Dadaism, the birth of Conceptual Art

Conceptual art was started by a group of artistic rebels (and yes I use the term loosely) off the back of World War 1. Artists were discontented with the war and the violence connected to it and also with the rigidity of art at the time, whether it was visual, literature, theatre or design. Painting was no longer good enough for the visual, people were getting bored.

Square dancing, you're doing it wrong

Dada burst onto the scene with a bang. Their art mainly for shock value, their pieces and ideas influenced many movements afterwards such as surrealism and shock art. Concept artists used visuals that were not before used in art. The first piece that really announced the scene was something rarely seen before anywhere but a men’s toilet. A urinal. Hung from the ceiling. In Tate Modern. Granted, the hung piece was a reproduction (the original hung in the artist Marcel Duchamp’s studio proudly, where only a seldom few would see it. Both were signed R Mutt (the piece was submitted under the pseudo name Richard Mutt) 1917. The piece and the reproduction were to revolutionise how we see art today.

It was torture for the guys with IBS

‘The Fountain’ changed people’s perception of art but also made people question the validity of the ‘Bathroom Appliance” as a piece of art. People either argued that it was art or that it was vile and tasteless. Remember though that this was at the start of the 20^th century, where people were still very prude. Dadaism was an anti-establishment movement; they had no leader but were an unorganized group of artists free from rules, a stark contrast to wartime Europe. They were artistic anarchists.

Marcel's kids HATED peek a boo

Concept art brings the question ‘Are ideas as important as representations?’ Could the idea that the urinal portrays, the lack of rules, the need to express themselves differently, the shock, just be shown in a painting? A piece is nothing without an idea, but what if the idea WAS the piece? Instead of trying to just paint an abstract piece, concept art gets people talking. It opened the way for artists to show their pieces in any other areas. This formed the way for land art and site-specific art, where the location was part of the piece itself. This can make for a lot of wonder and amazement, like the crop circles that were formed with just two guys, yet people still think of them as UFO landing sites.

I think he's just a cover... look at his HEAD!

Maybe on a more aggressive level, graffiti is derived from conceptual art. Blek le Rat, the French ‘street artist’ is famed for his stencils of rats around France and thereafter many other European countries. The Rats portrayed freedom, (rats can do what they want and go where they want) and the towns and cities were Blek’s canvas. Without the idea of conceptualism, and indeed, Dadaism, artists such as Blek le Rat and Banksy would not be able to express their art, nor would any pieces of graffiti that have a meaning (and aren’t just a name tag) have a place in society. We have a lot to thank Dadaism for.

“Dada:

An early-20th-century international movement in art, literature, music, and film, repudiating and mocking artistic and social conventions and emphasizing the illogical and absurd.”

Postmodernism

After trawling through pages upon pages of Internets on the topic of postmodernism, I have discovered it is not limited to a particular era. Unfortunately, in my own head, and as oxford dictionary defines it, Modern is “elating to the present or recent times as opposed to the remote past” or “characterized by or using the most up-to-date techniques, ideas, or equipment”. So you can imagine my frustration in trying to get my head around the fact that modern, in art terms at least, is in the past, and post-modern is the present. Maybe it is my own problem that my mind, so engulfed with the meaning of words and the fact that these meanings are set, will not be more open-minded.

The eras so defined as “post-modern” were the sixties and seventies. Stepping away from the early sixties, where people were celebrating life and experimenting, the later era was a time that looked back at the decades before and laughed at the naivety of them. The post modern era was the conservatives time to shine, taking the culture from the sixties and slamming it together with the self-referential idea of ‘look how silly we all were’. These days, an idea like that is called ‘meta’.

Part popular culture AND part what the...

The seventies was a period of inflation, and women’s rights were taking off so the decade was quite prosperous and gave a lot of people hope and prosperity. From what I can see the era was solely in America, the post war baby boomers had settled and grown up and life in America was getting into full swing. Almost everyone had a television and more people were getting high skill jobs and attending education for longer.

Roy Lichtenstein-a staple in Pop art

Andy Worhol was the artist that defines the PoMo era. Culturally, the art from the postmodernism era was very alike the previous surreal movement and Worhol was no real exception. By taking people perceptions of everyday things and twisting them by changing the colours and view of these things, he was able to get people thinking.

The first time I saw a tin of soup after this, my mind was blown

This is my knowledge of the postmodern era, from what I can tell from this time, people were reveling in the fact that the Vietnam war was over and they were entering into a period of time where the world was richer and new inventions, such as computer games and television were becoming a staple and the art of the time was reflecting this.

Is it art if it is digital?

It has been a sad month for anyone who works with technology. Two of the greats, Dennis Richie and Steve Jobs, have died. Is it ironic, however, that one was celebrated widely and mourned worldwide and another, without whose creations Apple would not exist in its present form, fell into the black hole? Don’t get me wrong, Steve Jobs was an innovator, a thinker, a great public speaker. He changed the way we do almost everything technologically today and when I found out about his death, I worried how Apple was going to change; but Dennis Richie was something else, he co-invented Unix (an OS from which MacOSX derives.) and the programming language C++. Of course it is the celebrated rebel of the technology world that broke rules and bent our perception of technology that was celebrated and not the Harvard Graduate that Neckbeards everywhere cried over. But what is interesting is that Steve Jobs was an artist, maybe not a conventional ‘artist’ by any means and contested by a quite angry New Yorker article (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2011/10/steve-jobs-artist-or-hippie-capitalist.html) but an artist none-the-less. And from all this rises the question: If it is digital (or anyway technological) is it art?

Have you watched a film with CG in it? Listened to a CD? Sat on a sofa? Well the last one is cheating because I can’t be sure if a sofa is art or not. 

I don't know about art but it seems cosy

I’m sure a lot of people will say the director has a ‘great vision’ or a ‘great artist’ makes the music. Well, in modern times (yes, these times) these things are made on computers. When you buy a CD or MP3, the band doesn’t appear the minute you press play, so where is the confusion? 

Like so, except with Jefferson Airplane

You can’t tell me these things are not art. Cartoons and drawings that are made by machines are just as ‘arty’ as the hand drawn and painted art. Heck, even renaissance artists cheated with the Camera Obscura.

...I sincerly hope he is only drawing...

The designer sitting behind a bright monitor with a whirring and hot hard drive is just as much an artist as the painter with a canvas and watercolours. A musician can make music without actually playing an instrument by using samples!

Time has dictated this change; people that argue that digital creations are not art are too scared of change and refuse to accept that the perception of art is evolving. These people don’t realize that creativity could not survive in a stagnant state; ideas will run out, life will become bland. With the opportunities that the digital age has thrown at people it means creativity is no longer limited to the precious few. I know there are many people that would like to keep art selective, like the patroned artists from the renaissance, but the truth is innovation and creativity does not limit itself to money or to whom society dictates. The digital age is well and truly upon us, and the Internet is an audience not limited to creative quarters, sites such as DeviantArt have made the web into a relevant platform for artists everywhere.

If we could do this with a typewriter we'd have it made

So the answer is digital art is just as much art and involves as much thought and creativity than just drawing, if not more.  It is still a relatively new platform for artists but change is part of being creative, the inspirations for artists have changed, so it is imperative that the means in which art is created should change and thrive also. Oh and 42.