Hugo Ball "Dada Manifesto"- Quote Interpretation/ Artists, Movements and Styles in Modern Art- Francis Picabia (1879-1953) (HW2)

Part 1- Quote Interpretation

QUOTE: "How does one achieve eternal bliss? By saying dada. How does one become famous? By saying dada. With a noble gesture and delicate propriety. Till one goes crazy. Till one loses consciousness.”

-Hugo Ball "Dada Manifesto"

INTERPRETATION:

How can one have everlasting happiness and satisfaction? “By saying dada.” Hugo Ball doesn’t mean to vocalize “dada,” but rather, to think “dada.”  Dada is a meaningless word. It’s associated with movement. Dadaism was a new form of art, and people were unfamiliar with it. It questioned established principles of art through morality. Ball says to say dada, “Till one goes crazy. Till one loses consciousness.” What he means is to say it all the time, till one detaches themselves as much from THIS man-made world; till one loses connection with this world, until one becomes his/her own boss. Detaching from THIS world will make one happy because he/she will realize all of the principles, laws and morals that are making a person unhappy are meaningless. Saying “dada” has a slight rebellious undertone because it says indirectly to go against the established rules and ideologies.

When reading this quote, meditation comes to my mind. People meditate to achieve an inner sense of enlightenment. Meditation "originated" in Buddhism in which it was used to find spiritual enlightenment and attaining moksha, or the stopping of reincarnation. Today many non-Buddhists meditate to simply relax and try to focus on the smaller questions of life, and temporarily ignore all that is happening in the world around them; simply to detach from this stressful, sometimes confusing, and demanding world. There are different types of meditation. One type of meditation is thoughtless meditation. A person sits quietly in a room and thinks of literally nothing (dada). The thoughts that cloud their mind are eventually silenced. A person detaches from this world and loses connection with their conscious mind. At this point a person is in his/her own refuge. The established principles and values mean nothing there. After meditation a person feels relaxed, at peace and empowered.

We live in an uncertain and shifting world. Modern beliefs, values and ideologies are currently being challenged every day. One example is gay marriage and its controversy of redefining the word marriage. Therefor if redefined, will it be considered a “traditional” marriage? In America, the word marriage is between a man and a woman, and same-sex marriage is a new definition. The public have rebelled, protested and now the word marriage means a union between two persons; but if we were to base our “traditions” on historical facts, we would know that the church did not get involved with marriages until after the collapse of the Roman Empire. It took several hundred years after, for marriage to become a sacrament because being single was considered holier than being married. Public weddings didn't come onto the scene until the 16th century. Therefor at what point do we start saying the marriage customs of a certain time and place are the "traditional" ones? Are marriages from the year 1000 "traditional"? Or are the ones from the B.C. years?  Or are the ones from 500 A.D. or 1800 A.D. or 1920 A.D.? Or are they are all different from each other?

Part 2- Artists, Movements and Styles in Modern Art- Francis Picabia (1879-1953)

Picabia-Villica-Caja-1929

Francis Picabia was a French painter, illustrator, designer, writer and editor, who was successively involved with the art movements Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism.

Cubism(1907-1915)

Cubism was invented around 1907 in Paris by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. It was the first abstract style of modern art. Cubist paintings ignore the traditions of perspective drawing and show you many views of a subject at one time. The Cubists believed that the traditions of Western art had become exhausted and to revitalize their work, they drew on the expressive energy of art from other cultures, particularly African art.

There are two distinct phases of the Cubist style: Analytical Cubism (pre 1912) and Synthetic Cubism (post 1912). Cubism influenced many other styles of modern art including Expressionism, Futurism, Orphism, Vorticism, Suprematism, Constructivism and De Stijl. Other notable artists associated with Cubism were Juan Gris, Fernand Leger, Robert Delaunay, Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Louis Marcoussis and Marie Laurencin.

Francis Picabia was the son of a Cuban diplomat father and a French mother. After studying at the École des Arts Décoratifs (1895-–97), he painted for nearly six years in an Impressionist mode akin to that of Alfred Sisley. In 1909 he adopted a Cubist style, and, along with Marcel Duchamp, he helped found in 1911 the Section d'Or, a group of Cubist artists. Picabia went on to combine the Cubist style with its more lyrical variation known as Orphism in such paintings as "I See Again in Memory My Dear Udnie" (1913-–14) and "Edtaonisl" (1913). In these early paintings he portrayed assemblages of closely fitted, metallic-looking abstract shapes. As Picabia moved away from Cubism to Orphism, his colors and shapes became softer.

I See Again in Memory My Dear Udnie (1913-–14)

Edtaonisl , 1913. Art Institute of Chicago

In 1915 Picabia traveled to New York, where he, Duchamp, and Man Ray began to develop what became known as an American version of Dada. Here Picabia exhibited at Alfred Stieglitz's gallery, 291, and contributed to the proto-Dadaist review 291. About 1916 he gave up the Cubist style completely and began to produce the images of satiric, machine like contrivances that are his chief contribution to Dadaism. The drawing "Universal Prostitution" (1916-–19) and the painting "Amorous Procession" (1917) are typical of his Dadaist phase; their association of mechanistic forms with sexual allusions were successfully shocking satires of bourgeois values.

Universal Prostitution (1916-–19)

Amorous Procession (1917)

In 1916 Picabia returned to Europe. He settled in Barcelona, where he published the first issues of his own satiric journal 391 (named in reference to the New York review). He subsequently joined Dadaist movements in Paris and Zürich. In 1921 he renounced Dada on the grounds that it was no longer vital and had lost its capacity to shock. In 1925 he left Paris to settle in the south of France, where he experimented with painting in various styles. He returned to live in Paris in 1945, and he spent the final years of his life painting in a mostly abstract mode. Picabia was notable for his inventiveness, adaptability, absurd humor, and disconcerting changes of style.