Melting clocks drape over trees; men in bowler hats float through the sky; a disembodied eye blinks back from a plate of soup… Disturbing, displaced, dreamlike – the visual language of Surrealism is now so normal that "to be surreal" can be shorthand for anything strange, unreal, or hinting at the deeper, darker recesses of the human mind.
Surrealism began as a literary movement in Paris, 1924, when writer André Breton created its first manifesto – he described it as "pure psychic automatism" – and it was shaped by Symbolist poetry and Dadaism, whose "anti-artworks" defied reason. It was soon embraced by fine artists including Max Ernst, Hans Arp, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró and René Magritte, who were reacting to the horrors of World War One, and the devastation of the 1918 influenza pandemic.
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That's to FA reader Pete.
