"The presentation of transitory, impermanent or clearly meaningless objects in an exhibition was even more provocative. A common-place today, in 1920 it was enough to make the chief constable in Cologne try to prosecute the Dadaists with fraud for charging an entrance fee for an art exhibition which was in fact nothing of the sort. (Max) Ernst replied, 'We said quite plainly that it is a dada exhibition. Dada has never claimed to have anything to do with art. If the public confuses the two, that is no fault of ours.'"

An important factor in the development of recalcitrant art in the years proceeding World War II was the publishing of 'The Dada Painters and Poets' in New York in 1951. This was to consolidate the burgeoning U.S. context for art, surfacing in an array of diluted forms from abstract expressionism, happenings and Pop iconoclasm. Meanwhile in London, where the scarification of the War was perhaps more amplified and ready to hand, ideas of anti-art were to take up an extreme position. Most prominent and resolute about their conviction was Gustav Metzger. Metzger who had emigrated to England from Berlin in 1939 subsequently lost most of his family in the holocaust. This may have contributed to his dissatisfaction with the role of art after World War II, which in turn developed into a strident anti-capitalist position in which art was seen as a key, dialectical ingredient of society. Metzger's response was to develop a series of public demonstrations in which he would paint stretched canvas with acid. Making visible a politics of disintegration supplemented Metzger's 'Auto-Destructive Art Manifesto' of 1959.

In the Manifesto, Metzger explains artists' collusion (at times unselfconscious) with the mechanisms of capital. In Metzger's opinion artists "engaged in political struggle" are essentially reformist and their activities often "consolidate the existing order, in the west, as well as in the East". In response the state "needs art as a cosmetic cloak" and "even when deployed against the state, art cannot cut loose from the umbilical cord of the state". At another level the Manifesto views artistic production as being intricately bound to processes of administration and policy in which curating, dealing and collecting are recognised as significant. For Metzger only a complete withdrawal from the making of art and its exhibitionary apparatus could contribute to a successful overthrow of capitalism. Unlike Duchamp who took it on himself to 'withdraw' from production regardless of other artists' activities, Metzger called upon all artists to cease work for a minimum of three years.

Sensing that he was not alone, Metzger organised an international gathering of artists in London in 1966. The meeting entitled The Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS) was underpinned by a formal understanding or co-operative (if not loose) understanding of art and its problems. It focused a body of activity that had been ongoing for some time. It brought together a range of anti-establishment sensibilities including Jean-Jacques Lebel, Wolf Vostell, Al Hansen, John Latham, Barry Flannagan, Robin Page, Yoko Ono, Jean Toche, Günter Brus, Kurt Kren, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch and Peter Weibel.

Two main consequences emerged from events such as DIAS. Firstly, practitioners involved in process based work and performance activities considered their activities free from comodification. In the following years the market would go to great lengths at successfully putting a price on 'live' and ephemeral work. However, lulled into a false sense of security, many artists believed that the production of time-based work automatically assumed resistance. Secondly, work which was motivated by political content began to coalesce as a 'complaint strategy'. In this context the dominant mechanisms of power are never dealt with effectively but are rather suspended in a politic of co-dependency - a condition in which recalcitrant practice relies upon the existence of the dominant, officious culture.