| Artist: | Hausmann, Raoul |
|
|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | Mechanical Head ("The Spirit of the Times") | |
| Date of Work: | 1919 | |
| Nationality: | German | |
| Context: | Post WWI | |
| Movement: | Berlin Dada | |
| Medium: | wood, mixed-media | |
| Subject: a wooden head dubbed "The Spirit of the Times" by its maker, Raoul Hausmann, better known for his development of Dada photomontage. The mannequin or "dummy's head" represents a not very flattering portrait of the German bourgeoisie (middle class man). He has eyes with no pupils so he cannot see for himself; his lips are closed tight because he cannot or will not speak out; over his ear Hausmann has placed a little case with a typeset cartridge inside because our little man only hears what he is told in the newspapers. He has a number tacked to his forehead for identification. Crowning his head is a traveler's collapsable cup, waiting for you to pour in any information you want. You see, our little man with the wooden head cannot think for himself. "The German wants only his order, his king, his Sunday sermon, and his easy chair" (Raoul Hausmann). Style: mixed media assemblage not done with aesthetics in mind. In fact, this mechanical head is decidedly anti-aesthetic in appearance. Functions as a Dada parody of the human being devolving into a machine; humanity as mappable onto another set of coordinates--that of the machine. Context: Dada anti-art, working deliberately against the aesthetic and the academic in the spirit of Tristan Tzara's Dada Manifesto to create an art of the streets rather than the museums. Anti-decorative and anti-sentimental about humanity; also anti-expressionistic in that it is not about the artist searching his own tortured soul or expressing his internal spiritual angst. Dada fought its own war, away from the muddy trenches and back in the cities where it was possible to put blinders on; Dada mounted its attack on the bourgeois morality and complacency that condoned the war from the stages of the cabaret and the streets rather than from the safety of the artist's studio and the art galleries. Dada is an "art" of protest that tried to point out the absurdity of the war, which they saw as hypocritical and morally bankrupt. In Berlin, Dada became particularly political in its "edge." Quotations from the Dada Manifesto: "Give yourself a poke in the nose and drop dead. Dada. . . . A priori, that is with eyes closed, Dada places before action and above all: doubt. Dada doubts all. Anti-Dadaism is a disease: self-kleptomania, the normal state of man is Dada. But the true dadas are against Dada. . . . we are all idiots and you are all idiots . . . Take a good look at me! I am an idiot, I am a clown, I am a faker. Take a good look at me! I am ugly, my face has no expression, I am little. I am like all of you!" | ||
