Dada – Art and Anti Art. Hans Richter.

In his book Dada - Art and Anti Art, Hans Richter (1965) discusses the element of chance within the art movement DADA. I think the element of chance relates quite highly to error and serendipitous mistakes. Richter thought it was quite central to Dada art and opened up new areas to art that had not been explored before and gave a new sense of freedom to the process.

The Dadaists asked the question what is chance and where does it lie within us? Dada artists read Jung who discussed coincidence, synchronicity, causality. They saw chance as a magical way of entering the unconscious mind or the soul. They saw is as a way to restore art back to it's primevel powerful state.

We were fated to live with the paradoxical necessity of entrusting ourselves to chance while at the same time remembering that we were conscious beings working towards conscious goals. This contradiction between the rational and the irrational opened a bottomless pit over which we had to walk.  Pg 61

Humour and laughter was also an important part of their art. Dada arose as a backlash of the times when the War had such a serious impact on society.

I see the connection to chance within art to primitive urges and animism. Tapping into the unconscious, entering into chance and accepting primitve urges are all realted. I want to encourge more chance within my artwork. I am very interested as to where it will take me.

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