Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express – verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner – the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern (André Breton, 1924).
French poet André Breton (1896 – 1966), founder of surrealism, has described his own vision of the future in the ‘First Manifesto of Surrealism’ (1924). His intensions were to bring about a profound revolution and help artists produce works freely from culturally enforced norms. This paper will address the key factors regarding surrealism by explaining its most popular methods, its goals, the historical events and founders and lastly, its impact on art and other areas.
Surrealism was rooted from Dada, which is a result of World War I. Dada artists’ goals are to create a culture where people champion the absurd, the irrational and the spontaneous to relief themselves from the boundaries and anger created by the war. Surrealists, however, having realized the “cynical and nihilistic” results of Dada’s works, used the ideas from Dada to create a “more sophisticated, more comprehensive movement” (Brad Finger, 2013, p 12). Fig 1: Timeline of Surrealism. (source: self-made)
In the early years, surrealism was aimed to become a social movement that involved everything from science to politic. The Surrealist Revolution (1924) was the first journal of the movement has