance in the from a thorough participation in Dada to become Kemper Art Museum importance of material objects deemed essential one of the central figures of Surrealism, employed 1 and the University to our understanding of the two movements. another of these techniques, frottage, which Library’s Special Col- Characteristic works of Dada may be harder to involves taking the imprint of a natural texture lections. The exhibi- locate, classify, and even appreciate, precisely in the manner of a gravestone rubbing. In his tion was coorganized because of the looser, more immediate, and portfolio Natural History (1926), Ernst used frottage by Stamos Metzi- ephemeral nature of Dada itself. Surrealism left to transform vegetal forms and textures into dakis, professor of more traces, partly because its effects were intended animals, uniting the botanical and the zoological French and com- to be deeper and more transformative. in absurd and sometimes marvelous combinations. parative literatures The techniques of Joan Miró, too, had their roots in in the Department of In this exhibition, artists associated with Dada, Dada. In the painting and prints on view here, Miró Romance Languages such as Hans Arp and Man Ray, are thus sometimes adapted Arp’s practice of biomorphism—making & Literatures, and represented by later works, produced long after the mutable animal or plant forms representative of no John Klein, associate initial flush of youthful post-WWI alienation. Arp’s real species—to create worlds replete with strange professor of modern amorphous, unnameable creature accompanying insectile, aquatic, or wormlike creatures. These odd and contemporary art in the Department his own poems, collected as Hairy Heart (1923–26) messengers from the unconscious can appear at of Art History & Ar- and Kings before the Deluge (1952–53), or Man Ray’s once amusing and threatening. chaeology, in conjunc- amusing reference to Leonardo da Vinci in The tion with their course Father of Mona Lisa (1967), are visually typical of Pablo Picasso was never associated with Dada, and of the same title in their earlier work, even if they are years removed he also resisted Breton’s efforts to recruit him to spring 2011. from Dada’s initial vitality and relevance. the Surrealist cause. But his work in the 1930s exhibits many Surrealist themes and techniques. Whereas Dada’s original purposes—to revolutionize Mythic creatures such as the Minotaur—half-man, consciousness and, by extension, society—were half-bull, an embodiment of the Surrealist struggle ultimately seen as largely unfulfilled, Surrealism between reason and instinct—frequently appear had, by contrast, a strong ongoing life in artistic in his work, as in Combat in the Arena (1937). In and literary imaginations. At first the Surrealists Dream and Lie of Franco (1937), Picasso brought his were, almost without exception, great admirers evocations of uncontrolled violence into the arena TEACHING GALLERY DADA AND SURREALISM (con’t) of politics in these cartoonlike condemnations of Further Resources Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco, whose rule was an affront to Picasso’s republican sympathies. Although Andrei Codrescu, The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara not a self-defined Surrealist, Picasso tended to and Lenin Play Chess (Princeton, NJ: Princeton distort, disrupt, and provoke, which led him to University Press, 2009). empathize with Surrealist practices if not always its Matthew Gale, Dada & Surrealism (London: Phaidon, purposes. 1997). Robert Motherwell, ed., The Dada Painters and Poets: The Surrealist emphasis on the unconscious, An Anthology (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1989). especially its instinctual and violent elements, had a significant afterlife too in the next generation of Maurice Nadeau, History of Surrealism, with an artists. Works by the Chilean Roberto Matta and introduction by Roger Shattuck (Cambridge, MA: the American William Baziotes, both of whom Belknap Press, 1989). knew and exhibited with the Surrealists in the Mark Polizzotti, Revolution of the Mind: The Life of United States, exemplify the movement’s continuing André Breton (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, importance and international impact. The many 1995). periodicals that proliferated under the banner of Surrealism, a few of which are represented in the Michel Sanouillet, Dada in Paris (Cambridge, MA: exhibition, also helped to extend the movement’s MIT Press, 2009). impact outside its original ambit. Dada’s initial rejection of a world torn apart by national interests was thereby recovered, in a sense, by the Surrealists’ See also related artworks on view in the Mildred transcendence of such borders and barriers through Lane Kemper Art Museum’s Bernoudy Permanent their committed exploration of the uncharted Collection Gallery, including key examples of territories of the individual psyche, and their desire Surrealism by Arshile Gorky and Yves Tanguy, as well as Joan Miró. to reach a wide audience with their revolutionary ideas. .

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