Dada a Movement of Artists Against Art

Dada had far-reaching effects on the art of the 20th century. Its nihilistic, anti-nationalistic analyses of society and its uncontrolled attacks on all formal artistic conventions found no direct successors, but its preoccupation with the bizarre, the irrational, and the fantastic had born the Surrealist movement. Dada artist’s reliance on accident and chance were later employed by the Surrealists and Abstract Expressionists. “It belongs within the framework of the great movements to which it contributed reaction, expressionism, cubism and futurism and the movement which followed it, and to which it passed on powerful impulses in its turn, Surrealism.” . It was also said surrealism was born out of a desire for positive action to start to build again from the ruins of dada” For many of the artists such as Picabia and Ernst, Surrealism was the new way forward but with keeping a lot of their Dada ideals.
Conceptual art is also rooted in Dada, for it was Duchamp who first asserted that the intellectual expression of the artist was of greater significance than the object created. This was the beginning to what we learn today in the idea of conceptual art. “The spirit of contradiction disposed of the outworn conception of art, and put the artist in the paradoxical position of having to insist that “art is useless and impossible to justify” ….But this very paradox illustrates the importance they attached to ambivalence and unlimited artistic freedom- the freedom which it was historically inevitable that someone one day assert.” . This freedom had created a breakthrough into conceptual thinking; it led onto contemporary artists today exhibiting work on further issues with culture and society, making people more aware of issues they never really addressed before, with also some of the artists continuing on using the shock value to make a statement in their work.
Also following on from dada in the 1960’s with post modernism there was pop art and neo-Dadaism. Abstract

Bibliography: Books 1. Harrison, Charles and Wood, Paul, Art in Theory 1900-2000, Blackwell publishing ltd 2005 2. Janco, Marcel, "Dada at Two Speeds," trans. in Lucy R. Lippard, Dadas on Art , Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1971 3. Kerrigan, Micheal, The World’s Greatest Art - Modern art ,flame tree publishing,2005 4. McEvilly, Thomas in Richard Roth, Jean Dubuffet, Susan King, Beauty Is Nowhere: Ethical Issues in Art and Design, Routledge, 1998. 5. Richter, Hans, Dada: Art and Anti-art, Thames and Hudson, May 17th 1997 6. Schneckenburger, Ruhrberg, Fricke, Honnef, Art of the 20th Century, Taschen 1998 7. Strangos, Nikos, “Concepts of Modern Art”, Thames and Hudson, London 1994