Art Movements - Dadaism + Appropriation

Dadaism was a European art movement starting in the early 1900's. Originating from the concept of 'Anti-Art', Marcel Duchamp, along with other surrealist artists of the time, creating what became Dada with the intention of being anti-everything, including war, politics and bourgeois.

The perculiar name was the result of one of the members placing a knife into a German/ French dictionary and landing on the word Dada, translating as 'hobbyhorse', which has nothing to do with art, thus making itself the perfect title for a group keen to reject all conventional concepts of what art it. As this story suggests, Dadaists believed strongly in rejecting the notion that words must be related to their meanings, directly contrasting with all principles which build semiotics.

Inspired by modernism and cubism, the Dada artists took great influence from many of the Bauhaus greats, namely Wasilly Kandisky's, theories and beliefs surrounding the order and conventions which controlled art at the time. Based off his principles, they where able to break free of the constraints at the time and strove to create pieces of work which questioned what art truly was. Marcel Duchamp's 'Fountain' is the perfect example of this as he simply took a lavatory urinal and wrote his own name on it to prove that anything he created could be art. Others took this concept to further, more disgusting lengths, to see just how far they could push the boundries of what they thought the public would accept as 'art'.

Dadaism was pivotal to the invention and development of the photocollage and strong advocated of the concept of appropriation. Manipulating and editing others work to create their own, many questioned their artistic talents as the only parts which where viewed as demonstrating genuine talent was 'appropriated' from other fine artists.