Surrealism is an artistic and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I. It is characterized by the depiction of unnerving, illogical scenes and the use of techniques that allow the unconscious mind to express itself. The movement produced works of painting, writing, theatre, filmmaking, photography, and other media. Key features of Surrealism include:
- Element of surprise: Works of Surrealism feature unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur.
- Challenging norms: At the core of Surrealism is the willingness to challenge imposed values and norms, and a search for freedom.
- Automatism: Surrealist artists seek to explore the unconscious mind as a way of creating art, resulting in dreamlike, sometimes bizarre imagery across endless mediums. The core of Surrealism is a focus on illustrating the mind’s deepest thoughts automatically when they surface.
Surrealism grew principally out of the earlier Dada movement, which before World War I produced works of anti-art that deliberately defied reason. However, Surrealisms emphasis was not on negation but on positive expression. The movement represented a reaction against what its members saw as the destruction wrought by the "rationalism" that had guided European culture and politics in the past and that had culminated in the horrors of World War I. According to the major spokesman of the movement, the poet and critic André Breton, who published The Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the world of dream and fantasy could be joined to the everyday rational world in "an absolute reality, a super-reality," or surreality.
