An Introduction to Surrealism: The Big Aesthetic Ideas

Before surrealism became Merriam Webster's word of the year in 2016 for its useful description of reality, it applied to art that incorporates the bizarre juxtapositions of dream logic. We know it from the films of David Lynch and paintings of Salvador Dalí. We may not, however, know it from the poetry of Andre Breton, “but the movement actually began in literature,” points out the Scottish National Gallery introductory video above. Breton, influenced by Freud and Rimbaud, railed against mediocrity, positivism, the ‘realistic attitude,” and the “reign of logic” in his 1924 “Manifesto of Surrealism.”

The first person to write the word Surréalisme was Guillaume Apollinaire, a French writer. However, after being influenced by the psychoanalysis of Freud, literature and art in the 20th century, which aims to express the world of unconsciousness or dreams, that would be also seen as the starting point.

Surrealism might place importance on a fantasy and daydream world that is not governed by reason. In other words, surrealism has turned its eyes to the unconscious realm, which was hidden underwater like an iceberg.

SURREALISM, n. 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. by Symbolist poet Guillaume Apollinaire

Meanwhile, Dali “introduced Surrealism to the general public, and made it fun!... America loved it, and him. They made Dali a celebrity," and he helped popularize a Surrealist aesthetic in Hollywood film and Madison Avenue advertising. But to really understand the movement, we must not look only to its visual vocabulary and its influence on pop culture, but also to the poetry, philosophy, and politics of its founder.