tumblr meme culture is really just a form of neo dadaism
I’d like to clarify:
dada was a largely european art movement that took place after wwi. this time and place is not a coincidence. let me explain.
dada art made no sense. the artists who made dada lived in a world in which nothing made sense – in which conventional logic led to the senselessness of a world war. so, making art that made no sense, making – well, you can’t really call it art, so making ANTI-art that rejected the conventions that brought about that atrocity in the first place – it made total sense. (if that makes any sense.)
so the artists did weird things. new things! putting things that were already made together and calling it sculpture, cutting up bits of pictures and putting them together and calling that something to frame – this site has some nice examples.
but from my perspective – there’s serious intellectual continuity between the absurdity of attaching a bunch of tacks to the bottom of an iron, rendering it useless, and say…. bath bomb posts. Put a fucking macbook in a bath. it’s useless now. Nobody fucking cares anymore. you want something funny? you want a punchline? gun. that’s your punchline. Take it. I am laughing
in a way it could be a method of venting some of the frustration and hopelessness and dissatisfaction that tumblr’s userbase (largely, disenfranchised millennials) feels in the modern day. I can’t really speak for anyone else, but… at least from a US perspective, there’s plenty to be disillusioned about. growing up in a constant state of questionably justified war, income inequality, an economic recession caused by the actions of a handful of wealthy fucks who didn’t even get properly punished, growing awareness of police brutality, being called lazy and self-absorbed by the generations that gave us these problems in the first place… I can’t help but think that these factors (and more) could produce a similar mindset to the one that precipitated the first dada movement.
so of COURSE we make nonsense jokes. it’s a coping mechanism for a world which doesn’t make any sense.
related: this isn’t by tumblr but I have to plug UCLA’s atrocity of a virtual gallery once more. it really needs to be experienced, but… it’s definitely also millennial neo dada. from the presentation (like an unplayable video game) to the content (THE DOGS HAVE ARRIVED), it is exactly what I am talking about. it is a fucking shitpost. and it’s high art, too! I love this
tl;dr: my generation is fed up with this bullshit, and the best way that we can express that is by shitposting. alternatively, dada was an early precursor to modern shitposting and we should all thank duchamp for signing a fucking urinal
a dear friend has given a perfect update to some of my phrasing, courtesy of their word replace extension:
you see this? this is exactly what I’m fucking talking about. the thing that I’m talking about is:
shitposting is the deconstruction of hegemonic discourse through the use of the absurd and surrealism.
I’d also say that while Dadaism was obsessed with the technological aspects of Modernity, of newspapers, of industrial mechanics and factory made clocks, neo-dadaism (of which shitposting but also the increasingly broad reach of the New Aesthetic and net aesthetics) is obsessed with the technological aspects of our time, or at the beginning of our time.
As just a comparison, the Clock in Absurdist and Dadaist art is both a symbol of the uplifting beginning of industrial relations (as one of the first complicated machines made by manufacturers, as the symbol of mankind’s ability to triumph and analyze nature and better ourselves) and as the deified symbol of horrific modernity (of demarcated time, labor hours, the oppression of the working class via managerial time), Neo-Dadaism/Absurdism has a similar relationship with early computers, which both symbolizes the utopian attitudes which we entered the digital age with, and the horrifying period we live in now, where the Digital is ever present and semi-deified.
My favorite dada satire is probably from Georges Grosz who takes the kind of robotic modernist tube people of folks like Leger:
and turns them into these mindlessly patriotic broken automatons chanting rote phrases:
And it’s so so funny to me that there’s all kinds of Gen X artists out there creating art about the millennials on their damn cellumar phones who think they’re the inheritors of this aesthetic but really it’s people who use the Madden gif generator to shitpost because they’re taking the technology meant for a coherent purpose for a particular narrative and they’re breaking it and turning it back on itself.
Aside from color palettes and materials used, I see literally zero difference.
This is one of the top 3 best posts I’ve ever seen on tumblr and I’ve been here for years.
Love
My grandmother took several classes on Dadaism, and I attended them with her growing up. Then I took plenty of art history when I got my BFA in Illustration.
This post is 100% legit in their observations. I’m seriously impressed.
Duchamp’s Urinal was one of the most famous, well known Dada pieces ever made, and he made it purely to prove that literally anything can be art. It was all about ignoring the Establishment’s rules of what art was and wasn’t, – this is exactly the same thing happening in real time.
16th century #cat running about with some guy’s penis
And there is a bargain going on
well you know the old saying:
“when a cat steals your penis you’re wise to have a fish at hand”
I have never heard this saying.
The text at the bottom says “Flaisch macht flaisch” I’m going to guess “flaisch” is an old way of saying “fleisch” which is meat (flesh). I have no idea what “flesh macht flesh” is supposed to mean.
afaik it means literally “meat makes meat” but in this context implies a trade of meat for meat. 😉
the person is trying to trade the cat a fish to get the penis back.
RIBALDRY
I am going to ask a silly question. How did he lose his penis to a cat?
**sighhh** it might help ppl to see the full illustration. this is why i hate when art history blogs don’t link back.
She is bribing the cat with a fish to get the penis in exchange. The Rijksmuseum text reads (loosely): “Nun runs with fish in hand chasing a cat, she wants to exchange the fish with a penis that has the cat in its mouth. A jester is watching through a window frame.”
I hope this helps people understand the situation being depicted.
I love my major…
Is this that Neko Atsume game I keep hearing about
MONK #1: do birds have meetings MONK #2: absolutely they have a Meeting Hat and everything MONK #1: what do they have meetings about MONK #2: mostly who gets to wear the meeting hat
MONK #1: do human women sleep in beds or– MONK #2: no that’s dogs you’re thinking of MONK #1: right right
MONK #1: what part of the knight do fish go on MONK #2: the head MONK #1: thanks MONK #2: oh absolutely no problem at all MONK #1: both lying flatwise across the head, or…? MONK #2: no one on each side like ears MONK #1: ok great
MONK #1: so when a dog and a bird make out MONK #2: right MONK #1: it’s usually the bird that’s on top right? MONK #2: yeah usually MONK #1: great
MONK #1: hey is it owls or people that live in caves and build fires? MONK #2: owls
MONK #1: hey roughly what size are sparrows MONK #2: mm it kind of depends MONK #1: like AS big as a tree or not quite as big as a tree? MONK #2: oh pretty much the same size as a tree
MONK #1: can cows sail boats? MONK #2: hahaha no common misconception they have to put wheels on the boat and roll it over land
MONK #1: what do birds eat MONK #2: other birds mostly MONK #1: like different kinds of birds, or something else MONK #2: no birds only eat exactly the same kind of birds that they are
MONK #1: what kind of bird tucks people into bed at night usually I mean MONK #2: any bird any kind of walking bird MONK #1: and when it tucks you in, people usually look… MONK #2: incredibly worried it’s incredibly worrying when the bedbird tucks you in
MONK #1: ugh sorry to bother you again MONK #2: no no its fine this is what i’m here for what is it MONK #1: what part of a goat is a snail again like the front end or the back end MONK #2: what part do you feel like should be the snail part MONK #1: the back part? MONK #2: you shouldnt doubt yourself you know more about goats than you give yourself credit for
MONK #1: what usually rides horses like people or– MONK #2: fire
Sometimes an artist just finds a niche and runs with it.
Take Eduard von Grützner, for example. German painter back in the early 1900s. He tried a whole bunch of stuff over the course of his career, but eventually he settled into doing paintings of fat, sassy monks drinking booze.
Very unfair. The elephant is tiny and looking in completely the wrong direction. This dragon should feel bad about its choices.
Disqualified for illegal tail spike.
The unfairness here is not that it’s 2 against 1, it’s that the elephants are camping out in a safe zone because they know dragons can’t touch water. Not technically against the rules, but not very sportsmanlike.
These dragons have gone for the ambush predator approach and failed miserably, especially the first one. Look at their feet dangling. Not unfair, but not effective either.
Kimchi and Justice 