Research based on Critical Play

After reading "Critical Play", I did ten minutes of research on Dada art. I remembered enjoying learning about it in a High School Art History class, and seeing the name again in the reading piqued my interest. I enjoyed reading about how the artistic movement occured as a result to World War I, and the nationalistic tendencies that led to the war. I also learned how Dada artists opposed all norms, including Dadaism itself, and many Dada artists proclaimed "Dada is anti-Dadaism". Dadaism was the rejection of artistic and cultural authority, and consisted mainly of a group of artists asking "what is art?". My favorite Dada artist is Marcel Duchamp, who is famous for many pieces, including "fountain", a sculpture which he created by turning a urinal on its side. Duchamp rejected all painting because he believed it to be made for the eye, rather than the mind. He showed this rejection in his general medium use of sculpture, but also in a piece he made, in which he drew a moustache on a print of Leonardo da'Vinci's "Mona Lisa". He named this piece "L.H.O.O.Q", which, in French, means something along the lines of "she has a hot @$$". This defacement of such a famous artwork shows the "in your face" attitude of the Dada movement.