Dada was an art movement formed during the First World War in Zurich in negative reaction to the horrors and folly of the war. The art, poetry and performance produced by dada artists is often satirical and nonsensical in nature.

Basically, Dadaism is art that is against the idea that art needs to have deep meanings. Dada art can be made spontaneously and it very rarely has any meaning at all.

Marcel Duchamp

Alive between 1887 and 1968, Marcel Duchamp was a French-American painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp only made very few Dada artworks, because he didn’t want to make “retinal” art that was just nice to look at, he wanted to make art that would make people think, and he was deliberately not associated with Dada groups. But the reason that I’ve put him on this list is because he made one Dada artwork that some say changed the way people think about 20th century art forever. Because of the very small number of his artworks being dada, I’m only going to talk about one.

In 1917 Duchamp was working for an art gallery who were putting on an exhibition and stating that anyone could enter their art, and it would be accepted. So Duchamp wanted to test this, so he anonymously submitted an upside-down urinal with the initials R.Mutt painted on. The gallery went back on their word and denied its place in the exhibition because they thought it was too impolite. This then sparked the idea that literally anything can, and should be considered art.

This is a Dada artwork because there was no real reason for Duchamp to choose a urinal, he could have chosen a toilet or even a jar of pee itself. I guess that he was just in the mood for urinals.

Just some of the many people and movements he was inspired by were; Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Cubism.

Some of the major events around the world in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903. World War 1 between 1914 and 1918. In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead. World War 2 between 1939 and 1945.

I like his urinal, which was titled “fountain”, I like that he showed the world that you don’t need to have great drawing, painting, or even culture skills to be an artist who can produce good art.

Man Ray

Alive between 1890 and 1976, Man Ray was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of media but considered himself a painter above all.

He was very good friends with Marcel Duchamp, and they helped each other pursue their passion for art. During this period, he would make weird compositions out of anything and everything he could get his hands on, which he would then photograph, like the image below.

After accidentally discovering the photogram technique which he named after himself “rayograms”, he produced hundreds of photos, experimenting with light and shadows. During this phase of his life, he also ventured into using this technique with portraiture photography, fashion, and even advertisement.

He would put great effort into creating weird and wonderful compositions that played with the ideas of time and space.

Some of the many artists and movements that inspired them were, as I already mentioned, Marcel Duchamp, Katherine Sophie Dreier, Salvador Dali, and Surrealism.

I like his work, it is experimental and I love the fact that he purposefully set out to break as many rules of photography as possible, which he did. Because that’s how you progress a movement, you break the rules and open up a whole new area to artistically mess around in.

Max Ernst

Alive between 1891 and 1976, Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and surrealism.

After being traumatised from being in the war, Max Ernst co-created the Dada movement. After witnessing firsthand the utter stupidity of war, he found solace in Dadaism.

He loved making collages out of cut-up bits of old encyclopedias. These later inspired some of his paintings.