Simplifying a lot of big words!!

Ran out of time for the TMA, managed to get an extension, and have sent in 'something'!!! I'm now trying to grasp some of these ideas before moving on, and before they vanish forever!! LOL

The area of study centred around 'The Emergence of Abstraction' and what Peter Bürger terms 'The Historical Avant-Gardes'. The three primary movements of Abstract art, represented by the artists Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevich, Dada focusing on Zurich and Berlin, and the Soviet Constructivists all shared in a desire for change, the need for change, and an art to assist to bring about or represent that change. They sought an art that would become an integral part of the new daily life.

Dada was driven by angry and idealistic youth, disillusioned with events in Europe at the time of the First World War, and eager to confront the establishment, and bring them down, either by mocking and belittling their values, or by fermenting left-wing politics. The abstract artists sickened by the materialism both of science and society, looked for a new spiritual era. The Soviet Constructivists, caught up in the Russian Revolution, were the ones who got their wish for major change, but their idealism was eventually smothered by the realities.

The TMA question asked for 2,000 words, but in a nut shell the reaction of Dada in Zurich was to create nonsense to confront war and events in Europe. Dada in Berlin was to use the different art forms springing from this 'nonsense', to motivate left-wing politics. The Constructivists supported revolution by revolutionising art, making everything new, with new values, new attitudes,and new meaning, but were idealists not realists. Finally, the Abstract artists sought a new spiritual era, and an 'art' to represent and support that. Peter Bürgers role writing in 1974, was to retrospectively pull these movements together, and link their elements of reaction and change, suggesting that they all sought for art to reintegrate with the 'praxis of life'.