Surrealism

Surrealism, a movement founded in Paris in 1924 with the publication of André Breton's first Surrealist Manifesto. It was conceived as a revolutionary mode of thought and action, concerned with politics, philosophy, and psychology as well as literature and art. The Manifesto attacked rationalism and narrow logical systems; drawing on Freud's theories concerning the unconscious and its relation to dreams, it called for the exploration of hidden and neglected areas of the human psyche. The group of writers and painters that gathered round Breton experimented with automatic processes, which were considered the best means of producing the surreal poetic image: the spontaneous coupling of unrelated objects. An extended conception of poetry, which was to be part of, not separate from, life, was central to surrealism. In England the movement attracted some attention among literary circles, but it was only after the International Surrealist Exhibition of 1936 that a surrealist group was established, its members including D. Gascoyne, H. Read, Roland Penrose (1900–84), and the documentary film-maker Humphrey Jennings (1907–50).