Dadaism and its Influence on Late Mid Twentieth Century - Essay Example

? Dadaism and its influence on late mid twentieth century design: Jamie Reid and Vivienne Westwood Table of Contents List of Figures 3 Introduction 4Defining Dada 5 Design and Dada 7 Jamie Reid 7 Vivienne Westwood 10 Conclusion 13 Bibliography 14 List of Figures Figure 1 Album cover: Sex Pistols, Jamie Reid, 1977 (CD and LP 2012) 8 Figure 2 Mona Lisa, Marcel Duchamps, 1977 (Bling and Cheese 2012) 9 Figure 3 Vivenne Westwood's Watteau dress, 1996 (Palmor 2008) 10 Figure 4 Viveinne Westwood in Punk T-Shirt (Holland 2011) 12 Figure 5 Vivienne Westwood (Holland 2011). 12 Introduction Dada is a concept that developed into a culture, a group of people performing their beliefs in not believing in the basic ideas of their contemporary world. This was, perhaps, the first resistance to the idea of the establishment, historic ‘hippies’ who worked their way through Paris, Berlin, and New York, defying and denying all that defined culture through normative ideas. Dada, in all its negativity, was about relationships. Through taking things that should not be related and putting them together, Dadaists creates worlds of connections, even though the manifestos written about Dada would not have made that claim. Through relating the unrelated, the Dadaist commented on the eruption of the industrial world, pre-pubescent ideas about consumerism and the material life. Design can be shown to have benefited from the innovations that occurred through the Dadaist movement. This paper will review the way in which Dada was defined and relate its evolution to the meaning that was placed in artistic works within the culture of Dada. The discussion will turn towards the work of James Reid and Vivienne Westwoods in order to reveal how Dada has been influential in design. Through focusing on these two designers, the concepts of Dada will emerge as influential to the development of their work and its importance in the evolving topics of design. Defining Dada Defining Dada often leaves the one doing the describing in a perpetual negative space. The explanation is often more focused on what Dada does not represent. Dada does not represent the common, the beliefs that had come before it about what defined art. Dada is about the avant-garde, even though it is technically a precursor to avant-garde ideas, but it is questionable that the definition of that term would suffice to describe Dada. Dada can be described for its visual impression, defining what is seen by what is perceived. An example of this is the use of words in order to create a visual impact. What the words say is not more important than the composition of the lettering, the way in which the visual impact performs. The viewer experiences the sensation of reading, but the experience is beyond just that concept. Dada took the evolution of design and printing to a place in which visual impact was used to create communication. At the time of Dada, the explanation of it was obscure; the idea of the irony in its creation meaning that it was the antithesis of all that was art. Dada was “nothing” as described by Duchamp. According to descriptions by Blythe and Powers (2006, p. 7) “Dada directed its energies toward challenging accepted notions of art and the tradition of oil painting, most noticeably by designating pre-existing mass produced objects – so called ‘Readymades’ - art and by using the playful language of puns offering humour and simultaneous meanings”. Dada was about using art against itself by creating graphically designed pieces that could be interpreted as anti-art, which in turn made them quintessentially art. The irony of Dada was always that in trying to not be what it was it was more itself. Dada, in not being art, became essentially artistic. Dada was much more than the creation of works of art. The concept of Dada was that it was a culture, defining ways of thinking through new perspectives. Dada was a challenge to the standard, a reversal of tradition in which to be expected would be a sin. Phrases such as “Cleanliness is the luxury of the poor, be dirty” and “Upside up and downside down” could be seen emerging as the Dadaists worked to spread their message (Motherwell and Arp 1989, p. 116). One of the performances, considered successful at the time, was in giving tours through church grave yards while reading random definitions from the dictionary (Motherwell and Arp 1989). The idea of creating the most unrelated ideas and placing them together to create meaning was one of the concepts that drove the idea of Dada. There are a great many different ways in which innovations in art erupted during the period that the Dadaists created. The photo montage was one of the more interesting forms of Dadaist creation. Max Ernst created montages that “rarely made overt social references. His work suggested irrational collisions of ideas or thought systems, and, to that end, he played down the physical nature of his materials” (Hopkins 2006, p. 72). The photo montage, and much of the work created during the period, embraced the idea of the chaos of modern society where a great many ideas could come together and become related through the fusion that was and is created through proximity. The message becomes guided by those aspects of the collage or work that becomes relatable. Design and Dada According to Bhaskaran (2005, p. 106) “dada did not really infiltrate the worlds of industrial design or architecture, but it did have a significant impact on graphic design, in particular, typography”. The idea of Dada influences a greater span of design work across disciplines, however, than just into graphic design for print work. The concepts of line and form as related through Dadaism has emerged in a great number of designed concepts, In addition, the elements of Dadaism, such as Montage or typography as art have been translated through a great many mediums, including fashion design. Jamie Reid The graphic art of Jamie Reid can be closely related to the ideas of anarchy and of the Situationists who had their period of prominence from the middle of the 20th century until approximately the 1970s. Like the Dadaists, this group embraced the idea of forming a counterculture which was founded on the idea that spectacle was a disguise for the degradation of capitalist existences. The ideology of Situationism was experimentation and the study of situational life in which topics such as unity urbanism became the focus. It is often considered a part of the Situationist movement that it was born from the boredom of UK students in the 1960s who were interested in adversarial confrontation of the established order of things rather than truly creating a counterculture ideology (Debord and McDonough 2004). One of the primary inventions associated with Jamie Reid was the look of the ransom note typography to express the violence and rage of his generation. On the album cover for the Sex Pistols, the words God Save the Queen and Sex Pistols were created to look like first words, then letters cut out of a magazine, similar to that of the popularized notion of the ransom note to disguise writing. As seen in Figure 1, the album cover was expressive of an angry generation, bent on holding the rest of the world hostage to that anger. It can also be interpreted as the idea of the established culture holding everyone for ransom, but in truth it is likely expressing their own intentions towards violence. Figure 1 Album cover: Sex Pistols, Jamie Reid, 1977 (CD and LP 2012) The punk movement of the 1970s provided the anarchist ideals that would translate perfectly the ideas of Dada. For the punk movement, the ideas of Dada that suggested that everything could be art were translated into the idea that everyone could create art (Marcus 1989). The profane could become commercialized so that the addition of a safety pin by Reid to the lips of the Queen was suddenly a reinvention of the defacement of the Mona Lisa done by Duchamp (Marcus 1989) (see Figure 2). This work was intended to reject the idea of cultural authority through the defacement of a culturally revered work. The work of Reid was the same kind of diminishment of the established order. The concept of Dada was not a constraining factor of punk, but could be seen as a point of origin as the loud, abrasive montages of punk rock were suddenly rife with aggressive topography that littered the world with the impression of anger and frustration. Figure 2 Mona Lisa, Marcel Duchamps, 1977 (Bling and Cheese 2012) Vivienne Westwood One of the most beautiful designs that also speak to the precepts of Dadaism as they have been translated into modern interpretations is Vivienne Westwood’s Watteau dress (see Figure 3). The beautifully tailored gown is elegant and historic as it brings to life the idea of the past, ironic in its reinterpretation, and spectacular as it is a living painting, sculpted of fabric. It is not this culmination of fashion spectacle that best describes her experiences in rock and roll which provided a canvas on which to express her anarchist and punk rock aesthetic. In her shop that she shared with Malcolm McLaren, Westwood created clothing that was typically defined by the same kind of aggressive typography and montage that Reid put into his work. McLaren, who became the manager for the Sex Pistols, inspired the kind of fashion that Westwood would develop for the shop (Colgrave and Sullivan 2005). Figure 3 Vivenne Westwood's Watteau dress, 1996 (Palmor 2008) Reid and Westwood were contemporaries who both ascribed to the ideas of the Situationists. Their expressions were designed to come into conflict with the current trends of society, to aggressively lash out against the traditional, and to be defined by the idea that in being against the traditional they were being innovative (see Figure 4). Westwood’s designs were “a progressive translation of fetish wear into street wear” according to Bracewell (2002, p. 99). Figure 4 Viveinne Westwood in Punk T-Shirt (Holland 2011) Still creating irony as she has reached her 70th birthday, Figure 5 shows Westwood once again reflecting history as she is done in a portrait that is a reflection of a major piece of art, but instead of the youthful body of the original, her older less perfected form suggests the reality over the ideal. In such concepts of representing history in its irony, she has continued to create a discourse on the ideas of anti-tradition that was influenced by the evolution of Dadaism. Figure 5 Vivienne Westwood (Holland 2011). Punk rock was the perfect forum in which to discuss Dadaist ideals. Punk rock rejected everyone who was not included in that culture. To be a part of it was to understand it, but those who were on the outside had a difficult time being a part of what was going on within the culture. As Reid and Westwood expressed their anarchist ideas through typography that was aggressive and violent, the nature of the emotions of the movement seen in terms of violent actions such as kidnapping and being held for ransom, and single words such as ‘Destroy’ accompanied by controversial images as seen in Figure 4. Conclusion The concepts of Dadaism are created with the idea that society has become a space in which objects that are unrelated become related through placing them together. In addition, the theories behind Dadaism provided for a culture in which the rejection of tradition and the ideologies of the establishment were placed into a culture in which rejection of modern society was a tenet of the ideals of that ideological structure. In looking at the work of Jamie Reid from the 1970s, the idea of rebellion emerges as the negativity of the Dadaists in their rejection becomes revived through punk rock expression. Vivienne Westwood also provided clothing through which these same sentiments could be seen, both expressing what was termed Situationism. The irony with which the works of both artists have been expressed provides context for understanding the influences of Dadaism. The Dadaist movement contained the seeds through which 1960s and 1970s rebellions could be defined. The methods of photo montage and typographical image art created a space in which modern life could be expressed through its consumerism and materialistic nature. Bibliography Bhaskaran, Lakshmi. 2005. Designs of the times: using key movements and styles for contemporary design. Mies: RotoVision. Bling and Cheese (2012). Artist Graphics: Marcel Duchamp. Bling and Cheese [Online] accessed on 9 March 2012 from http://www.blingcheese.com/i mage/c ode /49/marcel%20duchamp.htm Blythe, Sarah Ganz, and Edward D. Powers. 2006. Looking at Dada. New York, NY: Museum of Modern Art. Bracewell, Michael. 2002. When surface was depth: death by capuccino and other reflections on music and culture in the 1990's. Cambridge, Mass: Da Capo. CD and LP. (2012) Sex Pistols: God save the Queen. CD and LP.com [Online] accessed on 9 March 2012 from http://www.cdandlp.com/product/2/1 14801771/sex-pistols-uk-god-save-the-queen.html Colegrave, Stephen, and Chris Sullivan. 2005. Punk. New York, NY: Thunder's Mouth Press. Debord, Guy, and Tom McDonough. 2004. Guy Debord and the situationist international: texts and documents. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Goodrum, Alison L. 2005. The national fabric: fashion, Britishness, globalization. New York, NY: Berg. Holland, Stacey 8 April 2011. Dame Vivienne Westwood turns 70! Steel Velvet [Online] accessed on 9 March 2012 from http://steelvelvet. wordpress.com/tag/vivienne-westwood/ Hopkins, David. 2006. Dada and Surrealism: a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marcus, G. (1989). Lipstick traces: A secret history of the twentieth century. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Motherwell, Robert, and Jean Arp. 1989. The Dada painters and poets: an anthology. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Palmor, Lauren. 28 November 2008. Vivienne Westwood’s Watteau gown. The Art Object [Online] accessed 10 March 2012 from http://theartobject.b logsp ot.com/2008/11/vivienne-westwood-gown.html Read More