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100 Years of Dada:
Replication, Transformation, Reiteration
Every iteration of a meme, from its initial creation through its transformation by millions of individuals, has some intention that elevates its status from mindless self-replication to ironic avant-garde. In a sense, memes are a form of digital neo-dada as they recall the dada of the early twentieth century and the neo-dada of the fifties and sixties.
1916: The Beginning
Artists have mocked the status quo for centuries, and after the turn of the twentieth century, the Dadaist form became an outlet for frustrations with the status quo. The movement was “founded in 1916 in Zurich by artists and writers who fled their respective homelands during the first World War,” and although it “lasted only six years, its message spread throughout much of the world and continued to influence artists of later generations” (Hapgood and Rittner, 64).
2000s: The Digital Renaissance
A key facet of internet culture that points to the internet meme as an example of digital neo-dada is the rapidly growing Internet Ugly Aesthetic. Just as the Dada and Neo-Dada movements countered and mocked traditional art forms, Internet Ugly opposes the sleek New Aesthetic, imposing “messy humanity upon an online world of smooth gradients, blemish-correcting Photoshop, and AutoCorrect” (Douglas, 315). Amateur meme creators eschew the potential perfection of digital art, exploiting software meant to perfect art by creating intentional accidents.
Dada 1916
Fountain by Marcel Duchamp (1917) Duchamp used found objects, like this urinal, to challenge the viewer's notion of what art really is.
Neo-Dada 1950s
Bed by Robert Rauschenberg (1955) Rauschenberg linked art to life by using his own quilt and pillow (found objects) as a canvas for his Jackson Pollack-style painting.
Digital Neo-Dada 2016
Evil Kermit (2016) Evil Kermit, a current meme, is derived from a screencap from the 2014 movie, Muppets Most Wanted, in which Kermit confronts his evil look-alike. The meme is used to convey the internal conflict of the Freudian id and superego.
1950s: The Renaissance
Neo-Dadaists were “[i]nspired by the radical methods, ‘anti-art’ materials, and iconoclastic attitudes of the original Dada movement,” challenging the art forms of their own time by using found objects and manufactured products in their art as homage and transformation of the initial Dada philosophy (Hapgood and Rittner, 63).
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