The DADA movement began in Zurich, Switzerland in 1916 which began as a reaction and a response to the first World War.
It had a lot of influences, such as Constructivism, Cubism also futurism; Expressionism in my opinion, would have been also an influence since most artists involved in the DADA movement, distorted images and manipulated other art to create their own. DADA was not solely based on art on paper. The performance arts (theatre), sculpture and also poetry, all were artistic creations produced in the DADA movement.
Big cities such as Berlin, Paris and New York; all had artists involved in the movement and getting interested in creating this strange art. It is believed that the DADA movement started to fade, once Surrealism started to get noticed in France.
DADA was not art but rather was referred to as ANTI-art.
One artist that was involved in the movement was Jean Arp; also known as Hans Arp by some. He was a German artist, who lived in France. He dabbled in many things such as painting and sculpting as well as poetry.
He was born in September 16, 1998 and studied at Kunstschule in Weimar and in Paris at the Academie Julian. He is one of the founding members of the DADA movement that happened in Zurich.
His work varied in style; from Abstract, which lead to the works he contributed for the DADA movement, and he also did some Surrealism pieces. People also gave him credit for inventing the biomorphic sculptures, which are sculptures, usually inspired from shapes found in nature. These sculptures usually have an irregular form to their composition.
He died in Basel, Switzerland on June 7.
The video above is the first part of a documentary about the DADA movement. The clip documentary itself did a very good job in portraying the DADA movement in the visual aspect itself. It started by using what looks like actual footage from a DADA film were a man kept repeating the word “DADA”, which got a bit faster and louder during the duration of the clip.
The man interviewed, mentioned that DADA was not only about art but it was also about trying to create a new mentality. Dadaists believed that reason and logic were the reason people had to face the war, so what they tried to do was remove all logic and reason from the world and give in the anarchy and irrationality.
DADA influences graphic Design in the sense that it introduced Photo manipulation and photomontage as well as experimenting with typography and layout. All though all these could be seen in other movements, the carefree vision of the dadaist made them more experimental and therefore opening doors to graphic design. What they did with photo collages we now use special computer softwares to create the same effects.
referencing:
Art History. 2014. Jean Arp (Hans Arp) Biography. [ONLINE] Available at: http://arthistory.about.com/cs/namesaa/p/arp.htm. [Accessed 21 December 14].
Dada Movement, Artists and Major Works | The Art Story. 2014. Dada Movement, Artists and Major Works | The Art Story. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.theartstory.org/movement-dada.htm. [Accessed 21 December 2014].
. 2014. . [ONLINE] Available at: http://beauty.gmu.edu/AVT318/AVT318-001/studyguide/09student/becky.pdf. [Accessed 22 December 2014].
Dadaism – Art and Anti Art. 2014. Dadaism – Art and Anti Art. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/art_movements/dadaism.htm. [Accessed 22 December 2014].
Graphic Design History 