Neo-Dada

ネオ・ダダ / 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.

Neo-Dada — AI-generated interpretation 1 — AI-generated interpretation, not a reference work

Neo-Dada — Photo by Jac. de Nijs, Robert Rauschenberg with his work (solo exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum), 1968 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — Photo by Jac. de Nijs, Robert Rauschenberg with his work (solo exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum), 1968 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 · CC0

Neo-Dada — Ay-O, Tactile Box and Finger Box, exhibited at the Getty Center — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0 · © Marshall Astor — Ay-O, Tactile Box and Finger Box, exhibited at the Getty Center — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0 · CC BY-SA 2.0 · © Marshall Astor

At a glance

Visual cues

Ready-made objects brought onto the picture
Printed matter transferred by silkscreen
Forms halfway between painting and object
Traces of erasing, layering and soiling

Best used for

Record sleeves, zines and event graphics that need to look assembled out of the world rather than designed from nothing
Campaigns built from found print, where the receipts, newsprint and packaging keep their own history as part of the message

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Dictionary entry

Type: Mixed sizes and mixed faces from whatever was to hand, some stencilled, some torn out of existing print.
Composition: No grid: a horizontal collage in which one three-dimensional object breaks the picture plane and pulls the eye off axis.
Material: Silkscreened newsprint over smeared paint, registration deliberately out, erasures left visible.
Caution: 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.
Further study: The definition of the Combine painting / Japan's Neo-Dadaism Organizers / Its proximity to Fluxus

Related entries

Dada (ダダ)Shared effects: Rebellion / Play.Compare Neo-Dada and Dada
Pop Art (ポップアート)Shared effects: Play.Compare Neo-Dada and Pop Art

Often confused with

Pop Art (ポップアート)compare

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