Assignment #6 Between World Wars

            The Dadaism art movement began in Zurich and was a direct reaction to the horrors of World War I.  At the time a  number of artists and writers  believed that traditional logic and reason lead to the war; therefore, they defied tradition.  The Dadaists gave up the conventional standards of art and created the art on their own ways. Their artworks rejected aesthetics at all and were more concerned with irrationality and chaos and also reflected the absurdity of the war and artists’ anger. Marcel Duchamp who was a French-American painter was the most radical artist in the Dada movement and the first conceptual artist since he created a new idea of art—readymade.  Duchamp’s work was filled with aggressiveness and irony. One of his famous readmades called Fountain which was simply a urinal shocked people because of its visual puns and humor.  Bicycle Wheel was Duchamp’s first readmade. The work simply consisted of a kitchen stool and the wheel of a bicycle.  The objects the artist chose were common but the combination of the two was interesting. The viewer could feel happy and somehow peaceful when he looked at this artwork. It seemed also a kind of pleasure to see the wheel turning. It was apparent that Duchamp did not focus on technique and aesthetic appeal completely but he was more like to show people the conceptual value of art.

 

            Jacob Lawrence was born in 1917 in New Jersey and he was one of the best painters of 20^th century.  He was labeled as a storyteller because of his famous series of narrative paintings. Migration series, included sixty panels and depicted the migration of African Americans from the south to the north during and after the first World War. Lawrence showed the viewer the stories of people seeking jobs, new lives after the war in Europe. Each work combined sociology and history, and showed a clear theme such as education, jobs, environment, buildings and human activity and so on.  In addition, the artist used bold colors, simplified figures, flat space, lots of shapes and representational compositions in his series.  From the paintings, we can see that Lawrence expressed his strong emotions and concern about the world during the war.  He was influenced by African American history and the Harlem Renaissance.  Jacob Lawrence had great impact at the period since he told the stories of hopes and struggles of African Americans in history through his artworks. What his work showed was not only the portrait of the people he knew included his family, but it also was the portrait of himself.