The Earth itself is its own self-cleansing organ. It produces all humans. All humans are artists. All artists and the minds within them create structure, organization, and set the rules of society of what is considered beautiful. Yet, humans are arrogant and restless creatures. As a society, we do not allow norms and world leadership to go unquestioned. When more and more people question, the world changes. When the world changes, a movement occurs. And it is infectious. Dada was the infectious cultural movement that the world may have cleansed itself from once it ran its course. Yet, the next movement and every movement thereafter has been impacted by these artists. Since Dada, The Earth has forever lost its immune system that kept out the unstructured raw beauty created by this new wave of artists.
A lot was in the mind of Swiss artists from 1916 through 1922. Every day was a question during World War I. Artists could answer the question of how their tomorrows would be with two survival responses also discovered in this time era- fight or flight. These artists could fight their beliefs by standing by silently, fighting through the horrors of war and adhere to the guidelines of art created by this same culture that brought them such turmoil. By viewing any pieces by the artist during this time, their answer is obvious, they flew. Dropping all guidelines of tradition, artists soared away from traditional art to find complete freedom to confront societies problems head-on.
Artists did not only oppose the war, but they also rejected mindless trust in technology, European societal decadence, and other overlooked societal issues. Seeing the world turn, works of the Dada movement attempted to continue turning the world forward, just on a different axis. Claiming to be called, “anti-art”, these pieces utilized “negative and destructive” elements to express their protest of these unjust norms. The Dada philosophy quickly spread as people found the courage to express their beliefs through all different art forms. Literature, poetry, visual arts, and theatre are just a few outlets artists took to and as passion was represented as a passion for the first time. This is where the Earth’s movement became viral. Society knew it could not externally solve all these issues but, their work could open the eyes of those who decided to resist change. In the end, the Earth as a whole discovered it not only create art without strict technique but, this art can mean something larger than the initial artist.
Marcel Duchamp was a powerful force of the Dada movement for his belief in the impact of absolute freedom of art. He made his pieces speak to the viewer and make them ponder, rather than simply make the work visually appealing. Among his work supporting his cause was a “Ready-Made” piece of a Urinal, rotated, encouraging audiences to shift their way of thinking when observing. Duchamp sparked outrage when he painted a mustache on the Mona Lisa. Being a French visual artist, it can be said that Duchamp was ahead of its time foreshadowing a Détournement piece which started in France beginning in the late 1950s.
Détournement can be translated in French as “hijacking” and “rerouting”. Unlike Dada, where art was completely free from cultural past influence, Denouement can only be created by plagiarizing classic work from the culture in question and altering them to portray a completely different meaning than originally intended by the initial artist. In the late 1950s, in typical post-modernism fashion, these classical works originally well-known by the hand in which it came from were now known not by the artist who painted the original photo, or the artist who altered it, Détournement’s were now publicized for the purpose they served and the message they portrayed to society. Dada had its highest peak initially as the idea spread that dated techniques were not the only way to be recognized.
On the contrary, the influence of Détournement becomes stronger with more age between the initial image and the message it portrays. For example, displayed here is a Vincent Van Goughs work, Women in White side by side with its Détournement. I attempted this art form and hijacked this image to say, my generation, myself included, has the world at his/her fingertips. That being said, our world is connected so deeply through technological advancements that the outside world is in extreme danger of being disregarded. The light here is being shed on the fact that if we were to be disconnected this second, we would not even recognize the world around us.
Duchamp, and artists like him, found Dada as the first was to freely develop their unique style of art to attach to their name. Detournement’s differentiated itself by popularizing not by the style unique to the artist who “hi-jacked” the image, but the altered meaning that remains.
It took time to bring artists from the Dada movement to the Post- Modernism movement. World War I turned into World War II. Mindless trust in the evolution of technology evolved into consumerism and the endless hunger it causes. Naturally, restless artists questioned norms and were connected through beliefs that took them beyond individual styles and served a greater purpose. Dada and Détounement art created during these time periods allowed the Earth to cleanse itself of closed-minded traditional art rules. The artworks that remain allows our society as a whole to remain open-minded for the next influence that will make artists restless.
https://www.vincentvangogh.org/girl-in-white.jsp
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