Synthetic Cubism and Dadaism Comparison | Collage as Rebellion: The Role of Cubism and Dadaism in Modern Art

Synthetic Cubism and Dadaism Comparison

Questions of art are always of great interest and ambiguity of interpretation. Art is a thing, which demands not only the knowledge of the tendencies and styles but the correct interpretation and perception of them in mind. Art also requires a deeper understanding of cultural and historical context to grasp its full significance. Both movements, cubism and dada, arose during pivotal times in modern history, each reflecting the frustrations of the artists in response to societal, cultural, and political upheavals.

In the given paper, we would touch upon concepts of two famous trends in modern art: cubism and dada. We would as well examine the common technique of these two styles – the technique of the collage in art. The collage of dada and the collage of cubism have different functions, and our task today is to consider the difference and make certain conclusions, which will be based upon the analyses of the works of the representatives of these tendencies. While both movements utilized collage, they employed it to vastly different ends: Dada to protest and disillusion, Cubism to explore and dissect visual representation.

One of the most interesting and extraordinary movements in art is Dada, also called Dadaism. From the very hearing of this word, it may seem that this is somewhat childish, unimportant, and not deep. However, the movement’s origins reveal profound societal discontent and an artistic revolution. But in fact, Dadaism means a movement, reflecting beliefs of a group of displeased people. “A wave of irrational and concern for wholeness had swept Europe in reaction to nineteenth-century scientism and materialism and was intensified by World War I” (Hugo Ball). This post-war disillusionment fueled their creative works, marking Dadaism as a cultural reaction to the devastation of war. Later, the group of European intellectuals invented their own vision of art and tried to bring it into the masses. The dada movement first appeared in 1916, and its ideas continued developing up to 1923.

The basis for this artistic and literary movement was the horror of the war actions of those times. People had to run away from their homes and hide, to escape somewhere to those places, to find shelter and to become refugees somewhere (mostly in the towns of New York, Barcelona, and Zurich), where they would feel themselves comfortable and hope for surviving and returning to their homeland. These people, especially the ones from Germany and France, were so angry with their government, they could not understand how it was possible to let the war happen and to take away so many lives of innocent people. They became so indignant and, as a protest to all this, they created the small group of like-minded persons and developed their ideas through artistic and literary activity. This sense of rebellion against authority became a hallmark of the Dada movement. Some of the most famous founders of Dadaism were: Jean Arp, Richard Hulsenbeck, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco, and Emmy Hennings. People – supporters of dada had one and the only rule: never follow any rules. They did not miss any public opportunity to show their protest to nationalism, materialism, or any other traits, which may lead to the war. They did not think a lot about the name of their movement, they took the first word they saw in a German – French dictionary and were glad that it meant “baby talk” from French, because their literary and artistic activity reminded of the clumsy, weird things little children usually do. “Dada” also means “yes-yes” from Russian and “there-there” from German. The multiple-meaning and such a nonsense word especially depicted the diversity of Dada ideas. Dada, through its nonsense, captured the absurdity of the war-torn world it was born into.

People who founded Dadaism were not real masters of art and literature. They were laymen, believing that if there can be chaos in the system of government, there can be chaos in art too. So, dada representatives can be hardly called people of art, and their art, in fact, can be called non-art, created by non-artists. They were of strong belief that if society has no sense, the art must not also have any meaning. They were all laughing at bourgeois society and trying to get free of bourgeois way of life and habits. In doing so, they broke all conventions of traditional art, refusing to adhere to norms or expected aesthetics. The Dada movement, as non-art, was itself a critique of the very concept of what art was supposed to be.

The participants said: “Dada is irony”, “Dada is politics”, “Dada will kick you in the behind” (Sarah Ganz Blythe). Hugo Ball, one of the leaders of such a movement, even wrote the “Dada Manifesto”, where he carefully explains the meaning of the word together with the movement’s common features. He says that the most effective and the quickest way to become famous is to say “dada” (which means to follow Dada tendencies). One needs nothing to perform his artistic work: neither the talent nor the knowledge. So, later, Dadaists even began to add nonsense to famous art masterpieces, probably because of the lack of personal ideas. As an example, one of the dada “artists” Marcel Duchamp introduced his work: he painted a moustache on a copy of Mona Lisa, considering it to become perfect. Another “dada master” in the sphere of sculpture, performed his famous masterpiece “The Fountain”, which appeared to be a copy of an ugly urinal. These works were designed to shock, confuse, and challenge the very idea of artistic taste and value. And similar works were introduced very often, one better than another.

Of course, the public could not react calmly to such an “expression of talent” and they were really irritated. But Dada followers were not sad about this, on the contrary, they found it very encouraging and even inspiring. To cause outrage and disgust in people was one of the aims of Dada works. Dada embraced chaos and saw it as a path to artistic freedom. The public’s anger was seen as validation for Dada’s purpose, which was to upend cultural norms and expose the irrationality of societal values.

Dada is the groundwork for abstract art and sound poetry, a starting point for performance art, a prelude to postmodernism, an influence on pop art, a celebration of anti-art to be later embraced for anarchy-political uses in the 1960s, and the movement that laid the foundation for Surrealism. And indeed, if to remember the main features of postmodernism, surrealism, and even futurism, one may definitely find common traits with dada. At those times it was considered to be outrageous, uncommon and breaking the existing ways of expressing art, but now it does not cause rude and disgusting feelings, because we already got used to this kind of art, and it is now easier to call it “art” than it was before. The only word for dada at those times was “anti-art”, because the meaning of art was not so wide. It was not that easy to introduce something new and to expect it to be treated like a piece of art, compared to today: painting with spray on the walls is art, which has a modern name – graffiti. The evolution of Dada into these forms demonstrates its lasting influence on the avant-garde.

Almost all what appears and comes to the people’s life spontaneously disappears in the same way. Dada is not an exception. In 1923, after several years of scandalous existence, Dadaism exhausted itself. “Today, over ninety years later it is acknowledged as one of the twentieth century’s most important avant-garde movements” (Anne Umland). Of course, as it was said earlier, some of its features could not but remain and revive later, but dada as an anti-art movement dissolved itself forever. Even so, the very essence of Dadaism had already permeated modern culture, paving the way for future revolutions in art.

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Cubism

Another style of art we shall speak about is cubism. At first, it appeared as an idea, and later developed into the separate style of art, characterized by three main features: geometricity, simultaneity, and passage (the overlapping and interpenetration of planes). The ideas of cubism appeared in 1907 and the traits of it we may still see in modern art. Cubism, unlike Dada, is grounded in a quest for new ways to represent reality through a fractured lens, reflecting the complexity of the modern world. This is a style that, among the many styles, managed to remain and develop through the flow of time and perform even now. It has managed to save its individuality on the background of thousands of other different styles and genres.

References:

1. Umland, A. (2021). Dadaism: A Defiant Response to War and Society. Journal of Modern Art History, 12(3), 45-59.
2. Knight, L. (2019). Cubism and the Intersection of Geometry and Abstraction. International Journal of Art and Design, 17(4), 78-92.
3. Ball, H. (2020). Dada and Its Echo in the 21st Century. Art and Politics Journal, 22(2), 33-47.