Adopted from the French, the word avant-garde carries an English translation of vanguard, or more precisely, the leaders of a social movement.

With this definition in mind, "The Avant-Garde and the Text," on exhibit at the Palmer Museum of Art through March 11, was aptly titled.

The traveling exhibit, which includes works from the socially and politically oriented movements of futurism, expressionism, Dadaism, surrealism and constructivism, was borrowed from the private collection of Dr. and Mrs. Hans J. Kleinschmidt.

Publications and text dominate the exhibit, which also includes prints.

"In a lot of cases the artist is using the text as a visual element," said Randy Ploog, assistant curator of the Palmer Museum of Art.

The artists used newspaper pieces to incorporate the everyday world in art, said Micaela Amato, assistant professor of drawing and painting. "It would become visual / formal as well as develop a narrative," she said.

By cutting words out of newspapers, placing them into a hat and drawing them randomly, Dada poets often constructed poems which did not adhere to traditional rules of poetry, Ploog said. This use of text demonstrates the element of chance implemented by Dada artists, he said.

It was at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich that the Dada movement, which is most represented in the Palmer exhibit, was born. Dada artworks from Zurich, Berlin, Hanover, Paris and New York are on display.

According to the book Art: A History of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, "the static trench warfare of World War I" led a number of young intellectuals to seek refuge in Zurich, where Hugo Ball founded the Cabaret Voltaire as "a center for protest against the entire fabric of European society."

There is much controversy surrounding the creation of the name Dada, Ploog said.

"A couple of people from the Zurich group claim that they took a knife, stuck it into a French dictionary and opened it up to where the knife went through,"he said.

Ploog said that when the dictionary was opened it was pointing to the French word Dada, which means hobby horse. Another explanation suggests that the name was chosen for its nonsensical characteristic, Ploog said.

"Some people see it as a very elementary term similar to the first word a child utters," he said.

Essentially, the basic intent of the Dada movement was to respond to conditions in Europe through the use of nonsense, chance and disorganization, Ploog said.

"With the approaching of World War I and poor economic conditions of a lot of the European countries, the Dada artist took the idea that we would be better off without any leadership at all," Ploog said.

Micaela Amato said, "Dada has to do with the absurdity and horror of what was happening during World War I and the establishment (the artists) felt was responsible."

For example, in "Gruene Leiche," a broadside manifesto dated Jan. 27, 1919, Johannes Baader proclaimed himself both the "Ober Dada"(supreme Dada) as well as the "Praesident des Weitballs"(president of the globe). According to Ploog, Baader stood high above a group of Weimar politicians and showered copies of his proclamation upon them.

Other movements of the period relied less on chance and politics than Dada.

Surrealism, founded in 1924 by Andre Breton, held that the creative aspect of the artist should come from the subconscious and not be controlled by the conscious. Constructivism and Futurism espoused the modern, fast-paced, mechanized world, Ploog said.

The exhibit will be highlighted by a lecture given by Stephen C. Foster of the University of Iowa's Fine Arts Dada Archive at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 31. According to a news release, Foster curated the exhibit in conjunction with Estera Milman of the Fine Arts Dada Archive, Roy F. Allen of Iowa's Wartburg College and the Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester.