tumblr meme culture is really just a form of neo dadaism
Iād like to clarify:
dada was a largely european art movement that took place after wwi. this time and place is not a coincidence. let me explain.Ā
dada art made no sense. the artists who made dada lived in a world in which nothing made sense - in which conventional logic led to the senselessness of a world war. so, making art that made no sense, making - well, you canāt really call it art, so making ANTI-art that rejected the conventions that brought about that atrocity in the first place - it made total sense. (if that makes any sense.)
so the artists did weird things. new things! putting things that were already made together and calling it sculpture, cutting up bits of pictures and putting them together and calling that something to frame - this site has some nice examples.
but from my perspective - thereās serious intellectual continuity between the absurdity of attaching a bunch of tacks to the bottom of an iron, rendering it useless, and sayā¦. bath bomb posts. Put a fucking macbook in a bath. itās useless now. Nobody fucking cares anymore. you want something funny? you want a punchline? gun. thatās your punchline. Take it. I am laughing
in a way it could be a method of venting some of the frustration and hopelessness and dissatisfaction that tumblrās userbase (largely, disenfranchised millennials) feels in the modern day. I canāt really speak for anyone else, butā¦ at least from a US perspective, thereās plenty to be disillusioned about. growing up in a constant state of questionably justified war, income inequality, an economic recession caused by the actions of a handful of wealthy fucks who didnāt even get properly punished, growing awareness of police brutality, being called lazy and self-absorbed by the generations that gave us these problems in the first placeā¦ I canāt help but think that these factors (and more) could produce a similar mindset to the one that precipitated the first dada movement.Ā
so of COURSE we make nonsense jokes. itās a coping mechanism for a world which doesnāt make any sense.
related: this isnāt by tumblr but I have to plug UCLAās atrocity of a virtual galleryĀ once more. it really needs to be experienced, butā¦ itās definitely also millennial neo dada. from the presentation (like an unplayable video game) to the content (THE DOGS HAVE ARRIVED), it is exactly what I am talking about. it is a fucking shitpost. and itās high art, too! I love this
tl;dr: my generation is fed up with this bullshit, and the best way that we can express that is by shitposting. alternatively, dada was an early precursor to modern shitposting and we should all thank duchamp for signing a fucking urinal
a dear friend has given a perfect update to some of my phrasing, courtesy of their word replace extension:
you see this? this is exactly what Iām fucking talking about. the thing that Iām talking about is:
shitposting is the deconstruction of hegemonic discourse through the use of the absurd and surrealism.
Iād also say that while Dadaism was obsessed with the technological aspects of Modernity, of newspapers, of industrial mechanics and factory made clocks, neo-dadaism (of which shitposting but also the increasingly broad reach of the New Aesthetic and net aesthetics) is obsessed with the technological aspects of our time, or at the beginning of our time.
As just a comparison, the Clock in Absurdist and Dadaist art is both a symbol of the uplifting beginning of industrial relations (as one of the first complicated machines made by manufacturers, as the symbol of mankindās ability to triumph and analyze nature and better ourselves) and as the deified symbol of horrific modernity (of demarcated time, labor hours, the oppression of the working class via managerial time), Neo-Dadaism/Absurdism has a similar relationship with early computers, which both symbolizes the utopian attitudes which we entered the digital age with, and the horrifying period we live in now, where the Digital is ever present and semi-deified.
My favorite dada satire is probably from Georges Grosz who takes the kind of robotic modernist tube people of folks like Leger:
and turns them into these mindlessly patriotic broken automatons chanting rote phrases:
And itās so so funny to me that thereās all kinds of Gen X artists out there creating art about the millennials on their damn cellumar phones who think theyāre the inheritors of this aesthetic but really itās people who use the Madden gif generator to shitpost because theyāre taking the technology meant for a coherent purpose for a particular narrative and theyāre breaking it and turning it back on itself.
I think you might be onto somethingā¦
x
Aside from color palettes and materials used, I see literally zero difference.
This is one of the top 3 best posts Iāve ever seen on tumblr and Iāve been here for years.
Love
My grandmother took several classes on Dadaism, and I attended them with her growing up. Then I took plenty of art history when I got my BFA in Illustration.
This post is 100% legit in their observations. Iām seriously impressed.
Duchampās Urinal was one of the most famous, well known Dada pieces ever made, and he made it purely to prove that literally anything can be art. It was all about ignoring the Establishmentās rules of what art was and wasnāt, - this is exactly the same thing happening in real time.
