After a brief introduction on the existential dimension of Expressionism, I shall unravel for you the heart-wrenching story of Chaim Soutine, “The Cursed Painter” of 20th century Art History. It is a story bathed in blood red!

Lecture
“Chaim Soutine: Le Peintre Maudit”
Expressionism and the fever of distortion
Wed, Apr 3, 4:30pm
La Ostra Roja
A Casa Verde Annex
San Jorge 45 (off Refugio Sur)
120 pesos
Please make your reservations early
121-1026
bea_aaronson@hotmal.com

Born in 1893, into an utterly poor Jewish family in Smilovitchi near Minsk -modern day Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire–Chaim Soutine was the 10th of 11 children. His father was not even a tailor, but a clothes mender.

Beaten to a pulp by his own brothers when he was drawing–the making of images was forbidden by Hassidic Jewish Law- he left his native shtetl for Vilna in order study art. In 1912 he emigrated to Paris and befriended Chagall, Zadkine and Modigliani, the other peintre maudit and his drinking buddy! Soutine also met Henry Miller whose Tropic of Cancer owes a lot to the Jewish painter’s vision.

Isolated and tormented, Soutine once said that he was going to murder his paintings: “All that you see here is not worth anything. It is crap, even if it is better than the paintings of Modigliani and Chagall…Someday I am going to murder my paintings – although these are too contemptible even for that.” If his work displeased him, he would run into the kitchen, pick up a knife and slash at the canvas. He would even buy back some of his paintings to “kill” them! But fortunately for us most of his masterpieces are still with us.

Soutine looked uncouth and tattered most of his life. Before Dr Barnes bought all of his work and made him a prosperous artist, Soutine lived in total squalor, eating sardines and keeping paraffin oil burning all around his bed to ward off bed bugs and cockroaches.

His images are metaphors for Jewish and all human suffering. His flayed rabbits, plucked birds, dead fowls, dead herrings, slabs and carcasses of beef, are icons of inner torment, baring the inner wound for all to see. Soutine horrified his neighbors by keeping an animal carcass in his studio so that he could paint it. The stench drove them to send for the police, whom Soutine promptly lectured on the relative importance of art over hygiene!

Even his portraits, flowers and landscapes bespeak of suffering, oozing wormlike brush strokes of wounded flesh and decomposing earth. They destabilize, they hurt, they have no structure on which you can rest your gaze. When one looks at them, on a more joyful note, one can understand the old joke of Modigliani describing his own drunkenness: “Everything dances around me as in a painting by Soutine.”

As Word War II approached, Soutine had to hide in order to avoid arrest by the Gestapo. He moved from one place to another and was sometimes forced to seek shelter in forests, sleeping outdoors.

Suffering from a stomach ulcer and bleeding badly, he left a safe hiding place for Paris in order to undergo emergency surgery, which failed to save his life. On August 9, 1943, Chaim Soutine died of a perforated ulcer and was buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.

Come and meet this extraordinary artist, whose visionary power unleashed the tragedies of a sick 20th century, eroded by violence, war and greed.

Join Charlotte Bell author of Tears from the Crown of Thorns for her annual lecture on Semana Santa. Holy Week is a time filled with happenings. There are nine major events and many more minor ones. With so many options it is difficult to know where to start. Most of the events are ancient and have special significance. But without information they are just strange occurrences. The guide to Semana Santa is a lecture and slide show. Included with the ticket is a booklet with the times, locations and maps of the major events.

Lecture
“Tears from the Crown of Thorns”
By Charlotte Bell
Tue, Mar 26, 4pm
El Sindicato
Recreo 4

Charlotte spent years taking photographs and collecting information for her book. Much of the lore came from interviews with local residents who have participated in the processions and other events all their lives. You will learn about San Miguel’s very own saint maker, the late Genero Almanza. In the 1800s, San Miguel was known as the “cradle” of saint makers because of its school for Santeros. You will find out what happened to the school and the struggle that ensued. She will tell you about the storeroom of angels for the Procession of Santo Entierro on Good Friday. You will see behind the scenes as local residents prepare for the processions and decorate the churches. You will learn about Padre Felipe Neri de Alfaro, 1709-1776, creator of Atotonilco who would walk barefoot seven miles into San Miguel carrying a heavy cross. Various religious statues have an ancient history such as the figure of Ecce Homo which is over 300 years old. You will learn how he is known as the rainmaker as he travels from church to church for nine months of the year to bring on the rains. The knowledge you will gain will increase your understanding and appreciation of Holy Week in San Miguel.

From Charlotte’s extensive research she has created a guide to the events of Semana Santa. You will leave her talk with timetables and maps on the “what, where and when” so you can get the most out of this special time in San Miguel. She’ll show you the best place to stand for processions and give you hints on how to deal with the sun. For photographers she’ll assist you in finding the ultimate spots for taking great photographs and explain procession etiquette.

Get the facts so you can get the most out of this extraordinary time in San Miguel. Included in her talk will be a slide show featuring photos from her book. She will also be signing and selling copies of Tears from the Crown of Thorns. Join Charlotte at the Sindicato, Recreo 4, Tuesday, March 26 at 4pm.

Of all the major women in Picasso’s life, Jacqueline Roque is the last one. Her story still remains obscure. She was his last love, more dismissed and hated than any of Picasso’s other conquests.

Lecture
“Jacqueline Roque: Picasso’s Last Love and Final Victim”
Wed, Mar 27, 4:30pm
La Ostra Roja
A Casa Verde annex
San Jorge 45 (off Refugio Sur)
Please make your reservations early
121-1026
stephen.eaker@hotmail.com

A young divorcee with a little girl from a previous marriage in tow, Jacqueline Roque would become the final female act in Picasso’s love life and art. She was the last woman to fall completely under the Spaniard’s spell, to give up her own life and ambitions for him. She was the last sacrificial lamb on Picasso’s altar, and stayed by his side until the end.

By the year 1944, Françoise Gilot had “replaced” Dora Maar, and a few years later, Picasso’s new lover gave birth to their two children, Claude in 1947 and Paloma in 1949. After Paloma’s birth, the relationship between Françoise and Picasso was never quite the same again. The young mother was growing up fast and had never fallen completely under Picasso’s thumb like his previous women had done. Francoise had retained her own identity, voice, and strength during her ten years with Picasso.

In 1952, Madame Ramie of the Madoura Pottery in Vallauris was pregnant with her first child and needed some help at the studio. She hired her young divorced cousin, Jacqueline Roque, to help as a sales lady at the pottery where Picasso came to create his ceramics. The young woman was a short, classical Mediterranean dark-haired beauty who spoke a little Spanish. Every time Picasso came to the Madoura pottery, they would chat away.

In December of 1953, Gilot took the two children and left the Spanish genius to his incredible fame, fortune and advancing years. Picasso had several girlfriends afterwards but could not make up his mind which one to choose. Just about everbody in Picasso’s entourage was betting against the young divorcee with a child in tow, and many people were mean, even cruel to Jacqueline before Picasso made his decision.

By 1954, it became obvious whom Picasso had chosen for his mate, and those who had been mean to the young, divorced salesgirl at the Madoura Pottery suddenly found themselves humbly peddling back for Jacqueline’s forgiveness and good graces. But Jacqueline had not forgotten anything, and many of Picasso’s old friends found the door shut in their faces, forever banished from his court.

This once sweet, smiling, and simple girl underwent a major transformation, as she became the muse, lover and eventually the wife of Picasso. She became a horrible witch for some, a greedy money-loving leach for others, a good friend for a few, a gracious and charming host for the lucky, and a cold and evil gatekeeper for just about everybody else.

The last Madame Picasso played many roles in her husband’s late life: cooking, buying art supplies; as his social secretary she organized parties and visits, taking care of all the daily chores. She was also Picasso’s English interpreter when American collectors and celebrities would come to their house. She of course inspired him in more depictions of womanhood, docile and not so docile! In short, Picasso could not have functioned without her. But most importantly, Jacqueline followed his orders to the letter, turning people away because “the master” had said so, and it was always Jacqueline who bore the brunt, blame and hard feelings for his actions and decisions.

She would often refer to Picasso as “The Sun” as she played the role of the submissive moon that orbited religiously around him. She was extremely jealous and exclusive. Her life simply became an extension of his own, an annex for his will and purpose, a reservoir of youthful vitality for him to drain and use.

She was the moth that willingly flew to the flame, a female Icarus who wished to fly toward and fall before Picasso’s light, a devoted follower ready to be sacrificed at any given moment upon his altar of art. She was Jacqueline Roque, Picasso’s final love and last victim.

The last of the Old Masters and the first of the Moderns, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, the proud Spaniard, the revolutionary painter, was born in Fuendetodos in 1746 during the frenzy of the Enlightenment, and lived during the revolutionary fervor of the Romantic Era. He died in exile in Bordeaux in 1828. During his life, he created two very different bodies of work. As a court painter, he captured the obsolete power of a waning nobility, the arrogant beauty of young women, the glory of Catholicism — although he did depict the frightening insanity of the Spanish Inquisition— and also created numerous cartoons of tapestries to adorn the cold bare walls of the palaces. But Goya the visionary projected in his paintings, drawings, etchings, aquatints and lithographs, the desperate spiritual quest of the West.

Lecture
“Goya, The Visionary Painter of Human Nature, a Grotesque Satirical Existentialism”
Wed, Mar 20, 4:30pm
La Ostra Roja
A Casa Verde annex
San Jorge 45 (off Refugio)
Please, make your reservations early
121-1026
bea_aaronson@hotmail.com

The credible monstrosities of his “Caprichos” and “Disparates,” the ferocious lightness of his “Tauromaquia,” the grotesque reality of his “Disasters of the War,” the ominous despairing madness of his Black Paintings, all project the primeval chaos of a decadent humanity eaten up by arrogance and greed. Goya denounced a bestial, grimacing, war-mongering humanity in all its ugliness and lecherous moral degradation. Even his early portraits of the nobility reveal a discordance, which destabilizes order and mocks the aristocracy. As the court painter of Spanish royalty he was able to witness its corrupted power and fragile glory.

As a romantic soul, Goya was attracted to the dark side. He wove a macabre thread throughout his work. His frightening visions only reflect what we know is true but do not dare face. His chiaroscuro is a metaphor of a human inner fight between reason and the irrational. The violent contrast of his light and dark visual drama enhances his perception of a doomed human condition as a grotesque form of existentialism.

From the psychological truth to the caricatural and satirical ridicule of his portraits, from the enticing beauty of his nudes and seemingly peaceful landscapes to the exacerbated violence of his depictions of war, from his strong and vulnerable self-portraits, filled with doubt and interrogation to the nightmarish and phantasmagorical power of his flights of fancy, Goya has played all the variations of the human scale, thrusting a dissonant chord within the arts, heralding German expressionism and the macabre bitter taste of the 20th century.

He freed art from its servile realism and superficial pleasure-giving duty. He freed colors from their merely descriptive role, and brushstrokes from their slick invisibility. He freed composition and subject matter from their incarcerating canonized rules, and it is this liberation that paved the way for modern artistic developments such as Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Expressionism and Surrealism, which are already present in his work.

I invite you to meet Francisco José Goya y Lucientes, man of Aragon, the painter who painted with a knife in his heart, the painter whose images bleed even in black and white, the painter who dared venture and probe the human wound, and by doing so, opened the way to Modern Art.

Ernest Ludwig Kirchner was born in 1880 in Chemitz, Germany, the son of a successful and renowned chemist. His father showed no resentment or resistance to his son’s desire to study art. Kirchner left for Dresden in the year 1901. He met other young revolutionary-minded painters and became the co-founder of the Die Brücke movement (The Bridge), and the leading figure in the group that will push German art into Modernism.

Lecture
“Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: the German Bridge to Modernity”
Wed, Mar 13, 4:30pm
La Ostra Roja
A Casa Verde Annex
San Jorge 45 (off Refugio)
Please make your reservations early
121-1026
stephen.eaker@hotmail.com

The Die Brücke artists were a radical force in the Dresden art world through their simplified, angular, disquieting, angry forms, and brash, contrasting, vibrant colors. They sent invitations to other modern artists in France to join their ranks. Matisse ignored his invitation, but Kees Von Dongen, the brillant colorist from Holland, accepted and sent numerous paintings to the German group in Dresden. Van Dongen’s works were exhibited alongside the canvases of the young German moderns, who were firmly established and recognized as a significant artistic movement before the First World War.

Kirchner was saddened and horrified at the thought of impending war. He believed that if he were sent to the front with its pointed German helmet, he would certainly be killed. His terror of being sent to the front resulted in both a mental and physical crisis. In 1915, he was called up to serve in a field artillery regiment, but was discharged two months later on the grounds of poor health. His mental and emotional crisis precipitated him into a morphine addiction, which plagued him during the war years and also in Davos, Switzerland, where he went after the war to recover. He slowly succeeded to rid himself of his addiction in 1921.

As Kirchner grew older, his art became less angry, calmer. It was not anymore the work of the radical innovator of Dresden, the brilliant modern artist of Berlin before World War I. His work offered a more subdued and quieter approach to painting. As he evolved and matured to another level during the 1920s and early ‘30s, Kirchner witnessed the evolution of the Nazi party and its rise to power. By the early 1930s, Hitler’s views about modern art were very clear: he hated it, and the degenerate imagery of Die Brücke would be purged from the German museums and conscience.

With the rise of the Nazis, the life of one of Germany’s greatest early 20^th-century modern art masters was coming apart. Kirchner was considered a degenerate artist and his work was hung in the great Degenerate art exhibitions of 1937. His mental and physical states deteriorated even more, and he regressed to his morphine addiction. In 1938, he took his own life as the Nazis burned his work or sold it abroad for quick cash to finance their destructive march forward.

 
Muse, model, lover, artist…she was all that and more!
“She seized what she
Wanted from art and life,
And tore it free with both
Hands making it
Irrevocably her own.”
–Germaine Greer

This woman painted like a man, strong, bold, nothing shy of a Degas or a Toulouse Lautrec! But alas, she is too often only remembered as the mother of the most famous Montmartre painter, the neurotic and alcoholic Maurice Utrillo, or the muse and model of Puvis de Chavannes, Auguste Renoir, Modigliani, or the mistress of Toulouse Lautrec, to name a few of the great masters she inspired. Did you know Erik Satie composed his melancholic and mysterious Gymnopédies after she broke off their amorous relationship?

Lecture
“Suzanne Valadon: The Mistress of Montmartre”
Wed, Mar 6, 4:30pm
La Ostra Roja
A Casa Verde Annex
San Jorge 45 (off Refugio)
120 pesos
Please make your reservations early
121-1026
bea_aaronson@hotmail.com

Suzanne Valadon painted like she lived, passionately, unbridled, independent, strong willed, and self-determined. La Valadon, as she was called, was part of a circle of artists living and working in Paris’s Montmartre neighborhood at the turn of the 20th century, a moment in French history known as La Belle Epoque. She was one of the most notable female artists of the period, and my presentation will honor her and put her back where she belongs, among the greats.

Yes. She did live a ferocious, scandalous life. Oblivious of gossip, only focusing on love, life and art. Or… should it be art, love and life? But aren’t these three energies truly one same force? She was an eccentric too! Feeding caviar to her cats on Fridays and her “bad drawings” to a goat she kept in her studio!

Suzanne Valadon was born poor, out of wedlock, in 1865 in the Limousin region of France. Her mother was a laundress. A single mother in the puritanical provinces just does not do it! So, both mother and 5-year-old Marie Clémentine (that was her real name, it is Toulouse-Lautrec who called her Suzanne) left for the anonymous life of Paris. Marie Clémentine was a rebellious child, very independent, and very resourceful too. From age nine on she supported herself by doing odd jobs: nanny, street seller, and… circus acrobat! She did it until she fell off the trapeze when she was 16. Her body was strongly built and beautiful and, looking for a safer occupation, she became an artist’s model. The rest is history!

Suzanne Valadon, the self-taught artist, observed carefully the techniques of the artists for whom she was posing and began creating her own paintings. Her efforts were especially encouraged by Edgar Degas. She painted everything! Portraits, landscapes, cats, flowers and still-lifes, but it is her female nudes that created scandals! They were assertive and unashamedly naked, oozing a bold female sexuality that challenged the traditional male construction of passive femininity. She also dared paint naked males — in the company of naked females.You can just imagine! Albeit because, or thanks to, these scandals, Valadon achieved recognition and success in her own lifetime, allowing her to buy her own house in Paris. It is art history who forgot her!

I will be honored to repair this mistake and share with you Suzanne Valadon’s life and work, contextualized within the Paris of La Belle Epoque and Montmartre’s bohemian life. Be ready for a deliciously bumpy ride!

“The more frightening the world becomes… the more art becomes abstract.
In every painting a whole is mysteriously enclosed, a whole life of tortures, doubts, of hours of enthusiasm and inspiration” Wassily Kandinsky

From Moscow, where he was born in 1866, to Paris, where he died in 1944, via Venice, Rome, Munich, Berlin, Weimar and New York, Wassily Kandinsky disseminated the fairy-tale complexity of a visionary universe he had created to fight against conventional aesthetic values. Kandinsky invented a splendid organic, nonfigurative world where energy was unleashed through mutations of forms in order to reach a higher level of consciousness. This is what he called “inner beauty.” The fervor with which he painted was “inner necessity”!

LectureWassily Kandinsky: the visionary language of abstraction
Wed, Aug 29, 4:30pm
La Casa Verde
Prolongación Pila Seca 65C
152 5237
Bea_aaronson@hotmail.com
120 pesos

It was not until 1896, when Kandinsky was 30 years old, that he decided to become an artist. His artistic development was shaped greatly by an exhibition of French impressionist painters that was shown in Moscow in 1895. Above all it was Claude Monet who inspired him — Monet, for whom the role of color was more important than the subject matter…

Kandinsky’s fascination with the symbolic and psychological power of color reached a peak with his Baudelairian synesthetic philosophy, which he so poetically worded as follows, “Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.”

I shall unravel for you the Secret Doctrine of Theosophy which inspired him so much, as well as his poetical and scientific symbiosis with the world of music, especially Schönberg’s atonal inventions. From his early Fauve paintings, to his “organicist” improvisations, to his Bauhaus sacred geometry, I invite you to come and savor Kandinsky’s lyrical palette, and discover his spiritual world of metamorphosis.

Please make your reservations early as seats tend to go very rapidly. When the 4:30pm lecture is full, a 6:30pm presentation is available.

What is Japonisme? It is a French term that was first used by Jules Claretie in his book L’Art Francais en 1872. It refers to the influence of Japanese art on Western art. Influence? I would rather say “frenzy” or “upheaval.” The artists of the Far East had a completely new aesthetic approach, which not only marked a break with Western painting convention, but enthralled Western artists and energized them to change the face of Western Art forever. This great wave of Japanese artistic energy swept through Europe in the 1880s and 1890s.

Lecture
Japonisme
Wed, Aug 1, 4:30pm
La Casa Verde
Prolongación de Pila Seca 65C
120 pesos

After a brief yet substantial Japanese historical background, and an introduction to the Japanese art of Manga, Ukiyo-e and Nishiki-e, through the works of Hokusai, Hiroshige, Utamaro (to name but a few), we shall then look closely at all sorts of applied arts (ceramics, glassware, textiles, wallpaper, book covers, fonts, furniture, etc…) which definitely exude a Japanese flavor, the art nouveau flavor! And of course look at the work of Manet, Renoir, Degas, Caillebotte, Cézanne, Monet, Mary Cassatt, Vuillard, Bonnard, Toulouse Lautrec, Van Gogh and Gauguin. They all drank at the source of Japanese art. The Impressionist and Post-Impressionist revolutions would not have taken place without the Japanese creative energy.

With hundreds of illustrations I invite you to this feast of dissemination and cross-fertilization. One of the better facets of our human adventure!

Please make your reservations early as seats tend to go very rapidly, 152 5237 or bea_aaronson@hotmail.com. A 6:30pm lecture will be given when the 4:30 one is full.

Ernest Ludwig Kirchner was born in 1880 in Chemitz, Germany, the son of a successful and renowned chemist. His father showed no resentment or resistance to his son’s desire to study art. Kirchner left for Dresden in the year 1901. He met other young revolutionary-minded painters and became the co-founder of the Die Brücke movement (The Bridge), and the leading figure in the group that would push German art into Modernism.

Lecture, Ernest Ludwig Kirchner: The German Bridge to modernity, Wed, May 30, 4:30pm, La Casa Verde, Prolongación de Pila Seca 65C, 100 pesos per person, Please make your reservations early as seats tend to go rapidly, 152-5237 or stephen.eaker@hotmail.com

The Die Brücke artists were a radical force in the Dresden art world, through their simplified, angular, disquieting, angry forms, and brash, contrasting, vibrant colors. They sent invitations to other modern artists in France to join their ranks. Matisse ignored his invitation, but Kees van Dongen, the brilliant colorist from Holland, accepted and sent numerous paintings to the German group in Dresden. Van Dongen’s works were exhibited alongside the canvases of the young German moderns, who were firmly established and recognized as a significant artistic movement before World War I.
Kirchner was saddened and horrified at the thought of impending war. He believed that if he were sent to the front with his pointed German helmet, he would certainly be killed. His terror of being sent to the front resulted in both a mental and physical crisis. In 1915 he was called up to serve in a field artillery regiment, but was discharged two months later on the grounds of poor health. His mental and emotional crisis resulted in a morphine addiction, which plagued him during the war years and also in Davos, Switzerland, where he went to recover after the war. He managed to rid himself of his addiction in 1921.
As Kirchner grew older, his art became less angry, calmer. It was no longer the work of the radical innovator of Dresden, the brilliant modern artist of Berlin before World War I. His work offered a more subdued and quieter approach to painting. As he evolved and matured to another level during the 1920s and early 30s, Kirchner witnessed the evolution of the Nazi party and its rise to power. By the early 1930s, Hitler´s views about modern art were very clear: he hated it, and the imagery of Die Brücke would be purged from German museums and conscience.
With the rise of the Nazis, the life of one of Germany’s greatest early 20th century modern art masters was coming apart. Kirchner was considered a degenerate artist. His mental and physical states deteriorated even more, and he reverted to his morphine addiction. In 1938, he took his own life. The Nazis burned his work or sold it abroad.

Dada was, officially, not a movement, its artists not artists and its art not art. That sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? Of course, there is a bit more to the story of Dadaism than this simplistic explanation.

Lecture Series, Hitory of Art, Art Movements: The Dada Movement, Lecture 4. Wed, Nov 16, 5pm, Teatro Santa Ana, La Biblioteca, Reloj 50A. Donations: 60 pesos

Dada was a literary and artistic movement born in Europe at a time when the horror of World War I was being played out in what amounted to citizens’ front yards. Due to the war, a number of artists, writers and intellectuals – notably of French and German nationality – found themselves congregating in the refuge that Zurich (in neutral Switzerland) offered. Far from merely feeling relief at their respective escapes, this bunch was pretty ticked off that modern European society would allow the war to have happened. They were so angry, in fact, that they undertook the time-honored artistic tradition of protesting.

Banding together in a loosely-knit group, these writers and artists used any public forum they could find to (metaphorically) spit on nationalism, rationalism, materialism and any other -ism which they felt had contributed to a senseless war. In other words, the Dadaists were fed up. If society is going in this direction, they said, we’ll have no part of it or its traditions. Including…no, wait!…especially artistic traditions. We, who are non-artists, will create non-art – since art (and everything else in the world) has no meaning, anyway.

Using an early form of Shock Art, the Dadaists thrust mild obscenities, scatological humor, visual puns and everyday objects (renamed as “art”) into the public eye. Marcel Duchamp performed the most notable outrages by painting a mustache on a copy of the Mona Lisa (and scribbling an obscenity beneath) and proudly displaying his sculpture entitled Fountain (which was actually a urinal, sans plumbing, to which he added a fake signature).

The public, of course, was revulsed – which the Dadaists found wildly encouraging. Enthusiasm being contagious, the (non)movement spread from Zurich to other parts of Europe and New York City. And just as mainstream artists were giving it serious consideration, in the early 1920s, Dada (true to form) dissolved itself.

In an interesting twist, this art of protest – based on a serious underlying principle – is delightful. The nonsense factor rings true. Dada art is whimsical, colorful, wittily sarcastic and, at times, downright silly. If one wasn’t aware that there was, indeed, a rationale behind Dadaism, it would be fun to speculate as to just what these gentlemen were “on” when they created these pieces.

What are the key characteristics of Dada art?

Dada began in Zurich and became an international movement. Or non-movement, as it were.

Dada had only one rule: Never follow any known rules.

Dada was intended to provoke an emotional reaction from the viewer (typically shock or outrage). If its art failed to offend traditionalists, Dada writing – particularly Tristan Tzara’s manifestoes – proved a fine, nose-thumbing Plan B.

Dada art is nonsensical to the point of whimsy. Almost all of the people who created it were ferociously serious, though.

Abstraction and Expressionism were the main influences on Dada, followed by Cubism and, to a lesser extent, Futurism.