Neo-Dada

Neo-Dada was an art movement that included audio, visual and literary forms. It shared methods and goals with the earlier Dada movement, aiming to connect art more closely with everyday life. This style combined fun, iconoclasm, and appropriation in its works.

In the United States, the term Neo-Dada became well-known through Barbara Rose in the 1960s. It mainly described artworks from that time and the decade before. The movement also had an international reach, particularly in Japan and Europe, and helped start other art forms like Fluxus, Pop Art, and Nouveau réalisme.

Artists working in Neo-Dada often used modern materials and popular images, creating absurdist contrasts. They reacted against the strong personal feelings found in Abstract Expressionism. Inspired by Marcel Duchamp and Kurt Schwitters, they rejected traditional ideas about what makes something beautiful or aesthetics.

Trends

Interest in the original Dada art style grew after books like Robert Motherwell’s The Dada Painters and Poets (1951) were published. Some of the original Dada artists did not like the term Neo-Dada, feeling that it copied their ideas without adding anything new.

Artists like Piero Manzoni made unusual artworks, such as signing a hard-boiled egg with his thumbprint. Others used everyday objects in new ways. Richard Stankiewicz made sculptures from scrap materials, while Jean Tinguely created machines that fell apart on purpose. Robert Rauschenberg made “combines,” such as a painted quilt mounted on a wall, and Arman displayed collections of everyday items like dice and bottle tops. Daniel Spoerri glued used meals to tables and hung them on walls.

Poems

In the Netherlands, poets connected to the magazine Barbarber used everyday items like newspaper ads and typewriter test sheets to find poetic meaning. Writers in Belgium, such as C.B. Vaandrager, Hans Verhagen, and Armando, filled another magazine with everyday conversations and word experiments. They believed that a poet’s job was to point out interesting pieces of normal life, rather than creating new stories.

Artists in the Dutch Nul group, like Jan Schoonhoven, aimed for a style without personal feelings. They chose and showed parts of the world in a simple way, focusing on reality instead of their own ideas. This style shared some ideas with Pop Art and rejected strong personal expression. Concrete Poetry and text mixing also drew from earlier artists like Raoul Hausmann and H.N. Werkman.

Main article: Dutch Nul group
Main articles: Concrete Poetry, Wiener Gruppe

Artists linked with the term

Many artists were connected with the Neo-Dada movement. Some of them include Genpei Akasegawa, Arman, Joseph Beuys, Jaap Blonk, Lee Bontecou, George Brecht, John Cage, César, John Chamberlain, Christo, Merce Cunningham, Jim Dine, Jacques Halbert, Dick Higgins, Kommissar Hjuler, Jasper Johns, Allan Kaprow, Yves Klein, Alison Knowles, George Maciunas, Piero Manzoni, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Neo-Dada Organizers, Robin Page, Nam June Paik, Robert Rauschenberg, Niki de Saint Phalle, Ushio Shinohara, Daniel Spoerri, Richard Stankiewicz, Jean Tinguely, Jacques Villeglé, Wolf Vostell, and Masunobu Yoshimura. These artists used playful and surprising ways to bring art closer to everyday life.