The roots of Abject art go back a long way. Painters express a fascination for blood long before the Renaissance but it wasn't until the Dada movement that the fascination with transgression and taboo made it possible for Abject Art, as a movement, to exist. It owes a considerable debt to Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty. Well before the Abject Art movement was given a name by the Whitney Museum, New York in 1993, the movement towards Abject Art had long been in existence.