Dada

"Dada is a state of mind... Dada is artistic free thinking... Dada gives itself to nothing... ." This is how André Breton describes it, but Dada did not like labels or to be defined, that was the point.  Out with realism, beauty, and everything thought to be art.  Dada was bold, hard to understand and made the viewer think about what was going on.  You did not just look at this new style of art with an eye of beauty; you had to look deeper into the meaning and the expression of the artist.  There were times that you would question what the creator was thinking and how could that be considered art, and if the artist achieved this type of thinking from its viewers then there was Dadaism.  

Dada began as an anti-art movement; in the sense that it rejected the way art was appreciated. Out with everything we knew to be art and tired of the sense of contemporary art.  Several different mediums participated in this movement, painting, poetry, and theatre to name a few, and there were time mediums were coupled together. Merz performance is an example, this is the philosophy that any sound or unscripted words can be incorporated as material into a performance, a concept we found in the visual Dadaist’s, "ready-mades", or the use of "found objects”. The poetry was alive, and anything but we had ever read or heard before.  There are several examples of these reading, and you might be interested in, "Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales (Oddly Modern Fairy Tales), written by, Kurt Schwitters in the 1920's.  This style you could find strange and unusual.  A bit on the odd side but a fun read to explore and share with your mind.