2006年VOA标准英语-Dada in DC: 90-Year-Old Art Movement is St

By Carolyn Weaver¹
Washington, DC
11 May 2006
 
watch Dada report
 

Max Ernst, The Hat Makes the Man, 1920  
  
The National Gallery of Art in Washington is about to say goodbye to amajor show on Dada, the early 20th century art movement. Painting, sculpture, film, photography, collage² and "readymades" from Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, Paris and New York are all part of Dada, which the Gallery calls the most comprehensive exhibition of Dadaist art ever shown in the United States.

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Dada curator Leah Dickerman 
  
German artists fleeing World War One founded the Dada art movement in Switzerland in 1916, naming it after a nonsense word. The movement was born out of the artists' horror at the war, particularly its mechanized killing³, says the National Gallery's Dada curator, Leah Dickerman, and so she opens the show with a reel of World War One-era footage. “Many of the technologies that we associate with modern warfare⁴, including tanks and aerial dogfights and poison gas, were invented in this moment,” she said in an interview. “These new strategies provided a new efficiency in killing. And for the Dadaists as well as their contemporaries, it really threw into question whether you could talk about a rational European civilization.”

Raoul Hausmann, Mechanical Head (The Spirit of Our Age), c. 1920  
  
The Dadaists included artists with very different styles and interests, from George Grosz to Marcel Duchamp, Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber, to Man Ray. Wherever it migrated, from Zurich to Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, and on to Paris and New York, Dadaism rejected artistic⁵ convention, making art that was by turns angry and political, or witty⁶, modest and abstract -- or a challenge to the very definition of art. “The idea that art is a picture where you can look through the surface onto an imaginary world, was something they exploded as a group,” Ms. Dickerman said. “They replaced it with many of the key strategies we see in the rest of the 20th century: things like collage, montage, installation art, media pranks⁷, sound art.” 

 
Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q. (1919)
  
The sound art at Dada includes a 1926 film score, Le Ballet mécanique -- played at the National Gallery for the first time with the fully⁸ robotic orchestra that composer George Antheil envisioned: sixteen player pianos, together with xylophones, drums, bells, and sirens. In every medium, from sound to sculpture, Dada art was provocative⁹, oppositional¹⁰, outrageous¹¹. Marcel Duchamp doodled on a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, and exhibited a urinal as a piece of sculpture. But Leah Dickerman says Dadaism was never disengaged. “I think it's about people who want to understand their own moment,” she said, “and they want to analyze¹² it, and they want to make it visible to their audiences, as well. They're trying to sometimes shock people into another understanding of their own times, to shock them out of a kind of amnesia¹³, or shock them out of a kind of sleepwalking state.”

 
A visitor to the Dada show says it speaks to our times too
  
Visitors to the show said they were surprised at how topical it seemed. “It's really timely,” said one man. “A lot of those pieces could be today, you know, because of the reaction of the artists to the war, and to the mindless violence, and sort of incomprehensible stuff that's going on in society, I think is just exactly what we see in a lot of ways right now.” Another agreed, saying, “You can't divorce their art from the moment that they're in, and of course it makes you think about our moment." The National Gallery of Art show was selected from art works shown in Paris as part of a larger exhibit. A third version of Dada opens in June at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

1 weaver   

n.织布工；编织者

参考例句：

• She was a fast weaver and the cloth was very good.她织布织得很快，而且布的质量很好。
• The eager weaver did not notice my confusion.热心的纺织工人没有注意到我的狼狈相。

2 collage   

n.拼贴画；v.拼贴；把……创作成拼贴画

参考例句：

• A collage of coloured paper covers a table top.一副彩纸拼贴画盖在桌面上。
• He has used a mixture of mosaic,collage and felt-tip pen.他混合使用了马赛克、拼贴画和毡头笔。

3 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

4 warfare   

n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突

参考例句：

• He addressed the audience on the subject of atomic warfare.他向听众演讲有关原子战争的问题。
• Their struggle consists mainly in peasant guerrilla warfare.他们的斗争主要是农民游击战。

5 artistic   

adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的

参考例句：

• The picture on this screen is a good artistic work.这屏风上的画是件很好的艺术品。
• These artistic handicrafts are very popular with foreign friends.外国朋友很喜欢这些美术工艺品。

6 witty   

adj.机智的，风趣的

参考例句：

• Her witty remarks added a little salt to the conversation.她的妙语使谈话增添了一些风趣。
• He scored a bull's-eye in their argument with that witty retort.在他们的辩论中他那一句机智的反驳击中了要害。

7 pranks   

n.玩笑，恶作剧( prank的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Frank's errancy consisted mostly of pranks. 法兰克错在老喜欢恶作剧。 来自辞典例句
• He always leads in pranks and capers. 他老是带头胡闹和开玩笑。 来自辞典例句

8 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

9 provocative   

adj.挑衅的，煽动的，刺激的，挑逗的

参考例句：

• She wore a very provocative dress.她穿了一件非常性感的裙子。
• His provocative words only fueled the argument further.他的挑衅性讲话只能使争论进一步激化。

10 oppositional   

反对的，对抗的

参考例句：

• I wish to forcefully grasp fragile and entirely oppositional poles, allowing them to coexist. 我想要强押起脆弱的、完全相斥的两端，让他们共存。
• Robot Soccer game is an international and high-tech oppositional activity that develops rapidly in recent years. 机器人足球比赛是近年来在国际上迅速开展起来的高技术对抗活动。

11 outrageous   

adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的

参考例句：

• Her outrageous behaviour at the party offended everyone.她在聚会上的无礼行为触怒了每一个人。
• Charges for local telephone calls are particularly outrageous.本地电话资费贵得出奇。

12 analyze   

vt.分析，解析 (=analyse)

参考例句：

• We should analyze the cause and effect of this event.我们应该分析这场事变的因果。
• The teacher tried to analyze the cause of our failure.老师设法分析我们失败的原因。

13 amnesia   

n.健忘症，健忘

参考例句：

• People suffering from amnesia don't forget their general knowledge of objects.患健忘症的人不会忘记关于物体的一些基本知识。
• Chinese medicine experts developed a way to treat amnesia using marine materials.中国医学专家研制出用海洋物质治疗遗忘症的方法。