Dadaism

Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in neutral Zürich, Switzerland during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1920. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature (mainly poetry), theatre, and graphic design, and was characterized by nihilism, deliberate irrationality, disillusionment, cynicism, chance, and the rejection of the prevailing standards in art and randomness.

According to its proponents, Dada was not art—it was anti-art. For everything that art stood for, Dada was to represent the opposite. Where art was concerned with aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. If art were to have at least an implicit or latent message, Dada strove to have no meaning — interpretation of Dada is dependent entirely on the viewer. If art is to appeal to sensibilities, Dada is to offend. It is perhaps then ironic that Dada became an influential movement in modern art. Dada became a commentary on art and the world and thus became art itself.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dada