| At the end of World War One, the Dada | | | | influenced by the emerging psychoanalytic |
| movement wished to attack and offend society | | | | theories of Jung and Freud on our perceptions of |
| because of the monstrosity that the world had | | | | reality. |
| become. Dadaists believed that a world which had | | | | It was officially founded by Andre Breton in Paris |
| done it's utmost to eat itself did not deserve fine | | | | in 1924 with his Manifesto of Surrealism; it's |
| art so they decided to give it hideousness. | | | | principal aim was to merge the contradictory |
| Bizarrely, society embraced this anti-art, they saw | | | | notions of dream and reality into an absolute |
| it as not attacking them as such but attacking the | | | | reality - super reality. It's members viewed the |
| old, staid institutions such as feudalism and the | | | | movement as a philosophy, even a religion in it's |
| Church. So to the dismay of the Dadaists, their | | | | aims and practices. Members of the movement |
| desire to destruct by art failed, their art was | | | | could even be flung out of it, if they did not abide |
| embraced and therefore became the art of the | | | | by the rules and conventions, such as happened |
| day, the statues quo; to their horror they | | | | Salvador Dali in 1937. Breton even developed a |
| achieved greatness and produced art that was | | | | political programme for the improvement of |
| judged to be great. Surrealism inherited its | | | | society, however it proved too jarring with the |
| anti-rationalist sensibility from Dada, but was | | | | major Surrealist aim of exploring and liberating the |
| lighter in spirit than that movement. It was heavily | | | | creative powers of the unconscious mind. |