In recent posts I have been interested in looking at the development of American painting immediately before and after World War II. Although there were numerous artists working in a variety of styles, Abstract Expressionism has come to dominate the history of this period. What I would like to look at briefly in this post is a style called Neo-Dada.
Neo-Dadaism is often looked at as a transition style between the Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s and the Pop artists of the 1960s. Neo-Dadaism takes its name from the Dada art movement which came about in Europe around the time of World War I. Like its namesake, Neo-Dadaism was characterized by playfully extreme insouciance. Taking Modern art as its target for folly and criticism, Neo-Dadaist quickly set about to undo what the Abstract Expressionists had created.
Rauschenberg was wildly creative in comparison to the more cerebral Johns and he set about dismantling the venerated categories of distinction held by Modern art; namely, drawing, painting and sculpture. By making three-dimensional artworks of found objects that were assembled and subsequently painted by him, Rauschenberg dispensed with two long held beliefs of Modernism; namely that painting occurs on canvas and that the painted image is flat.
Heading off in a different direction, Johns began working with familiar symbols such as maps, targets and flags. In doing so he re-introduced subject matter but also played with notions of representation and objecthood. Simply put his painting of a flag is simultaneously a painting (a representation of a flag) and a flag (an actual object). Moreover, Johns chose mundane objects that were often overlooked and elevated them to high art. In so doing he attacked the notion of high art as established by Modernism. By placing these innocuous objects next to Abstract Expressionist paintings, the grand gestures of the latter began to look silly.
I find it ironic that a painting of an American flag could take the steam out of Abstract Expressionism (an art form that was strongly influenced by European art). The Neo-Dadaist were not interested in tradition but rather in doing something new. They didn’t look back to pre-Modern European art at all. Their work was a critique of modernism and in dismantling modern art they had nothing to offer to replace it. Thus Neo-Dadaism was unsustainable as a cohesive movement. Perhaps this is why many of the artists went their separate ways pursuing disparate and highly individual albeit ahistorical styles.
By the end of the 1950s, Abstract Expressionism gave way to Pop art, which relied heavily on representing objects of all kinds. By exploring the many layers of subject matter that occurred when diverse objects were suddenly juxtaposed, Pop art signaled the end of Abstract Expressionism and more than any other movement continues to shape American painting today.