Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow Dada: Keep one reading path; rotate and sever the rest
- Type
- Set in Dada's manner (Collide weights, directions and cases in one plane), and let Neo-Dada's lettering (Mixed sizes and mixed faces from whatever was to hand, some stencilled, some torn out of existing print) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in Dada's material (Letterpress black, red, off-white; bind the accidents with repetition); bring in exactly one thing from Neo-Dada (Silkscreened newsprint over smeared paint, registration deliberately out, erasures left visible).
- Colour
- Build on #efe6d0, #d7362f, #161513 and admit one accent from #d7d5c7, #bb6308, #181a24.
Where they fight
These are already listed as related entries, so the join should come easily.
Caution
- Dada Not decorative messiness. Decide which authority or custom you are objecting to.
- Neo-Dada Pasting readymades alone never shows why they were chosen, and it becomes a shelf of knickknacks. Arranging it tidily strips the dirt and scale the work depends on, and leaves clean decoration.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from Dada (style, 1916–1920s) and their accent from Neo-Dada (style, 1953–1965). ## What to make Make the kind of thing Dada exists for: cultural events and statements that doubt common sense, or making voice, noise and collision come before meaning. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from Dada - Rotated type - Fragments of sound - Collisions of scale - Unbalanced margins Composition: Keep one reading path; rotate and sever the rest. Type and lettering: Collide weights, directions and cases in one plane. ## Accent comes from Neo-Dada, used sparingly - Ready-made objects brought onto the picture - Printed matter transferred by silkscreen - Forms halfway between painting and object - Traces of erasing, layering and soiling Let one material quality come from it: Silkscreened newsprint over smeared paint, registration deliberately out, erasures left visible. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #efe6d0, carry the structure in #d7362f and #161513, and let a single accent come from #bb6308. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: rebellion, play, exhilaration, technique. ## What goes wrong - Dada: Not decorative messiness. Decide which authority or custom you are objecting to. - Neo-Dada: Pasting readymades alone never shows why they were chosen, and it becomes a shelf of knickknacks. Arranging it tidily strips the dirt and scale the work depends on, and leaves clean decoration. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- Dada 1916–1920s / Style / Avant-garde
Deliberately dislocates meaning and order, making authority itself the material of the joke.
- Neo-Dada 1953–1965 / Style / Postwar American Art
A postwar current that answered the inwardness of Abstract Expressionism by bringing household objects, printed matter and taxidermy onto the picture, working in the gap between art and life. It inherited Dada's gestures while making the materials of consumer society into structural components. The branching point immediately before Pop art.
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