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NEO-DADA Redefining Art, 1958-1962 Susan Hapgood and Jennifer Rittner An exhibition organized by The American Federation of Arts he ironic wit, unconventional methods, and provocative themes of the avant-garde artists of the late 1950s and early 1960s are examined in "Neo-Dada: Redefining Art, 1958-1962," an AFA exhibition that is currently touring the country . Focusing for the first time on the Neo-Dada phenomenon in the United States and Europe, the exhibition examines the diverse art manifestations to which the rubrics Pop Art, Nouveau R6alisme, Fluxus, and Happenings have been applied. It demonstrates how important the Dadaist influence was during this brief period, and reveals common attitudes that prevailed across a broad spectrum of art. The exhibition brings together 65 works, most created in the period between 1958 and 1962, by such artists as Arman, Jasper Johns, Allan Kaprow, Yves Klein, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Jean Tinguely. Also included is a small selection of pieces by Dada masters Marcel Duchamp and Kurt Schwitters, whose work was a crucial influence on the younger artists' own readymades, found objects, detritus , environmental, and performance pieces. The term "Neo-Dada," though coined in the late 1950s as a pejorative slap and never applied consistently, quickly became the principal term used to describe art made between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. During these years ofcreative ferment, many younger artists broke away from the then dominant conventions of painterly abstraction in search of alternate approaches to making art. Inspired by the radical methods , "anti-art" materials, and iconoclastic attitudes of the original Dada movement that flourished from 1916 until 1922, this new generation of artists challenged the rules about what art should be, both conceptually and visually . The strongest Dada impulses informing younger American and European artists of the 1950s were Duchamp's notion of the "readymade"-manufactured products designated as art objects-and Schwitters's collage technique that incorporated scraps and bits of everyday material. Although the appearance of their work differs significantly, nearly all of the artists characterized as NeoDadaists seem definitively drawn either to Schwitters's more formalist aesthetiU 63 cized style, or Duchamp's more conceptual approach, which veered toward irony and wit. More globally, the NeoDada artists' use of chance as a compositional method, their interest in performance and other ephemeral manifestations , and their challenges to the conventional exhibition, distribution, and commodification of art, reflect profound shifts effected by Dada in attitudes about making art. In this exhibition, concrete connections between the younger artists and their Dada predecessors will be evident in the ubiquitous reintroduction of the Duchampian "readymade," found objects , found images, and detritus by such artists as Arman, Johns, Rauschenberg , and Tinguely; the extension into environments begun by Schwitters's Merzbau and later explored by Kaprow, Edward Kienholz, and Oldenburg; the use of chance as a compositional tool by Cage, Robert Morris, and De Saint Phalle; and the anti-bourgeois approaches taken by George Macuinas, Daniel Spoerri, Piero Manzoni, and Yoko Ono. Also represented in the exhibition are Wallace Berman, George Brecht, John Chamberlain, Jim Dine, Fluxus, Jean Follet, Raymond Hams, George Herms, Dick Higgins, Yves Klein, Alison Knowles, Nam June Paik, Carolee Schneemann, Richard Stankiewicz , Ben Vautier, Andy Warhol, Robert Watts, and LaMonte Young. NEO-DADA Dada was founded in 1916 in Zurich by artists and writers who fled their respective homelands during the first World War. Dada art mocked traditional culture. Artists such as Duchamp, Schwitters, and Jean Arp, among others , experimented with theatre, music, art created by chance, readymades, collage , and political propaganda. Although the movement lasted only six years, its message spread throughout much of the world and continued to influence artists of later generations. In 1951, a book which chronicled the evolution of Dada, The Dada Painters and Poets (Robert Motherwell, editor) was published. Galleries and museums organized an increasing number of art exhibitions focusing on Dada, and ideas initiated by the Dada artist were passed on to young artists by Cage in a class on music composition taught at The New School. Many artists in Europe and the United States were empowered by their new-found knowledge of the art movement . By the late...

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