Modern and contemporary
Dada and Surrealism
1916–c. 1950
Chance, absurdity and the unconscious mind, used to overturn accepted ideas of what art is.
Overview
Dada began in Zurich in 1916 among artists and writers disgusted by the First World War. They answered a world that seemed senseless with nonsense, chance and provocation, and Marcel Duchamp’s “readymades,” ordinary objects presented as art, questioned the definition of art itself.
Surrealism, launched in Paris by André Breton’s manifesto of 1924, drew on Freud’s ideas about dreams and the unconscious. Some Surrealists painted impossible scenes in precise detail, while others used automatic drawing and chance techniques to bypass conscious control.
What defines it
- Readymades, collage and photomontage
- Dream imagery and unexpected juxtapositions
- Automatic techniques that give chance a role
Works to know
- Fountain
- Cut with the Kitchen Knife
- The Treachery of Images
- The Persistence of Memory