Dadaism

The "Fountain" sculpture that Professor Schacht discussed within his blog Don't p-- on that art! is an example of Dada Art. Dadaism was an art movement that started in the 1910's.

The movement's name had its own history of origin:

DADA: This word was seized upon by the Dadaists at the Cabaret Cafe in 1916 when a paper knife was found inserted into a dictionary pointing to the term "dada." This infant language for "hobbyhorse" was found appropriate for the group's anti-aesthetic creations and protest activities. ( Information on Dadaism.

This art movement included the art forms of sculpture as well as poetry. I read in some book back in my high school art class about an example of how Dada poetry was created. It is similar in how the Van Lingle Mungo song by David Frishberg was created using baseball players names. People would cut out the words from back of seed packets and patch them together in any combination that pleased them and read their creations out loud. It was Found Art in the sense that the words had already been written up on the back of the seed packets, but the art of it was that they created their own completed piece out of the random words.

So who are we to say that it isn't poetry, isn't art in general, just because it was there beforehand? The manipulation and composition of the objects/words is what sets it a part from what it formerly was. Found art is then the essential and primary basis on how all art is created, from using life to inspire artistic creations. It takes on a whole new meaning.