Readymade Art and Dada: Marcel Duchamp and Hugo Ball

Fountain by Marcel Duchamp (French); 1917; assisted readymade.
Location: London, England; Tate Modern.
Image via Angel Alcalá Brand.

        In the years leading up to World War I (1914-1918), reality was topsy-turvey as Freudian and Marxist thought gained footing, Schoenberg produced atonal “music,” Mallarmé redefine “poem,” Picasso shed human anatomy in Cubist light and Anarchists and Nihilists were making their way into the political scene. “Art” was being attacked from new angles, some absurd, to bring the meaningless of certain aspects of daily life into view and one artist doing so was Marcel Duchamp.

        Duchamp began an artistic revolution, creating readymade art from found objects (also referred to as found object art or objet trouvé).  Duchamp created a piece of ready-made art for an exhibition in 1917 entitled Fountain, which was a urinal he purchased and placed on it's back. He signed “R. Mutt 1917,” but the piece was rejected by the exhibit; Duchamp waged a public protest.

L.H.O.O.Q. by Marcel Duchamp (French); 1919; assisted readymade.
Location: Paris, France; Musée National d'Art Moderne.
Image via Scott Zagar.

        Duchamp rejected painting, saying paintings were merely aesthetic, that didn't stimulate the mind. Duchamp wanted to question what the notion of art was and rejected all standards set up before him.  One example is L.O.O.H.Q., created in 1919, for which Duchamp took a postcard of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. He simply added a mustache and its namesake letters at the bottom.  When the letters are pronounced quickly in French, it sounds like “elle a chaud au cul,” which means “she has a hot ass;” in English,  the letters sound like the word "look." By doing this, Duchamp is expelling the importance of the work to art history, as well as the formalities of the art world in general, and therefore promoting the ideas behind Dadaism—the absurd and meaningless.

        Hugo Ball was another kind of artist in the Dada movement. An author and poet, Ball felt that because paintings were phasing out human forms it was natural that poetry should reject the use of language.

Hugo Ball reciting the sound poem Karawane at

Café Voltaire in Zürich, Switzerland (1916).

Image via Study Blue.

        In 1916, Ball recited his sound poem Karawane on the stage at Café Voltaire in Zürich, Switzerland, where Dada began. Intended to be nonsensical, it reflected the senselessness of the war while politicians felt the war to be a worthy cause. Ball felt that the war didn't reflect Europe's culture, intellect or enlightenment and was, itself, absurd.

       The Dada movement, spread from Zürich to Berlin, New York, Tokyo and elsewhere. The Dada movement was the starting off point for other movements to follow, like surrealism abstract expressionism, performance art, conceptual art, and pop art. As important as Dada was for opening the door to these movements, it died out within a decade.