First off, sorry everybody for being so late with this. I was out of town from Wednesday afternoon until a few minutes ago. Though I was able to set up my blog during that time, I wasn't able to post anything until this very moment. That said, here's some dadastuff.

"Art has nothing to do with taste. Art is not there to be tasted."
-Max Ernst

I find the dadadiscomfort (I am just really into this fun word-formation so help me...) with the concept of "taste" to be really interesting. The discomfort seems to stem from a fear of being absorbed into popular/mass/mundane/"safe" culture, which is, it seems, one of the hazards of creating art which is meant to be, at least to some degree, judged on how trangressive it is/was, how much it challenges the observer, how it affects the artist, etc. It seems a perfectly reasonable fear to have, especially when one's reputation as a "serious" (a particularly hilarious distinction, I think, especially in the context of dada) artist is at stake.


I also found Schwitters' use of identification of his works (and self! though the two shouldn't necessarily be separated in the first place) as "Merz" interesting, especially in the context of other one-man movements (such as the work of Stewart Home).

(There'll be more to come shortly, I swear for real.)