When art lost its way

Marcel Duchamp, "Fountain" (1917), Tate

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The art movement called Dada produced some works that challenge the viewer's sensibilities, but for good reason.

Dada was an informal international movement, with participants in Europe and North America. The beginnings of Dada correspond to the outbreak of World War I. For many participants, the movement was a protest against the bourgeois nationalist and colonialist interests, which many Dadaists believed were the root cause of the war, and against the cultural and intellectual conformity—in art and more broadly in society—that corresponded to the war. 

Many Dadaists believed that the 'reason' and 'logic' of bourgeois capitalist society had led people into war. They expressed their rejection of that ideology in artistic expression that appeared to reject logic and embrace chaos and irrationality. For example, George Grosz later recalled that his Dadaist art was intended as a protest "against this world of mutual destruction." 

According to Hans Richter Dada was not art: it was "anti-art." Dada represented the opposite of everything which art stood for. Where art was concerned with traditional aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. If art was to appeal to sensibilities, Dada was intended to offend. (Wikipedia)

The aftermath of World War I presented

drastic political, cultural, and social change across Europe, Asia, Africa, and even in areas outside those that were directly involved. Four empires collapsed due to the war, old countries were abolished, new ones were formed, boundaries were redrawn, international organizations were established, and many new and old ideologies took a firm hold in people's minds.

Years later, Dada artists described the movement

as "a phenomenon bursting forth in the midst of the postwar economic and moral crisis, a savior, a monster, which would lay waste to everything in its path... [It was] a systematic work of destruction and demoralization... In the end it became nothing but an act of sacrilege." (Wikipedia)

Perhaps the best known artists active in the Dada movement are Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst. Dadaism resolved into surrealism, which aimed to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality (André Breton)." Often works produced by Dada artists are assigned to surrealism.

More information about Europe after WWI can be found at HowStuffWorks, the history section. And, as a challenge to the usual way of looking at history, here's an article on the cycles of the slower-moving planets, titles "History and the cycles of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto." (Hint: search the page on 'WW1' and '1917'.)

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Max Ernst, "The Elephant Celebes" (1921), Wikipedia

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-- Marge