of found and readymade materials in Dada and Surrealist collages,
montages, and objects break down the borders between art and
life. Fragments of the everyday world placed in unexpected
juxtapositions shock, seduce, and disorient the viewer. The
relocation releases their poetic potential, creating a dream
object “drawn from the strange depths of the unconscious
the rapid technological development of radio, cinema, manufacturing,
and the illustrated press. The Dadaist were an international
group, and included Kurt Schwitters, Hannah Höch, Max
Ernst, Marcel Janco, Man Ray, and Marcel Duchamp, some of
whom continued to be active in the Surrealist movement. Their
strategies involved purchasing, editing, and arranging objects,
texts, and mechanically produced images. Chance, humor, and
punning were among their major weapons.
challenged handmade artifacts and the notion of self-expression.
Exhibiting mundane items – a comb, bottlerack, or coat
hanger – with almost no intervention, Dada artists questioned
the transformation of an object when placed in a museum or
gallery. The idea behind the artwork now constituted the real
act of creation, anticipating late twentieth-century conceptual
art. The Dadaists deliberately minimized the value of the
original work of art and the artist’s effort and skill.
radical operations began before the war and independently
of Dada. André Breton described his readymades as precursors
of the Surrealist object. These objects were perceived as
visual equivalents of the powerful poetic metaphors used in
Surrealist core texts: “beautiful as the chance encounter
on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella.”
and objects inspired later artists, including Louise Nevelson,
Joseph Cornell, and Christo, and have become mainstream activities
in contemporary art, feeding into installation and site-specific
works as well as commercial media.