Fountain, 1917
The Persistence of Memory, 1931World War I started in the summer of 1914 in Western Europe and eventually advanced to Eastern Europe. To this day, the Great War is still recognized as one of the most calamitous struggles in history. Despite the amount of countries and soldiers who fought in the World War, none can truly say that they enjoyed the battle; wars are not glamorous, and for the most part they are not constructive. Wars fuel oppression, indifferences, and murder. There have been wars throughout mankind’s history, and unfortunately there may be future conflicts and hardships. Despite this fact that war is inevitable and supported by some, there are those who denounce conflict to promote peace, knowledge, and creation. Often time’s passive conception entails anti-war ideals that are communicated through literature, visual arts and theatre, music, and art movements. Dada, or Dadaism, was an art revolution spawned from WWI in 1916 in opposition to the war. An early influential Dadaist known as Marcel Duchamp toyed with Cubism before finding refuge within the Dada movement. One of Duchamp’s most controversial pieces, Fountain, 1917, incorporated a ready-made object that would challenge academia for decades to come. Eight years after the introduction of Dada, Surrealism was introduced also out of spite towards the Great War. Salvador Dali, arguably the most famous Surrealist of all time, shocked patrons and the art community with hallucinational works that were meant to induce paranoia and connect viewers with their subconscious. The Persistence of Memory, 1931, was an early work of Dali’s that cast viewers into a dream-like plain and inspired people to seek imaginative expression beyond what the materialistic world had to offer. Fountain and The Persistence of Memory, at first glance, appear aesthetically dissimilar, but Duchamp and Dali’s main intentions were in fact very similar. These similarities mainly involve retrospection on the art works themselves and on the viewers’ psyche, as well as a counterbalance of the art community in the early twentieth century. Through this text these two pieces and their respective art-revolutions, which were both formed in response to WWI and materialism, will be dissected and summarized in search of further similarities and oppositions.
Dada, as a cultural movement, began in Switzerland and New York City, concurrently. Dadaism was a social protest against the Great War. These counterculturalists blamed the science of reasoning for the fighting and unrest in Europe. Dada was also a means to denounce the snobbery and subjugation of the art-institution by shocking viewers with humorous and illogical pieces of art. Dadaism incorporated found or “ready-made” objects that Dada artists claimed. Dadaists either displayed their ready-made objects after slight modifications, or without alterations. This avant-garde tactic undermined traditional art and forced viewers to think differently; either scoffing or pondering. Dadaism inspired and insulted artists and patrons for roughly seven years. At the forefront of the Dada movement was Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp already had a sufficient background with traditional painting styles and his boredom with these mediums accelerated his personal drive to emphasize idea over materials. His new artistic epiphany guided him to Dadaism. Using Dada as a means of expression, Duchamp sought to challenge viewers to see things differently, to allow patrons to walk away with their own personal experience and interpretations of art, and ultimately to award artists with crucial artistic freedom; Fountain did just that. Duchamp displayed a men’s urinal turned on it’s side with a signatory “R. Mutt 1917” as a alias, which referred to a local plumbing company that manufactured the same toilet. The alias masked Duchamp’s identity when he submitted the work to an exhibition of the SIA, the Society of Independent Artists, whom he worked for as the director of installations. Duchamp was testing his fellow comrades to see how strongly they were devoted to artistic freedom. This piece caused people to debate “what is art”. Fountain stretched the borders set by art elitists and challenged a stable logical society. The “R. Mutt 1917” scribe was also a humorous joke that correlated with the renowned comic Mutt and Jeff. This was Duchamp’s means of bringing humor and jest into the art establishment.
Duchamp’s beloved Dada movement paved the way for another avant-garde Parisian artistic revolution known as Surrealism. Like Dada, Surrealism was actualized in response to WWI, and also because Surrealists felt that industrial progression was fueling a repetitious, ambiguous lifestyle overrun by materialism and lacking imagination. Andre Breton composed his Surrealist manifesto in 1924 shortly after Dadaism had subsided. Breton’s manifesto announced his intentions of a philosophical artistic approach to conveying what was once considered a subconscious state of mind; thoughts that most would not publicly express without fear of alienation. Breton intended to evoke the subconscious mind by portraying hallucinative states of illusion. These dream-like images seemed extremely real with fixed light sources, clear perspectives, and crisp imagery. Like Dadaism, Surrealism was an attack on rational society and it challenged the art-community. Surrealists promoted self-exploration by challenging viewers with surprising juxtapositions and frozen images in order to evoke paranoia and the subconscious mind. Shortly after Breton’s manifesto, Salvador Dali had fled from art academia, given up on Cubism, experimented with Dadaism, and grew a distinguishable mustache. Dali worked diligently to formulate what he called “Paranoiac-critical method”. The Paranoiac-critical method was Dali’s brain-child of accessing the subconscious mind to promote pronounced artistic originality. Dali’s method was meant to connect what is rational with what is irrational by causing viewers to experience images and places that are unimaginable in a conscious state of mind. Dali was diving deep with in his subconscious, or a dream realm, and he was determined to make his patrons do the same. Many of his famous works included images that looked like two different things that may have resulted in two different connotations, depending on how the viewers mind operated. This went hand in hand with Paranoiac-critical method. The Persistence of Memory has one such image centered in the foreground; what appears to be a white cloth draped across the earth, but with the resemblance of a nose, tongue, and eye lashes it also looks like a face melting away in due time, as if aging. Atop the cloth-like figure is one of four clocks, three of which are melting. The closest melting watch is slithering off a normal table-like surface while the other is again draped from a hollowed tree. The last clock, which lies face down is covered in ants that busily work and cluster as most ants tend to do. In the left background there is another flat surface. These two tables develop clear perspective and establish the distance between the watches in the foreground and the cliff in the far right background. This landscape with water leading up to the cliff is lucid enough to cause viewers to second guess what it is they’re viewing, and this response is exactly what Surrealists and Dali wanted.
Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain and Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory were both executed in reaction to one of the world’s most devastating wars, The Great War, and also in response to man’s industrial progression and consequential materialism. Both artists desired reactions from their patrons and the art community by displaying what had never been done before; claiming found objects as art work and painting paranoiac subconscious thoughts that most would never recall to their friends. Duchamp’s goal was to create more freedom for artists and extend the boundaries of what was considered art. Dali took advantage of these alleviated barriers by exposing the subconscious and unrealistic to the normal, sound mind. Both artists supported new creative methods that catapulted their respective movements; ready-made with Dada and the Paranoiac-critical method with Surrealism. Dali and Duchamp’s later inspirations came to them after they experimented with Cubism. On another note, both Fountain and The Persistence of Memory are dissimilar. Fountain is a three-dimensional ceramic object covered with written text most likely in ink or paints, where as The Persistence of Memory is an oil painting on a two-dimensional canvas. Fountain lacks detail and artistic skill, like that of Dali’s painting, and there is no foreground or background, psychedelic images, or landscape. Fountain’s minimal perspective does not compare with the depth of the lucid landscape of The Persistence of Memory. Although Fountain was meant for viewers to debate what is art, The Persistence of Memory seems to hint at how precious and impermanent time and life can be, and thus has a deep peculiar implication. Lastly, Fountain can have natural shadows depending on the light source above the display where as The Persistence of Memory has a fixed light source reminiscent of Surrealist paitnings.
Many people say that positivity blooms from negativity, and in the case of art movements like Dada and Surrealism sprouting in reaction to World War I, some may agree with the aforementioned. Marcel Duchamp pushed the envelope with in an art community that he felt needed more freedom of expression by presenting his Dadaist piece Fountain in 1917. He was determined to stir artistic debate and promote further creativity in a time when most were worried about the destruction taking place in Europe. His bold accomplishments, like presenting ready-mades to art academia, inspired Salvador Dali, who after toying with Cubism and Dada found himself trapped with in his subconscious mind juxtaposing the rational with the irrational. Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, created in 1931, applies his Paranoiac-critical method in terms of making a cloth seem like human skin, or was it the other way around? The Persistence of Memory perfectly captures a subconscious dream-like realm by pairing a genuine landscape with surreal melting clocks, a misplaced hollowed tree, and random ant farm runaways. Like Duchamp, Dali was communicating the importance to live boldly and creatively by accepting what may be eerie or out of place in a perfect world; a world without war and greed.
***written by A. Burgess
