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 avant-garde. 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.”

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