Laurie Spigel's
Art History Class on Dada

The Dada Movement, which led to Surrealism, was named by slipping a paper knife into a dictionary and seeing which word it touched. DADA means hobby horse in French, uncle or yes-yes in Russian, daddy in English, and seemed an appropriately ridiculous name for an artistic movement that was funny, irreverent, anti-war, anti-government, and even anti-art. Students made Dadaist portrait collages after viewing the work of Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and others.
See Classes & Lectures for more information on this and other art history classes.

Modern Art History Syllabus

	Description	Activity
1.	Author Emile Zola and Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, Auguste Renoir, and Claude Monet	Watercolor Painting
2.	Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, Toulouse-Lautrec.	Colored Pastels
3.	Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh	Impasto Painting, thickened tempera with sand
4.	Georges Seurat, Paul Signac	Pointillism — dot paintings with markers
5.	Camille Pissaro, Paul Cézanne, techniques that led to Cubism	Pastels and oil pastels
6.	Pablo Picasso, Georges Braques, Juan Gris, Cubism	Cubism: Collage and mixed media
7.	Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse	Papercuts and Collage
8.	Wassily Kandinsky and his theory of color and sound	Improvisational painting to music using watercolors
9.	Paul Klee	Colored pencils and markers
10.	Dada — Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and others.	Dadaist portrait collages
11.	Surrealism — Yves Tanguy, Marcel Jean, and Salvador Dali .	Surrealism
12.	Surrealist collages — Giorgio de Chirico and Rene Magritte	Surrealist collages
13.	Surrealism and symbolism — Joan Miró	Surrealism and symbolism
14.	Alexander Calder	Wire sculpture
15.	Henry Moore	Clay sculpture
16a.	Louise Nevelson	Stabiles
16b.	Louise Nevelson	Found object sculpture
	Romare Bearden	Collages