Inspiration // Dadism

Dadaism was a movement that involved art and literature and concerned itself with anti-war politics via methods of 'anti-art', the antithesis of art. It ignored aesthetics and intended to offend. Dadaism blamed the reason and logic of bourgeois capitalist society that had led to war. As a result, their work often expressed the idea of rejection of logic and embrace chaos and irrationality.

Dada often used public gathering, demonstrations and publishing art/literary journals with passionate coverage of art, politics and culture. Dadism later influenced the avant-garde, surrealism and pop art.

Marcel Duchamp, 1917, Fountain. Ceramic, glazed ceramic,

61 cm x 36 cm x 48 cm,

Tate Modern

"Dada is the groundwork to abstract art and sound poetry, a starting point for performance art, a prelude to postmodernism, an influence on pop art, a celebration of antiart to be later embraced for anarcho-political uses in the 1960s and the movement that lay the foundation for Surrealism"

(Marc Lowenthal, translator's introduction to Francis Picabia's I Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose, And Provocation)

Marcel Duchamp, 1919, Mona Lisa parody "LHOOQ". Post card reproduction with added moustache, goatee and title in pencil, 19.7 x 12.4 cm

So how does this fit within our ideas for our zine? Zine's ignore the aesthetics and traditions of normal publishing and magazines; they are low cost, self distributed, no capitalist element etc. Therefore, it could be argued that Zines are almost a Dadaist version of magazines. However, Dadaism comes into our zines as it is seen as a movement that influenced Surrealism, something I am exploring for the design of my pages for the zine and perhaps other pages too.

 Richter, Hans (1965), Dada: Art and Anti-art, Oxford Univ Press
  Marc Lowenthal, translator's introduction to Francis Picabia's I Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose, And Provocation