tumblr meme culture is really just a form of neo dadaism
I’d 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.
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 can’t 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 - there’s serious intellectual continuity between the absurdity of attaching a bunch of tacks to the bottom of an iron, rendering it useless, and say…. bath bomb posts. Put a fucking macbook in a bath. it’s useless now. Nobody fucking cares anymore. you want something funny? you want a punchline? gun. that’s 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 tumblr’s userbase (largely, disenfranchised millennials) feels in the modern day. I can’t really speak for anyone else, but… at least from a US perspective, there’s 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 didn’t 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 place… I can’t help but think that these factors (and more) could produce a similar mindset to the one that precipitated the first dada movement.
so of COURSE we make nonsense jokes. it’s a coping mechanism for a world which doesn’t make any sense.
related: this isn’t by tumblr but I have to plug UCLA’s atrocity of a virtual gallery once more. it really needs to be experienced, but… it’s 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 it’s 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 I’m fucking talking about. the thing that I’m talking about is:
shitposting is the deconstruction of hegemonic discourse through the use of the absurd and surrealism.
I’d 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 mankind’s 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 it’s so so funny to me that there’s all kinds of Gen X artists out there creating art about the millennials on their damn cellumar phones who think they’re the inheritors of this aesthetic but really it’s people who use the Madden gif generator to shitpost because they’re taking the technology meant for a coherent purpose for a particular narrative and they’re breaking it and turning it back on itself.
Aside from color palettes and materials used, I see literally zero difference.
This is one of the top 3 best posts I’ve ever seen on tumblr and I’ve 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. I’m seriously impressed.
Duchamp’s 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 Establishment’s rules of what art was and wasn’t, - this is exactly the same thing happening in real time.
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I haven't made a thread of random digital art for a while. I have a "new practice", where I get stuck in my own Google Photos drive... I use a term or terms for 'search', w/ something in mind... and instead I get distracted by other things. Often times it's my own digital art:
In a 'round-a-bout' way, this thread was inspired by @aiww. He posted on Insta that his sculpture "Porcelain Cube" was smashed during a showing in Bologna. The man was arrested. he is a known "art destroyer" from Czech Republic. Ai Weiwei is also famous for destroying pots.
Ai Weiwei's cube reminds me of works by the controversial Charles Krafft. Krafft made "dissasterwear" ceramics in Dutch Delft Style. Krafft [RIP] was popular w/ collectors until it was revealed that he was a White Nationalist™ and a Conspiracy Theorist™.
Can u believe it?!
It's unlikely that Ai Weiwei is unaware of Krafft, &--I used to TALK TO KRAFFT--(without realizing WHO he was), back in the day on Facebook.
Cuz he was friends w/ my friend @NRaapana, known for her expose of #COMMUNITARIANISM, & when I realize later, I was floored. So it goes.
Anyways-- Back to my own works. Search terms this time around were "monochrome pattern", (within my own google photos drive). I had searched for "black & white", a few days back, cuz somebody here on twitter made a quote tweet encouraging people to share "B&W Art". Here's a few:
One of those above is just a regular ole photograph. No filter or settings or anything. Can you believe it?! ...anyways... I often scroll scroll scroll to the very bottom of my search results so I can get a glimpse of the "oldest art I made" according to these search terms:
"Google Photos" now uses AI to generate what it believes to be 'best results' from your search terms. I love & hate it. So now it does NOT generate chronological results--so--my above adventure for oldest was thwarted (though the portrait is 2018), alas! try again for 'old ones':
2018, & a rare "irl" painting (incomplete of course) from 2015. Strange that the Google Photos app doesn't wanna search for "black and white". No results. Hmmph.
Do u think it's cuz the terms are nerfed to prevent racism & stuff? know it also goes blank for "fuck" or "jew".
I'll gather a few more before I press "Post all", and go do SOMETHING around the house...
More "monochrome pattern" results. "b&w" works too. Weird, right?
More random samples from AI generated resulst from my own extensive google photos drive of "omfg i save everything cuz i have adhd and make a shitte-tonne of digital art":
Three More Tweets, (no more text):
(#2 is a birthday gift for @AdamJoshDotCom, circa Oct 25, 2021)
