Art Class: Dada

As might have become clear by now I have more than a passing familiarity with art and the creative process. It might not look like it but I kinda know what I’m doing. It’s just that the worst place to sit at the ballet is right up front. From there you can hear the grunts and creaks as a hundred pound slip of a girl contorts her body in time to music in such a way that to the people in the back rows it looks like one graceful, smooth, continuous motion. That’s dance for you, those people use their whole bodies as a canvas. Really, dance can be seen as the precursor to a sort of performance art where the line between audience and author is blurred by the invitation of participation. And, well, I’m not dancer but I’m afraid I’ve become a performance artist – if anyone who creates anything that’s something can said to be an artist (more than that I’ll leave up to the more qualified because from where I stand I’m grunting away and the sweat is pooling in my eyes. Because this ain’t no ballet, son, this here’s a hootanany and I’m dancing up a storm.) – this is the internets, after all. Where the boundaries between creator and comment are slim and active participation from the peanut gallery is just a fact of life. And while they might be caught up in traffic this is all going in the archives and, I don’t know about you, but when I find a blog I like I try and browse through the backcatalog and see if there’s anything else I might be interested in.

But, I am a wordy motherfucker who is constitutionally unable to leave well enough alone. And I have a wide and varied background and more interests than I can name – literally - that leaves me knowledgeable about a staggeringly large number of things and well-equiped with the tools and temperament to seek out whatever information I lack. Yet, at the same time, I’m an expert at nothing. I’m just curious. I read, I talk, I type, I listen, I explore, and I experiment. No judgment if you do or don’t, I’m just dancing, y’all. Right now I’m on this blogging experiment. Tomorrow, who knows? But, as long as we’re doing art around here, keeping in mind, I’m no artist beyond the fact that I string words and the occasional picture together, I might as well make sure that in all my rushing around I haven’t left anyone behind.

So, every now and then I’m going to try and slow down and explain some of the artistic terms I’m going to throw around here. Now, I’m no art expert although I’ve probably spoken to one or two along the way. At least read their books. That’s the kind of person I am. Every now and then I like nothing better to do than to head to the local museum of fine and important arts put on walls and stands by serious people in serious clothes who think seriously about serious things and just goof off. Take a sketchbook and a pencil or twelve, maybe a pen if I’m feeling brave, and spend some time with people I’d love to have met but can’t because all that’s left some indelible memories. Other people go to cemeteries for the same, I guess, but where I’m from we have this little thing we do with the dead called a “wake” where we throw one kick-ass party in their memory. Now, a museum is a serious place so it’s not like I’m cracking a brew and telling the nearest security guard that he’s changed, man, really really changed. No, but I’m not there for mourning I’m there for celebration.

And my way of doing that is to, in my own small, humble way take a little notebook along and try to sketch and draw and anything else that I think makes me a little part of what’s all around me. Sometimes I write, sometimes I try to copy a painting (sometimes, when I’m feeling bold, I’ll try and copy one painting in another painter’s style), sometimes I sketch the people walking around. If they’d let me walk around with a lump of clay I’d do the same with pottery or sculpture. And they’re not even going to let me bring up mixed media microprocessor controlled installation in my pocket, most of those places don’t even like cellphones because of all the cameras. It’s not so much that they mind a picture or two floating around as most of that stuff is in the “public domain”, the old stuff I like anyways, but I’d imagine it’s the flashes. You see, I might have worked at a museum or two in my time or at least spoken with those who have and it’s a lot harder than hanging a picture on the wall and making sure it isn’t crooked. There’s a fascinating amount of time and effort that goes into preserving those works of art from controlling the temperature and humidity to the very amount of light that causes them to fade over time. Because these things are old and eventually they’ll crumble to dust, everything will after all, but for a few thousand years they’ll hold together long enough for a few more parties. And the people currently entrusted to hold them for us all want to make sure they get through history unscathed. So those people, those curators, are cautious, serious people and the museums they make tend to be a bit stuffy because they just don’t like people walking up and touching things because, man, the oils on your fingertips? Mixing with centuries old pigment and binder affixed to fraying strips of canvas fabric? Whew, you might as well take out a lighter and set the things on fire. But those people aren’t artists, not really, they preserve the art so we can all enjoy it. That’s all well and good. It’s just that if they were artists they probably wouldn’t care because to an artist their greatest masterpiece is their next one. And all they want is people to come and party with them.

So, if you’ve ever wanted to join that party, well, I’m not an artist but if you’ve got a question about this art style or this technique or that you’d like answered, well, if I don’t know the answer I can probably help you find it. So ask away.

While we’re waiting, I’ll start us off. Since I already posted the rather lovely Magritte piece The Treachery of Images (1928-1929), let’s start somewhere…near. Don’t worry about what I just did there, that title (Approximate date of creation) is just how art historians and curators write out what a particular work is called. And if we don’t want any of them around correcting us then we’d better make sure we get the form right because we’re playing Telephone with meaning. Games, too, I know so just ask away. But really, games about meaning is where we’re headed because since I’ve been getting a bit surreal lately, I want to talk about Dada.

Dadaism.

Anybody can look up the Wikipedia entry (And feel free. Just don’t trust it. Don’t trust me. Trust yourself.). But that’s not what the Dadaists would have done. If they’d wanted to know what Dada was they’d have opened up a phone book to a random page and called someone up and asked them what the price of a loaf of bread was. Bunch of jokers, those guys and girls. They’re what’s called, by some, an absurdist movement. They just liked to throw a custard pie in the face of convention, metaphorically speaking. Big fans of metaphor, of symbols, of coded meaning, and as that’s what I’m interested in at the moment they’re a bit on my mind. Because not just metaphors but stripping metaphors down to the very basics and rebuilding from the ground up. Dada isn’t art. It’s anti-art. It’s destructive rather than constructive. Nihilisitc, at its core, but trying to do something with the despair and uncertainty of its time. Because the movement really hit its peak in the years following the first World War. From our perspective we known there was worse yet to come but from theirs it wasn’t the first truly global war it was the Great War. The War to End All Wars. Dulce et ducorum est and all that (Poetry. Later.). Where the very fabric of European society was transformed through awful and bloody conflict that, well, very nearly destroyed their institutions. Certainly brought down a government or two. It was a time of panic, of crisis, where the survivors – those few, few survivors – had to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. The Dadaists decided that if things are so bad you can only laugh or cry it’s better to laugh. And they laughed at anything and everything. Nothing was sacred. Eventually, like all avante gardge movements it transformed into something else as times and tastes changed. There’s Dali and Magritte waiting in its future - as they, as a group, became more concerned with technique insead of form - but so, too, are the Nazis and charges of “degenerate art”. Dadaists wouldn’t care to consider anything but their little jokes but, then, they’d also do the exact opposite of what you’d expect so maybe they’d consider it fitting to consider that art, that life, does not exist in a vacuum. And the same despair that led Duchamp to tack a urinal on a wall and call it art led Hitler to write Mein Kampf. And we all know where that led. Be careful with this little hobby-horse because it’s the most serious attempt to do nothing much that I’ve ever had the pleasure to come across. They really tried to turn throw away the book and start with a blank page and while it’s a little fun to get silly from now and then, really serious surrealism is hard to pull off if you’re not prepared to get a little flexible. Because, at its core Dadaism says nothing means anything and anything can mean something. And meaning is deconstructed to its atomic composition and reassembled in non-sensical and seemingly meaningless ways. Yet, at the same time full of meaning because the whole process is done by a person who has to make at least some decisions along the way.

If you’re looking for a one line definition (that I doubt you’ll find in an art book) here goes: Dada is the realization that, fundamentally, meaning is fungible and can be shifted, at will, for conscious purpose.

Not that Dadaism is the beginning point of art or anything but if you were going to pick a direct ancestor of most artistic movements today the movement that started by stripping everything down to basics is a good place to look. And we're at the start of things here, trying to strip mine things for the basics, but we'll hopefully be able to use the tinker toys to put together, well, something. So thanks for reading this far and I hope you're enjoying things. If you'd like to see more of this or anything else please let me know. No promises but one thing that happens when you toss all preconceptions aside is that you'll find wisdom in unexpected places. Like, for example, right where you're looking for it.