quotations about surrealism
The mind which plunges into Surrealism, relives with burning excitement the best part of childhood.
ANDRÉ BRETON
Surrealist Manifesto, 1924
I am the soul in limbo.
ANDRÉ BRETON
NADJA
Desire tends towards its own realization and change takes place when the desire for it shatters the bounds of the possible, breaking the dialectical equilibrium holding together the framework of what is existent. It is at such moments that the imaginary flows into the real and overwhelms it, inundating it until it has been absorbed.
MICHAEL RICHARDSON
Dedalus Book of Surrealism 2: The Myth of the World
Surrealism was a perception of reality over which reason was denied the opportunity to exercise confining restrictions.
JOHN HERBERT MATTHEWS
The Surrealist Mind
Surrealism is born of a consciousness of the derisory condition allotted to the individual and his thought, and a refusal to accommodate oneself to it.
JEAN-LOUIS BÉDOUIN
attributed, Surrealism, 1961
The key to surrealism is to create something apparently disparate and irrational that at the end has more sense than the objective world.
CISCO JIMENEZ
"A Surreal Thread Connecting 'Dreamers and Realists'", San Antonio Current, August 3, 2016
I have been inclined to regard the Surrealists as complete fools, but that young Spaniard Salvador Dali with his candid, fanatical eyes and his undeniable technical mastery, has changed my estimate.
SIGMUND FREUD
letter to novelist Stefan Zweig, 1939
Landscape and Surrealism are anyway uneasy bedfellows: "dreamscapes" (that Hollywood coinage) are entirely the invention of the wide-awake.
T.J. CLARK
"At Tate Britain", London Review of Books, February 2, 2017
Surrealism is not really about blueprints. Surrealism is kind of being open to your psychology, being open to your unconscious and kind of just doing it.
BLACK FRANCIS
"Pixies Frontman Black Francis on Making the Band's First Full Album in 25 Years", Vogue, October 4, 2016
The imaginary is what tends to become real.
ANDRÉ BRETON
Earthlight
Surrealism sought to maintain its autonomy and the right to continue its own particular investigations into ways of changing consciousness, the role of the unconscious within the social body, and the current state of language both visual and verbal.
DAWN ADES
afterword, Investigating Sex: Surrealist Research
Well-tempered Surrealism is a contradiction in terms.
T.J. CLARK
"At Tate Britain", London Review of Books, February 2, 2017
To the Surrealists, speed was a way of getting the hand out of control, free of conscious guidance, and the results were interpreted as evidence of the unconscious mind.
LAWRENCE ALLOWAY
text for 'The Baziotes Memorial Exhibition' and its accompanying catalogue at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1965
The stress in Surrealism is always upon life and thought, not on literature or technique. To a Surrealist everything is dictated by the place which art has in life. Art would lose its function if it were separated from the problems of everyday living.
SILVANO LEVY
Surrealism: Surrealist Visuality
I think surrealism gave later generations permission to challenge the limits of traditional artistic categories, materials and modes of production.
JODI ROBERTS
"Above and beyond realism", Palo Alto Online, January 26, 2017
Surrealism has come to have two meanings: it was originally the closely-knit spiritual union of artists and writers who operated under the common trademark, worked out their artistic problems together, wrote for the same periodicals, sometimes even collaborated on works. But ... in its broader sense it represents a spiritual crisis that stems from the ideological developments of the nineteenth century, and has succeeded in producing a technique of writing and painting that conveys a materio-mystical vision of the universe.
ANNA BALAKIAN
Surrealism
Surrealism, if an artist has to be influenced by it, is best taken in operatic overdoses for a very short time.
T.J. CLARK
"At Tate Britain", London Review of Books, February 2, 2017
Instead of stubbornly attempting to use surrealism for purposes of subversion, it is necessary to try to make of surrealism something as solid, complete and classic as the works of museums.
SALVADOR DALI
The Secret Life of Salvador Dali
In pop surrealism (or low brow) artwork, the dreamy, subconscious and decontextualized nature of surrealism is combined with the shallow symbols, motifs and characters associated with modern pop culture. It's a juxtaposition that creates great unrest, with the subconscious flow of surrealism battering against the very conscious, controlled and groomed nature of consumerist and popular culture. The pop culture elements seem to bring an ingenuine, contrived and corrupted element to that which we hold sacred to ourselves -- the subconscious and the dreams that actually show our true selves.
LORELEI DIETZ
"Salem Tattoo Artist Kelly Doty Experiments with Pop Surrealism", The Amherst Student, June 30, 2017
MTV has severely compromised surrealism, perhaps ruined it forever.
DONALD BARTHELME
"Being Bad"