The French Invented Dada

You don't need to speak French to find this one bizarre. Dadaesque, really.

Seen at Papy Potage

"The true dadas are against Dada."

Untitled, 1920 by Max Ernst

"Dada blasted onto the scene in 1916 with ear-splitting enthusiasm: rowdy, brazen, irreverent, and assaulting. Its sounds were clamorous, its visions were shocking, and its language was explosive. Yet Dada was not aimless anarchy. Rather, the artists were responding to the violence and trauma of World War I—and to the shock of modernity more generally—by developing shock tactics of their own. They critiqued traditional conceptions of the artist as master of his medium by using prefabricated materials or relegating aesthetic decisions to chance. They scoffed at the conventional definition of artistic media, expanding it to include the stuff of modern life—newspapers, magazines, ticket stubs, mechanical parts, food wrappers, pipes, advertisements, light bulbs, and so on. Through their performances, publicity stunts, and manipulation of mass media, they further altered perceptions of what constituted a work of art by blurring the boundaries between art and life."
An introduction and exhibition to DADA at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Accidental Auteur

Ira Gallen, curator of TV Days, known on YouTube as TVNETWORKS is the keeper of hundreds of moldering reels of vintage film stored in what appears to be his basement. He’s posted commercials featuring chain-smoking puppets shilling for Brylcreem, G.I. Joe Astronauts, and the Pork Marketing board, as well as some out-of-left-field titles as “Japan Elephant and Fire don’t Mix 1959”, “Your Hit Parade Moments to Remember—is It Racist?” (answer: yes)
But for me, the gems of the collection are his Dadaesque collages of mismatched music and film, artistic masterpieces that may possibly make you aspirate your Coco Puffs (so avoid viewing while dining). Frenetic 1920s Charleston dancers gyrate to Farmer John Ham commercials. The hunt and subsequent slaughter of a whale unfolds to the strains of the Chiquita banana song. A heartfelt version of “Jeepers Creepers” provides a sprightly soundtrack for What’s The Name & History of This Fish 1899. GERMAN LIZARDS ROAM THE WORLD TO SONG 1930 .....the song being “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime”.

If you’re a needlessly pragmatic killjoy, you might insist that Ira Gallen was just playing random songs during the transfer of the silent films…..but I prefer to think of it as deliberate. So there.