Dadaism (or Dada) and Surrealism were both monumental avant-garde art movements from the early 20th century, each of which expanded across all areas of the arts and had a phenomenal influence on the development of art, culture and literature well into the 20th and 21st century. Yet, there were four key differences between Dadaism and Surrealism.

Dada is an artistic movement that flouted conventional aesthetic and cultural values by producing works marked by nonsense, travesty and incongruity, while Surrealism is an artistic movement that attempts to express the workings of the subconscious and is characterize by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtaposition of subject matter.

Dadaism was an angry and anarchic response to the World War I. Its artists asked fundamental questions about systems of control and figures of authority. Influenced by Freudian theories of the subconscious, Surrealism was inward-looking. Rather than brutally responding to the outside world, the Surrealists mined their inner worlds, looking for a deeper understanding of the human psyche through a series of thought-based experiments.

Dada began before the 1920s, while Surrealism began in the 1920s and was developed from Dada.

Dada artists were pulling apart familiar things and leaving them in a scattered state. By contrast, the Surrealists cut up and reconfigured everyday objects like book pages, old dolls, or found objects, transforming them into a weird and uncanny new reality.

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