Dada + Surrealism: c. 1913 – 1920

Dada was an anti-art movement that sought to subvert the function of the arts in an increasingly commercial and militaristic society. Dada develops in numerous cities including Zurich, Berlin, Paris, and New York in the context WWI. Influenced by ideas of psychoanalysis such as the unconscious, artists built on the irrational art of Dada to explore the dark world of desire freed from rules created to protect us from our inner ourselves.

Raoul Hausmann, Spirit of the Age: Mechanical Head, 1919, wooden mannequin head with attached objects, 32.5 x 21 x 20 cm (Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris) — A century before democracy was tested by social media gone rogue, Hausmann understood the dark side of technology.

Raoul Hausmann, Spirit of the Age: Mechanical ...

Detail, Picabia, "Here, This Is Stieglitz Here" — Though Picabia borrows from the popular machine aesthetic, nothing about his apparatus is functional.

Francis Picabia, Ideal

Hugo Ball performing at the Cabaret Voltaire, 1916 — The avant-garde reached new heights by looking to “low” culture; after all, the whole thing started with a urinal!

Introduction to Dada

Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory, 1931 (MoMA) — Surrealism may be familiar from dorm room posters, but what do you really know about this movement?

The Case for Surrealism

As the European public grew increasingly hard to scandalize, Duchamp crossed the Atlantic to stir up more trouble.

Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No ...

Meret Oppenheim. Object - detail — Identifying as agents of change, the Surrealists were interested in Freudian psychology and social revolution.

Surrealism, an introduction

Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) — Love, sex, science, broken glass, a coffee grinder, a bride from another dimension—this one really has it all.

Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare ...

Marcel Duchamp, Boite-en-valise (the red box), series F, 1960 (Portland Art Museum) — Duchamp’s wife spent hours gluing prints of her husband’s work onto cardboard for this “portable retrospective.”

Marcel Duchamp, Boite-en-valise, Series F

Introduction to Dada — This is one of the most important objects of twentieth-century Euro-American visual culture. But… is it art?

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain

Dali, Persistence of Memory — Dalí wages war on the rational in this naturalistic landscape populated by strange objects.

Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory

Marcel Duchamp, In Advance of the Broken Arm, 1964 (fourth version, after lost original of November 1915) (MoMA) — For this snow shovel, the road from the garage to the gallery was paved with the ruins of art as we knew it.

Art as concept: Marcel Duchamp, In Advance ...

Salvador Dalí, Metamorphosis of Narcissus, 1937, oil on canvas, 51.1 x 78.1 cm (Tate Modern, London) — Dalí’s forms are mirrored and doubled in this disconcerting painting, made in a state of “paranoiac critical activity.”

Salvador Dalí, Metamorphosis of Narcissus

René Magritte, The Treachery of Images (Ceci n'est pas une pipe), 1929 (LACMA) — This painting claims it is not a pipe… so what is it?

René Magritte, The Treachery of Images (Ceci ...

Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, collage, mixed media, 1919-1920 — This chaotic montage features the “Where’s Waldo?” of artistic signatures, but its subject matter is no joke.

Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife ...

Alberto Giacometti, Palace at 4am, wood, glass, wire and string, 1932 (MoMA) — The architectural forms of a dream are constructed as a stage set, ready to be taken apart and reconfigured.

Alberto Giacometti, The Palace at 4 a.m.

Meret Oppenheim. Object, 1936. Fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon, cup 4-3/8" in diameter; saucer 9-3/8" in diameter; spoon 8" long, overall height 2-7/8" (The Museum of Modern Art, New York) — This furry tea service was a touchstone for Surrealism, but the artist was a victim of her own success.

Meret Oppenheim, Object (Fur-covered cup, saucer, and ...

Man Ray, Gift, c. 1958 (replica of 1921 original), painted flatiron and tacks, 15.3 x 9 x 11.4 cm (The Museum of Modern Art, New York) — Man Ray takes a common household object and renders it strange, dysfunctional, and dangerous.

Man Ray, The Gift