Task 2 – Dada and Sophie Taeuber-Arp Research

Dada

Dada or dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde based in the early 20th century. Having and early center in Zürich, in Switzerland at the Cabaret Voltaire (circa 1916), New York Dada began circa 1915 and after 1920 Dada grew in popularity in Paris. Dadaism was developed in response to World War I, The Dada movement consisted of artists that rejected the logic, reason and aestheticism behind the modern capitalist society, they instead expressed nonsense, irrationality and anti-bourgeois protest in their works of art. The art movement wasn't just focused on one kind of media it spanned over from visual, literary, and sound media, including collage, sound poetry, cut-up writing, and sculpture. Dadaist artists expressed their discontent with violence, war, and nationalism, and maintained political affinities with the radical left. 

"There is no consensus on the origin of the movement's name; a common story is that the Austrian artist Richard Huelsenbeck plunged a knife at random into a dictionary, where it landed on "dada", a colloquial French term for a hobby horse. Others note that it suggests the first words of a child, evoking a childishness and absurdity that appealed to the group. Still others speculate that the word might have been chosen to evoke a similar meaning (or no meaning at all) in any language, reflecting the movement's internationalism."  

Sophie Taeuber-Arp

Sophie Henriette Gertrude Taeuber-Arp was born on the 19th of January 1889. She was a Swiss artist, painter, sculptor,textile-designer, furniture and interior designer, architect and dancer. She is considered to be one of the most important artists of concrete art and geometric abstraction of the 20th century. 

"Born in Davos, Switzerland, Sophie Henriette Gertrude Taeuber was the fifth child of Prussian pharmacist Emil Taeuber and Swiss Sophie Taeuber-Krüsi, from Gais in Appenzell Inner Rhodes, Switzerland. Her parents operated a pharmacy in Davos until her father died of tuberculosis when she was two years old, after which the family moved to Trogen, where her mother opened a pension. She studied textile design at the trade school (Gewerbeschule, today School of Applied Arts) in St. Gallen (1906–1910). She then moved on to the workshop of Wilhelm von Debschitz at his school in Munich, where she studied in 1911 and again in 1913; in between, she studied for a year at the School of Arts and Crafts (Kunstgewerbeschule) in Hamburg. She joined the Schweizerischer Werkbund in 1915. In the same year, she attended the Laban School of Dance in Zurich, and in the summer she joined the artist colony of Monte Verita in Ascona; in 1917, she danced with Suzanne Perrottet, Mary Wigman and others at the Sun Festival organised by Laban in Ascona."

In the year 1915, she met the Dada artist Jean "Hans" Arp at an exhibition at the tanner gallery which then became her spouse seven years later when they married in 1922, she then changed her name to what she is known to this day which is Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Jean "Hans" Arp moved to Zurich in 1915 as a way to avoid being drafted by the German army during World war I. They collaborated in many joint projects until she died in 1943. 

"Taeuber-Arp taught weaving and other textile arts at the Zurich Kunstgewerbeschule (now Zurich University of the Arts) from 1916 to 1929. Her textile and graphic works from around 1916 through the 1920s are among the earliest Constructivist works, along with those of Piet Mondrian and Kasimir Malevich. These sophisticated geometric abstractions reflect a subtle understanding of the interplay between colour and form." 

I think that I will be using Spophie Taeuber-Arp's work as an inspiration for my animation because they are colorful and interesting especially her puppets I think that they are perfect to use for my animation because they simple but interesting.