Stripping Design

“DaDa is beautiful like the night, who cradles the young day in her arms.” - Hans Arp

DaDa was an artistic and cultural movement during the early 19oo’s (with its peak around 1916-1920) and like many others was a reaction to the times. The Great War. World War One. The First World War. The War to End All Wars (total bullshit, this must have been used for  propaganda! argh!!).

DaDa originated in Zürich, Switzerland spreading to France, Germany, and America (and then some). It’s form was borrowed from Cubist and consisted of photomontage, collage, and assemblages (but keep in mind that there was no set form). The most widely accepted account on where the name came from was a café in Zürich where a paper knife was stabbed into a French-Germany dictionary pointing to the word dada, which is a child’s word for horse. They blieved it was most appropriate for their anti-aesthetic creations and protest activities in response to their disgust for bourgeois values and WWI.

All realms of art were involved in DaDaism such as visual arts, literature, graphic design, and theatre. The anti-art movement was meant to offend and ignore traditional aesthetics. It was to stand for everything art didn’t stand for, which I believe was the bourgeois view of art. During those times it was better to be schooled and they wanted things to look and feel a certain way (they were the main buyers after all). Dadaist didn’t intend for nor wanted it to become an “ism” (art movement). 

Unfortunately, in 1922 DaDaism started to die off when the artist discovered surrealism. Some theorist say Dadaism was the beginnings of postmodern art. By WWII, Dadaist had fled to the United States or killed by Hitler for degenerative art. 

We should be thanking the DaDa artist because they helped build on to the foundation to the idea of anti-art, or in other words, early cultural jamming!! To disrupt the norms of society is something all artist should be working towards! (or at least try once…) If not for the DaDaist, would we all be painting naked women?

Sources:

http://www.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/pm/dada-januszczak.htm

http://members.peak.org/~dadaist/English/Graphics/index.html

http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/d/dada.html

and of course http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dada

http://gdpsu.typepad.com/files/harrell-fletcher—loving-laura-more.pdf

After sitting in class on the first day, Lis briefly showed us the website Learning to Love You More by Harrell Fletcher. She showed us many of the creative assignments and the one that stuck out to me was Assignment #22 recreating a scene from Laura Lark’s short story. Perhaps it was the oddly positioned people in the posted pictures that caught my initial interest but I wanted to know more about Laura. Why would someone offer others to recreate a scene in her life? It had to be juicy, I thought to myself.

Luckily one of the articles we had a choice to read was titled Loving Laura More by Andrea Grover a friend of Laura Lark. It was very well written and helped show how Harrell Fletchers simple website sparked an interest in so many people. In what seemed a miniscule method, grew so large as to having a Laura Lark screening session on Valentines Day. The article was so intriguing I went back to the Learning to Love You More website (learningtoloveyoumore.com) and decided to look up Assignment #14 : Write Your Life Story in Less Than a Day. I anxiously skimmed through the names knowing that Laura Lark would be near the bottom of the list and I read on.

Not too long after that, I decided to google Laura Lark. And of course her website comes up feauturing beautiful images that she’s created (http://www.lauralark.com/html/work.html). They really give off strong emotions. Please click them to enlarge or visit Laura Lark’s website.