When it's too idiotic to be schizophrenic.

On principle, I have always found the Dada (anti)movement very endearing, bad and a bit autistic.
Even denounced by its perpetrators at later dates, it did a wonderful thing in its frenzied tearing at the canvasses around it, swearing at everyone and attempting to redefine what constituted art, and what it was to be anti-art, concepts that have been so deeply ingrained in human culture for millennia.
They sought to offend, they disregarded and in fact railed away from aesthetic and totally shit on everything traditional and I love that. I mean, of course now we're romanticising Dadaism because we can see retrospectively what it began.
It was noisy, often grotesque and demanded attention, received revulsion and revelled in it.
Unfortunately it wasn't a product of universal consciousness; that being, rather than artists who were wholly dissatisfied with the state of art (especially in its changes due to the popularity of photography), the war and the world, who independently created works in a unanimous, wordless, angry movement, like a mob that convenes with no organisation and no goal but to destroy. And it seems a little silly that these artists did in fact gather to say "Right, we're going to be like mentally deficits and smear shit on the walls and act like monkeys and write propaganda and do everything in our power to collectively tear down the bourgeois artists and destroy traditional culture!"
And years later, they would describe it as thus;
"a phenomenon bursting forth in the midst of the postwar economic and moral crisis, a savior, a monster, which would lay waste to everything in its path. [It was] a systematic work of destruction and demoralization...In the end it became nothing but an act of sacrilege."
Following Dadaism, like a hangover, was Surrealism, and from those mid-afternoon dreams through a groggy haze, some of my favourite artists came to the forefront, including and especially René Magritte.

Dictionary: Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.

Encyclopedia: Surrealism. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life.

"It is living and ceasing to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere."

I've always enjoyed Surrealism more because we saw from Magritte, Dali, Ernst, de Chirico and others these at times photorealistic paintings that were visual tricks, nonsense, illogical things and these amazing, inspired, impossible compositions. And Dali had paintings full of surprises, like a Where's Wally page, with tiny details everywhere, each intentional and intensely thought-out.

"The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd.

For it's contributions (shit smearing, and collage, assemblage, readymades, photomontage) Dadaism is an over appreciated and over romanticised art movement, and our love of it completely defies what it set out to do, and it would pout at us now for adoring it.

The essence of it was that of a tantrum.

Dadaism is a tantrum in the history of art, a recklessly thrown blot of ink on the pages, created in a impudent struggle against everything that came before, and sought to rebel and start a fire.

"For us, art is not an end in itself ... but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in." - Hugo Ball

All that said, maybe I'll always just love Duchamp's fountain for its utter audacity.