Compose two styles
Rather than blending two styles into a middle, this assigns them roles: one carries the structure, the other appears as an accent. Where the two fight, 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 #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615.
Where they fight
These two are already listed as related, 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
An original image that takes its structure from Dada (Style, 1916–1920s) and its accent from Neo-Dada (Style, 1953–1965). Structural cues: Rotated type; Fragments of sound; Collisions of scale; Unbalanced margins. Accent cues, 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. Composition: Keep one reading path; rotate and sever the rest. Type and lettering: Collide weights, directions and cases in one plane. Let one material quality come from the second style: Silkscreened newsprint over smeared paint, registration deliberately out, erasures left visible.. Mood: Rebellion, Play, Exhilaration, Technology. Color: build on #efe6d0, #d7362f, #161513 with a single accent drawn from #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615. Constraints: do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. Produce an original composition 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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