The Life of the Cabaret

What is considered the starting point of the movement was in 1916, when a man by the name of Hugo Ball rented out a small space to host the free spirit artists that had moved to Zurich to escape World War I, and called it the Cabaret Voltaire.  He, along with his significant other Emmy Hennings worked together to create an environment where artists could come and present whatever they longed to present.  Most of the time the result was such shocking versions of art and poetry that the people who paid money to enter seemed to be disgusted but became caught up in the appeal of it all.  It was a crowded room with tables lined up all around the stage, and a sense that there was always something going on was prevalent.  They did not remain as the two leaders though, for soon after the idea came about for the Cabaret Voltaire.  International artists joined them, including Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco, Jean Arp, and Richard Huelsenbeck.  They each represented different countries and different art movements.  These men were the initial beginners of the Dada movement.

This was a new sense of performance art.  Every night they would have a new program, consisting of music, costumes, dance, paintings, poetry, masks, and theatrical performances.  It was anything but stale for the viewer.  They were constantly looking for the new ways to challenge the different ways art was being presented, especially with all their influence taken from around different areas of Europe. 

Hugo Ball was the first to introduce abstract poetry at this point through the Cabaret Voltaire.  It is also referred to as phonetic poetry, for it was a creation of verses without words.  They were just groupings of letters to convey sounds and contribute to the performance of the poetry.  The first example by Ball in 1916 went a little something like this: "gadji beri bimba....glandridi lauli lonni cadori....." He found a way to formulate "words" based purely on sound rather than meaning.   

In his second play with poetry, he wrote the poem Karawane.  He got on the stage dressed in a cardboard costume that required him to be brought to his place in front of the audience through the aide of one of the other performers.   He stood reading off tow stands in front of him, limited to the position he was placed in.  This poem did not really had meaning, but rather remained in the style of syllables performed in a rhythmic melody.  

The Cabaret was innovative, violently rejecting the traditional organized productions of the arts.  But this was the important aspect behind their art.  It made their creative process even stronger as they searched for all the different ways they could express themselves that were opposing the structures that were set around Europe.  

Visual Phenomena

Marcel Duchamp was the man of many techniques.  Although he is not he only Dada artist who seemed to move from technique to technique, the pieces he presented in each style were such radical compositions.  So overall he is covered through multiple areas of study.  He did play in different outputs, sometimes even collaborating with other artists.  One of his closest colleagues, Man Ray, who was developing in the world of photography and film, worked with him on his workings of Kinetic art.

Rotative plaques verre, optique de précision

Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp 1920

Kinetic Art is art that contains movement in order to have an effect.  These moving parts are operated in various ways.  The first object of kinetic art is considered the Bicycle Wheel (1913) by Duchamp. (This object was also the first ready-made.)  In this case, the movement was controlled by the viewer.  One could spin the wheel, gazing through.  Currently in its location in the MoMA, touching the piece is forbidden, taking away one of the most important elements Duchamp wanted to create with it.


In 1920, he began working with Man Ray, creating a motorized example of kinetic art titled Rotative plaques verre, optique de précision.  This was a sculpture that involved a rectangular support of glass that was painted the segments of the circle.  The motor spun the glass creating an optical illusion.  Duchamp referred to this illusion as a visual phenomena.  

Wings to the Heavens David Ascalon 2008


This first example of kinetic art went on to influence many movements that followed Dada.  In the 1960's-70's different artists began to experiment with different sculptures that involved movement.  Some of these came in the form of mobiles, like those of Alexander Calder in the late 1950's, and even more recent mobiles being installed in 2008 by David Ascalon.  The mobiles are an example of an evolution in the field of kinetic art.  


Artists also began to play around with light and movement, being called Lumino kinetic art.  Light plays an important role in the way that the movements create different illusions.  This is seen as an example of art that has embraced the technological age that grew in the 20th century.  

Links Between

Dadaism is all about links.  The movement grew through links between various artists.  These artists, all who had by chance assembled in one location initially beginning the moment of Dada, were always moving around.  The distance in which they relocated varied from artists to artist.  Some remained in their home country after Zurich, while others crossed the Atlantic and made their way in to the art world beginning to surface on American soil.  The one thing that each and every one of these artists maintained is contact with multiple artists from around the western world.

Nowadays, most careers come through connections that you have with various people.  This was almost the same in the lives of Dadaists, but it was more in terms of learning rather than getting a high paying job.  They wrote between each other constantly, talking about different ideas they had, and discussing what was going on around them.  Although they varied in location, the artists were all facing chaos in their everyday lives.  They were searching for escape.  

These links that they created led to many collaborative works, like the Francis Picabia piece L'oeil cacodylate, or the later work The Reunion, between John Cage and Marcel Duchamp.  These links were an important aspect to the short-lived movement we call Dada.  

The Dada artists did not limit the communications to simply just Dadaists, but they interacted with multiple other artists that were involved in various movements.  That is why we see an integration of games that the Surrealists used.  

Last week, we played a game that I am going to refer to as a game of links.  The object is to have two nouns, one at the beginning and one at the end.  Between these two nouns on paper is 6 lines.  The point is to start with the first noun, and create 6 levels of connections to link it to the end word.  The links can rhyme, be a synonym, or any link your mind creates.  For example:  I flipped through a biography I was reading on Marcel Duchamp by Calvin Tomkins, and chose two nouns at on two random pages, Draw and Inscription.  Although these two are very similar my links went like this: Draw, Saw, Wood, Forest, Height, Kite, Paper, Inscription.  

To offer an alternate way to see different links, write down 6 different nouns on a sheet of paper, and have another person create the links between them. This way is a little bit harder, causing the mind to have to step even further out of the box in order to find some connection.  Graziano chose to write: Pizza, Pharmacy, Glass, Concept, Farewell, Stone.  And the connections went something like this: Pizza (store) Pharmacy (see) Glass (Duchamp/art) Concept (leave) Farewell (death) Stone.

Now, if someone else was given these set of words, they would see different connections, and the same goes for the first process. 

The purpose of this is that it shows there are always links around us.  Everything is linked in some way.

Now...what exactly does this have to do with Dada and what I was writing about before??? Let's see. 

Dada art was being created by chance, opposition to the world, dissatisfaction with the production of art objects in the early 20th century.  It is the art of randomness, of freedom, and people associate those two things with separation when in reality the world is about links.  The Dadaists created because they were linked to the other movements, and did not necessarily want to follow the guidelines that were set.  And this variation of links that each artist obtained did not just disintegrate when the Cabaret Voltaire began and the artists associated themselves to this "anti-art".  Links are eternal, and never ending.  

The Mass-Produced

At the time where industrial objects were growing and becoming recognizable to many around the globe, the Dadaists were at their prime.  They were questioning technique, medium, support, and other parameters that set the aesthetic walls.   Museums were beginning to call themselves radical, and bragging about their collections involving what is considered the anti-art compositions.  Readymade sculpture is he example of how far the boundaries were pushed by Dada artists.  A readymade is an everyday object that is then minutely altered, in most cases, then presented as an object of art.  

Marcel Duchamp, a French/cross-over New York Dadaist, would collect these mass produced items in his studio.  It began as fun.  They were items he knew he wanted to use, but was unsure exactly how to integrate them in to his production.  In 1913, he took a kitchen bar stool he had and placed a bicycle wheel upside down on top of it.  The wheel could spin, which he sat and played with.  To Duchamp, the point was the interactive quality this piece held.  The act of spinning combined the viewer to the object.  This is the first example of readymade, but he technically did not perfect this ideal until 1915, when he had gone to New York as a tourist, and met the New York Dadaists.  He went on to produce The Fountain (1917) to submit to the exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York City.  In this case of readymade technique, Duchamp chose to present a urinal, which was flipped and signed with the signature “R.Mutt”.  This society of artists were putting on an exhibition they referred to as extremely radical, challenging artists to submit such actions that encouraged this. Despite their radical claims, the board turned away this piece, naming it rubbish in their eyes.  It was almost guaranteed admission in to the exhibition is the fee was paid and the art was presented, which Duchamp knew.  His actions were simple; to challenge what art was.  

Another example of Duchamp, coming in a different medium is L.H.O.O.Q. (1919).  Duchamp took a mass produced photograph, one that remains one of the most commonly recognized images today, the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.  Duchamp took the reproduction, added a mustache and a beard, in essence finalizing the piece, and presented it as an aesthetic object.  This is an action everyone commonly carries on today.  Mustaches get drawn on the faces of people we dislike, or just for fun in magazines and on newspapers.  They are meant to make one giggle a the "genius" they had in making that person look absolutely hideous through the simple additions to their face.  In Duchamp's case, he just was playing with the ambiguous sexuality that the Mona Lisa emitted originially.  

Other artists produced readymades after the founder had.  One of those being Man Ray, who is mostly known for his photography, but did work in many various techniques throughout his career.  One of the most known of his readymades was The Gift (1921).  Coming from a family who owned a tailoring shop in the U.S., it comes as no surprise that Man Ray used a flatiron.  His change was not as minute as the urinal being rotated and signed, for he glued 14 tacks to the bottom, and presented it as a gift to a gallery owner who held his first exhibition.  

The issue with the readymades is that most of the originals have been lost.  Some have fallen victim to the rubbish, while others were just lost in the mixup of moving around the time of the wars, and similarly from gallery to gallery (which could seem like a war-zone with all the different objects floating around to be shown).  

Ray-ography

Dadaist artists seemed to always find themselves taking an already developed technique and making it something unconventional.  When it came to photography, which was already prevalent within Paris, Dadaists took the opportunity to play around with the realistic portraits.  Already developed as an artist, Emmanuel Radnitzky, or better known as Man Ray, moved to Paris and became interwoven with the Parisian Dadaists.  Moving in to a different medium, he chose photography as his means of expression, and became most known for the compositions he created at this point.  

Man Ray - Hands

Man Ray created photography that branched out from the basic image printed on to a piece of paper.  He took the images, worked with them, and created different forms through juxtaposing them.  He played with reflections, utilized optical illusions, and expressed a unique beauty of the world around him.  Of course this world was quite limited to the likes of Kiki de Montparnasse, who was his muse and lover.  So when I go about saying the world around him, I simply mean the woman who offered him such great inspiration.  

Photogram by Man Ray 1922

Known as simply a photographer throughout America, he did not limit himself to simply the creation of photos taken by a camera, but rather disheveled the norm when it cam to production of photos.  He re-developed a new style of photography, which are called rayographs.  

Firstly, rayographs, or photograms, was a technique that Man Ray utilized after he moved from America to Paris.  The process involved placing objects on light sensitive paper, creating a negative image formed.  Artists used the photogram as a simple example of negative imagery, mostly putting one or two items on the sheet.  Man Ray created a complexity of juxtaposed images on to the paper, making the negative remnants indistinguishable from each other.  He also began to play with timing, taking some items off before others, or later adding an object to the surface.  This freedom he had created images that were unique and recognizable as his own.  

After reaching a sort of final point in his rayographs, Man Ray turned to creating short films with moving images.  He used the imagery, mostly a mixture of Kiki, other artists, and naturalistic elements, set to expressive music to show underlying interest in the concepts of moving the photo past the snapshot in time.  His dabble in this would eventually lead to the short films he shot. The film below of Kiki de Montparnasse is his evolution from the photography he began to experiment with upon his move to Paris.

  

Photography as a technique is important to the Dada movement, because not only did it lead to the artist  producing short films or founding new techniques, but it was also a platform in which the photomontages were made.  This one faction of art that was first seen by some as the joke of art became the form of expression that expelled from all different styles.