These artists explored subconscious thought in order to bypass restrictions placed on people by social convention.
1922 - 1939
Beginner's guide
Influenced by French psychology and the work of Sigmund Freud, the Surrealists experimented with practices that allowed them to explore subconscious thought and identity and bypass restrictions placed on people by social convention.
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Surrealist Techniques: Collage
The Surrealists saw collage as a means to enact what they considered to be the fundamental poetic activity of the unconscious mind.
Surrealist Photography
Photographs were used by the Surrealists to call into question the nature of reality.
Surrealist Exhibitions
Surrealist exhibitions broke down conventional distinctions between art and non-art.
Surrealist Techniques: Subversive Realism
Everything is, in the end, a question of representation (in words or images) in which we choose to believe, or not.
Surrealist Techniques: Automatism
Automatism was a group of techniques used by the Surrealists to facilitate the direct and uncontrolled outpouring of unconscious thought.
Surrealism and Psychoanalysis
The Surrealists were interested in the unconscious as a creative source.
Surrealism: Origins and Precursors
The goal of Surrealist writings and art was to “ruin” the logical, practical, and moral reasoning that structures human understanding of reality.
The Case for Surrealism
Surrealism may be familiar from dorm room posters, but what do you really know about this movement?
Surrealism, an introduction
Identifying as agents of change, the Surrealists were interested in Freudian psychology and social revolution.
Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory
Dalí wages war on the rational in this naturalistic landscape populated by strange objects.
Salvador Dalí, Metamorphosis of Narcissus
Dalí’s forms are mirrored and doubled in this disconcerting painting, made in a state of “paranoiac critical activity.”