First of all, Happy New Year to you all!
New year, new you, and all that. While I'd much rather keep on at my slowly but surely pace, I have been looking into a new art area and art movement - Dada. It began with artists' block on the last week of college, when my art teacher swooped (ok, maybe not quite) to my rescue, suggesting that I look into 'cut-up' technique. This is basically where you take something existing, often text, and cut it up, then blindly pull out the pieces and let chance determine the order. It has been used by David Bowie to construct some of his songs I believe, and also by the writer and artist William Burroughs. Looking into its origins, led me to the art movement 'Dada'. And that's basically what I've spent my half term reading about. Dadaism is hard to sum up in a sentence or two, since it's such a large and varied movement. It emerged in the early 20th century, aiming to challenge normality, in society and in the world of art, by dramatically shunning rules. Sometimes, but not always, it took a political stance, especially in Berlin. Dada artists often used nonsense in their work, to both challenge and shock observers as well as to pull away from artistic and social convention. You may have heard of artist Marcel Duchamp submitting a urinal to an art gallery with the aim of questioning the idea of what art is. This is just one example of what Dada artists got up to. The movement has been incredibly influential, and some say it was the beginning of postmodernism. Many of the early surrealists emerged from Dadaism. I hope to share my research and reaction into Dada over the next few weeks. The cut-up technique has already given me some ideas, and saved me once from a pool of stagnation. I've been experimenting with different amounts of control over the process, sometimes letting chance fully dictate the outcome, other times being more selective. It is a strange and new experience, since usually I've worked to improve and further my art by increasing control of my tools and understanding and application, whereas this is the opposite. Although it is strange, it's quite freeing, letting something be reinvented through chance as I push slips of paper into a random order. I'm considering applying this to some otherwise quite personal pieces of art. Like many people, there are things I would want to say, maybe even shout, but there are barriers such as privacy and sensitivity and confidence that prevent us. I've already experimented with writing down 'things I want to say' and combining them with related lyrics for example. It feels like a more comfortable ground between not expressing anything and possibly oversharing. And it also is quite comforting to have meanings known only by me in my art, that others can think about, and react to in more ways than if the meaning was obvious. It also ends up sounding rather poetic, in a fragmented dreamy kinda way: North my direction, walk burns me burn bright ...cloudy stars, It is heart, heart my weary.' I'll share a bit more about my thoughts on Dada, meaning and emotion in my next few posts.... C-M
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Claire-M BathI'm a mostly self-taught artist, currently studying A-Level art at college. Archives
March 2018
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