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. Motivate 3 Unit 8 pp.80–81
© Oxford University Press PHOTOCOPIABLE