| Basic Concepts: Surrealism
Surrealism focuses the reader/viewer's reflection on the relationships of a physical universe whose laws maintain only a tenuous connection with the material world. In surrealist art and literature, the recognizable world is reshaped by playful imagination. . The prefix "sur" means "beyond," so the meaning of "surrealism" would suggest "beyond realism." The French writer André Breton define the movement in "The Manifesto of Surrealism" in 1924. Dominated in the mid-twentieth century by the works of the long-lived Salvador Dali, surrealism typically depicts a scene or subject realistically in which selected images are distorted. In Dali's "Sunflowers," a vase sports towering stalks of wide-blossomed sunflowers--with the one exception: the front stalk, in place of a flower, extrudes a fried egg yolk. In other works, physical objects are warped and hang around like rags; distorted images drift against open skies. . Online Connections For an overview of the movement, see "WebMuseum/Paris--Surrealism." Check out "Surrealism" for a magical, animated example. For samples of Salvador Dali's works, see "The Salvador Dali Print Gallery." For an introduction to both surrealist writers and artists, see "Surrealists." . Our Course Connections While the French artist, Isidore Ducasse, the "Comte de Lautréamont," is generally considered the source of the movement, just as he was the precursor of so many of the other "modern arts schools," Poe also anticipates the surrealist movement as well. In his short poem, "Dream-Land," Poe takes the reader "Out of Space, Out of Time," into a netherworld in which the laws of nature are suddenly thrown out of sync and the landscape literally folds in upon itself. .  |