Dada and Surrealism Art Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Dada and Surrealism Art - Essay Example The essay "Dada and Surrealism Art" analyzes surrealism and dada art. Dadaists believed this modern world to be the cause of the war, and thus defied the practice of conformity through its anti-art. Where a canvas and paints were the usual media employed, scissors and scraps of paper were now being glued onto wood and everyday objects took on a new leash of life as the central subject of works. People were forced to look at everyday objects of simple use in a way that would transform the very basis of their existence. Art for the first time became informal, illogical and embraced the chaotic irrationality which was to become its trademark description. Fundamentally, it represented protest ‘against this world of mutual destruction’, and left a permanent mark on the world of art. Everywhere, boundaries were stretched beyond their limits and inevitably broken until recognition of the term ‘art’ as it once stood would never be thought of in the same way again. T he Dada movement paved the way for the later developing Surrealist movement; a lovechild, if you will, of the former and a way of ensuring that the boundaries could not be brought back into check by the modern traditional nationalists – however bleak this possibility might have seemed at the time. The Surrealist movement was based on the freeing of the imagination and the promotion of the ability to express and explore the self, as suggested by Freud’s subconscious mind. Dada sought to free mankind from the suffocating normalities forced upon him.