“Shock and the Senseless in Dada and Fluxus offers an important and extraordinarily fluent examination of the conceptual foundations of two revolutionary art movements of the twentieth century. It is at once provocative and analytical, exhibiting philosophical sensitivity and originality by its suggestive treatment of central aesthetic categories deeply ingrained in the emergence of contemporary art. Wittily illustrated and gracefully written, the book bridges an art-historical gap by a parallel close reading of the major concepts of Dada and Fluxus. A meaningful contribution to the revision of the links between avant-garde art movements from the 1960s up to the present.”

"Dorothee Brill brings much-needed clarification to some difficult issues, including the roles of shock in art of the modern era, the importance of historical and geographical contexts for avant-garde artistic manifestations, and the differences between Dada and the self-described 'neo-dada' Fluxus movement, differences that generate more complex understandings of both."
— Jacquelynn Baas, independent scholar and director emeritus, University of California Berkeley Art Museum