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In the second and third decades of the twentieth century, a new kind of artistic movement swept Europe and America. Its very name, "Dada"--two identical syllables without the obligatory "-ism"--distinguished it from the long line of avant-gardes which have determined the history of the arts in the last 200 years. Its proponents came from all parts of Europe and the United States at a time when their native countries were battling one another in the deadliest war ever known. They did not restrict themselves to being painters, writers, dancers, or musicians; most of them were involved in several art forms and in breaking down the boundaries which kept the arts distinct from one another. Indeed, the Dadaists were not content to make art. They wanted to affect all aspects of Western civilization, to take part in the revolutionary changes which were the inevitable result of the chaos of the First World War. They were not interested in writing books and painting pictures which a public would admire in an uninvolved manner; rather, they aimed to provoke the public into reacting to their activities: to the Dadaists, a violently negative reaction was better that a passive acceptance. The Dada movement was perhaps the most decisive single influence on the development of twentieth-century art, and its innovations are so pervasive as to be virtually taken for granted today.- an excerpt from an essay by Timothy Shipe
Full essay can be found here: http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/archive.html
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