The term Neo-Dada surfaced in New York in the late 1950s and was used
to characterize young artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns
whose art appeared at odds with the serious emotional and painterly
interests of the then-dominant movement, Abstract Expressionism.
Neo-Dada quickly became the word of choice in the early 1960s to
designate experimental art, including assemblage, performance, Pop art,
and nascent forms of minimal and conceptual art.
An Audience of Artists turns this time line for the postwar New York
art world on its head, presenting a new pedigree for these artistic
movements. Drawing on an array of previously unpublished material,
Catherine A. Craft reveals that Neo-Dada, far from being a reaction to
Abstract Expressionism, actually originated at the heart of that
movement's concerns about viewers, originality, and artists' debts to
the past and one another. Furthermore, she argues, the original Dada
movement was not incompatible with Abstract Expressionism. In fact, Dada
provided a vital historical reference for artists and critics seeking to
come to terms with the radical departure from tradition that Abstract
Expressionism seemed to represent. Tracing the activities of artists
such as Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and Jackson Pollock alongside
Marcel Duchamp's renewed embrace of Dada in the late 1940s, Craft
composes a subtle exploration of the challenges facing artists trying to
work in the wake of a destructive world war and the paintings, objects,
writings, and installations that resulted from their efforts. Providing
the first examination of the roots of the Neo-Dada phenomenon, this
groundbreaking study significantly reassesses the histories of these
three movements and offers new ways of understanding the broader issues
related to the development of modern art.
