dada

The Dada movement came about as reaction against violence of World War I. The movement challenged art itself and included elements of strong negativity and destructiveness. In Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, it stated that, “Dada artists claimed to have invented photomontage…” This technique took found photographs, and manipulated them to create an unpleasant closeness to each of them. It also made the viewer create weird/forced associations amongst the images. The pioneers of photomontage work during the Dada movement were Raoul Hausmann and Hannah Höch. They had been excelling on this medium since 1918.

Today, we still see this technique in use in our current movie posters. The posters that immediately come to mind, for me, are Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Captain America, and Iron Man. Each of these posters combined images directly taken out from the film, images taken just for the film, and background images. Although the images aren’t dramatically juxtaposed like Dada montages, they are planned out like Dada montages. They are manipulated, as well, to have to create an interesting movie poster to entice audiences all over the world. Dada photomontages were the quintessential advertising technique, of that time, for the violence and destructiveness of war. Just like that, movie posters have been, and will continue to be, one of the key advertising methods for movie promotion all over the world.