Dada Vs. Surrealism - Term Paper Example

Dada vs. Surrealism The rapidly changing world of the 19th century brought forward a wide range ofexploration into the ways we communicate our ideas. The birth of the century saw a rapid rise of the metropolis as the processes of industry and urbanization took control. Subjective society as it had been known in the rural districts was quickly being supplanted by the objective society arising in the culturally mixed districts of the cities. Through the factory time clock and other time-ordered activities, the individual’s physical experience became ordered not by their own sense of time and responsibility or by the rising and setting of the sun as it had been in the past, but rather of external organization as those with the money determined the schedule. Because of this enforced rhythm to life in the city, explorations of art, literature and science into this mechanized realm produced the idea of the phantasmagorical. Phantasmagorical is characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtapositions. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines phantasmagoria as “an exhibition of optical effects and illusions; a constantly shifting complex succession of things seen or imagined; a bizarre or fantastic combination, collection or assemblage” (2010). Artists emerging in this period used disjunctive and bizarre comparisons and contexts to try to break through to a cultural subconscious creating new approaches to art. In the course of making their art, they wanted to expose the hypocrisy that lay at the heart of what they considered to be a decadent, bourgeois world that only they truly understood. The Dada and Surreal movements that emerged in this period were both influential in their own right. Dada began as a movement against the way art was appreciated by others while Surrealism, originally a literally movement, grew and engulfed Dada and became the most eminent movement other than Cubism at that time. Being that Surrealism is a reflection more defined by Dada, it quickly immersed Dada and thus became more influential. The Dada movement in art is roughly traced to the beginning of the First World War. It was essentially a protest carried out through the visual arts, literature, theatre and graphic design. The movement stood against what the literati considered the bourgeois nationalist and colonialist interests that led to war as well as the conformity of the populace as expressed through both art and society in agreeing to war (Richter, 1965). To fully express their anger and shame at these cultural elements of anti-peace, the artists involved in the Dada movement essentially dedicated themselves to an anti-war and anti-art movement. The modern world had lost all sense of true meaning so the art they produced focused on reflecting this attitude by focusing on chaos and irrationality while rejecting logic and order. According to George Grosz, an artist of the period, his focus at the time was to protest “against this world of mutual destruction” (Schneede, 1979). The movement ignored aesthetics, rejected traditional culture and intended to offend the audience in an attempt to shock them into taking a closer look at what was happening around them. As many Dada artists believed, this was the true end design of art. “Art is not an end in itself … but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in” (McNatt, 2006). To accomplish their goal, the artists took entirely new approaches to art, using alternate materials in strange ways fully intent upon drawing a negative reaction. This highly-charged reactionary movement revealed a previously unexplored window to the workings of the human soul. “Dada is the groundwork to abstract art and sound poetry, a starting point for performance art, a prelude to postmodernism, an influence on pop art, a celebration of antiart to be later embraced for anarcho-political uses in the 1960s and the movement that lay the foundation for Surrealism” (Lowenthal in Picabia, 2007). This was achieved as the artists to follow attempted to make sense of the nonsense. While World War 1 taught the Dadaists about nihilism, the Surrealists began to put into action the ideas of the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. These ideas were rapidly gaining in popularity in post-war Europe and centered on the concept that there are underlying formulas and motivations beneath the superficial social lives we lead. Freud’s ideas focused on the way dreams communicated the concepts of the unconscious mind to the waking mind through symbolic content at the same time that this symbolic content was necessary to protect the waking mind from hurt. “Defense mechanisms [are] the psychoanalytic term for unconscious methods the ego uses to distort reality, thereby protecting it from anxiety. In Freud’s view, the conflicting demands of the personality structures produce anxiety” (Pagewise, 2002). Freud also wrote about how these defense mechanisms can also create another version of reality that we are only peripherally aware of but which manifests through symbols and patterns of speech. These concepts were embraced by the Dadaists and provided deep psychological depth to much of their work. It also gave them a credible theory to back some of their stranger experiments and provided room and overlap into the world of the Surreal. Surrealism was a wildly varied movement unified by several key themes. One of the strongest of these themes was the idea that the world we perceive is simply a superficial construction. Under this surface construction are a number of conflicting and even destructive emotional responses at both the individual and the societal levels. While the traditional forms of representations functioned to bring some of these subterranean feelings to the surface in the form of symbols and symbolic connections, the Surrealists took a different approach. Like the Dadaists, they rejected tradition and sought new forms of expression wherein the meaning might be far from clear. “Surrealism attempts to further our understanding of the human condition by seeking ways of fusing together our perceived conscious reality with our unconscious dream state” (Nik, 2006). One of the most well-known Surrealists today, the Spanish painter Salvador Dali, became famous because of his ability to break these traditional boundaries. His willingness to share his internal visions with the greater world population helped to usher the concepts of surrealism into the mainstream. This, in turn, led to its acceptance as a recognized artistic style. “Dalis importance for Surrealism was that he invented his own psycho technique, a method he called critical paranoia. He deliberately cultivated delusions similar to those of paranoiacs in the cause of wresting hallucinatory images from his conscious mind. Dalis images - his bent watches, his figures, halfhuman, half chest of drawers – have made him the most famous of all Surrealist painters” (Harden, 2006). Not every surrealist followed in Dali’s ‘psycho technique’ but they all found a less-traditional means of outwardly expressing the sometimes disjointed concepts that affected their inner worlds. Today, Frida Kahlo from Mexico is among the more recognized female Surrealist artists. Her work illustrates her desperate struggle to find a balancing between her past and present, her inner self and social expectations, the conscious and the subconscious elements of herself. This struggle is particularly well-illustrated in her 1939 self-portrait “The Two Fridas.” The painting depicts two images of the artist sitting side by side. This expresses her conflicted inner state at the time of her divorce from her artist/husband Diego Rivera. One figure is depicted in European clothing, indicating her European half inherited from her father and the part of her that her husband does not love (Stechler, 2005). The symbolic torn bodice and broken heart dominate this rejected side and her hand holds a surgical clamp to stop the bleeding from a severed connection. The other figure has clearly found success and happiness. Comfortable in her traditional Mexican clothing and with the strength of her whole heart, she holds a miniature photo of Diego, indicating a continued connection and a vein extends to the first figure, demonstrating another connection that can never be severed. Surrealist artists such as Dali and Kahlo worked to find order within the disconnected symbols of their dreams and fantasies. In many cases, this approach adopted the same approaches taken by the Dadaists, but Surrealism offered a broader range of exploration. While the inner explorations of both groups of artists might have taken place to some extent with or without Freud, Freud’s ideas undoubtedly helped to provide shape and function to their thoughts and dreams. This gave the artworks produced greater credence within the collecting world. Through the angry outpouring of protest against everything traditional expressed by the Dadaists, the boundary line between the conscious and the subconscious mind was revealed to be not as concrete as previously thought. The Surrealists grabbed this concept and expanded it, exploring numerous areas of life and experience. It was because of this increased flexibility and greater intellectual credibility that Surrealism was able to immerse Dada and emerge as the more influential movement. Works Cited Hardin, Mark. “Dada and Surrealism.” The Archive. [online]. (2010). McNatt, Glenn. “Dadaists raged against the machine, and against art.” The Baltimore Sun. (February 19, 2006). Nik. “About Surrealism.” Surrealism. [online]. (2006) Pagewise. “Freud’s Personality Theory.” Essortment. [online]. (2002). . “Phantasmagoria.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2010. Picabia, Frances. I am a beautiful monster: Poetry, prose and provocation. Massachusetts: MIT, 2007. Schneede, Uwe M. George Grosz, His life and work. New York: Universe Books, 1979. Stechler, Amy. “The Two Fridas.” The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo. New York: Public Broadcasting Station, 2005. Read More