Anti-meaning: Absurdity against the establishment Emerging amid the brutality of World War I, the revolutionaryDadamovement tookdisgust with the establishment as its starting point. From 1916 until the mid 1920s, artists in Zurich, Cologne, Hanover, Paris, and New York posed a radical assault against the politics, social values, and cultural conformity which they regarded as complicit in the devastation of conflict.Dada artists shared no distinct style but rather a common wish to upturn societal structures as much as artistic standards and toreplace logic and reason with the absurd, chaotic,...

Let's get abstract
Making sense of revolutionary new forms

Abstraction shook Western art to its core. In the early part of the 20th century, it refuted the reign of clear, indisputable forms and confronted audiences instead with vivid visual poems devoid of conventional, representational imagery and characterized instead by allegories of emotion and sensation.

This radical artistic adventure established new artistic means, as much as narratives. Expression became characterized by...