In this thought-provoking work, Dorothee Brill examines notions of shock and the senseless in Dada and Fluxus, pairing two distinctly radical art movements that challenged the very notion and
purpose of art. Laying out a genealogy of surrealisms, she addresses the senseless in artistic production as a strategy toward shock--generally considered to be characteristic of the historical
avantgarde. Examining the changing correlation between the notions of shock and the senseless in their artistic use in prewar Europe and postwar America, Brill arrives at a new understanding of
the overstrained and generally pejorative catch phrase of "shock for shock's sake." This is an important work that will appeal to all manner of art historians and scholars--not only students of
modernism, but also those interested in the artistic recurrence of avant-garde manifestations in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond.
