Dadaist

To the world at large, relativity seemed to pull the rug out from under perceived reality. And for many advanced thinkers of the 1920s, from Dadaists to Cubists to Freudians, that was a fitting credo, reflecting what science historian David Cassidy calls "the incomprehensiveness of the contemporary scene--the fall of monarchies, the upheaval of the social order, indeed, all the turbulence of the 20th century."

In 1976 and 1977, and the years to follow, as symbolically remade by the Sex Pistols, it was, perhaps, dadaists, lettrists, situationists, and various medieval heretics.

Breton's Surrealist movement transformed Dadaist despair -- at both the war and the technologies that had led to it -- into a constructive assault on social and sexual norms.