Note Details
- Stage: seed 🌱
- Type: concept
- Topics: surrealism, art, philosophy
Surrealism is a cultural and artistic movement founded in 1920s Paris that sought to liberate the mind by channeling the unconscious through art, literature, and philosophy.
Surrealism emerged in the early 1920s as both an artistic movement and a philosophical stance, formally established by Andre Breton’s 1924 Manifeste du Surrealisme. The movement sought to resolve the contradictions between dream and reality into a higher synthesis — a “surreality.” Drawing heavily on Freudian psychoanalysis, the surrealists developed techniques like automatism, frottage, and exquisite corpse to bypass rational thought and tap directly into the unconscious mind.
Key figures of the movement include visual artists such as Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Max Ernst, Frida Kahlo, and Remedios Varo, as well as writers like Breton, Paul Eluard, and Antonin Artaud. The surrealists believed that by disrupting habitual perception, they could reveal deeper truths about human experience and liberate both individual consciousness and society from the constraints of rationalism and bourgeois convention.
Surrealism’s influence extends far beyond the visual arts into film (Luis Bunuel, David Lynch), literature, theater, and contemporary culture. Its legacy persists in any creative practice that privileges the irrational, the dreamlike, and the marvelous as pathways to insight.