Dada art and cabaret thrived in the turbulent inflationary Germany of the 1920s.

ECONOMIST: Kurt Schwitters

In grief, rage, and despair, Dada used art to comment on the world, making art an indictment of the hypocrisies that wiped out a generation.

NPR: Dada on Display at the National Gallery of Art

But Leah Dickerman, curator at the National Gallery of Art, says Dada was not the Seinfeld of art.

NPR: Dada on Display at the National Gallery of Art

In its rejection of conventions of the past and its ridicule of the future, Dada is thought to be an art about nothing.

NPR: Dada on Display at the National Gallery of Art

"Just because Dada is attacking traditional values and ideas of high art doesn't mean that it is meaningless art, " she says.

NPR: Dada on Display at the National Gallery of Art

Schwitters made lively connections across Europe with Dadaists and later with Constructivists (whose architectonic art, which much influenced his Hanover Merzbau, is much cooler and more rational than Dada), promoting their work in his Merz magazines.

ECONOMIST: Kurt Schwitters