The Unconscious Mind
This website explores three influential Surrealist artists: René Magritte, Frida Kahlo, and Salvador Dalí. Each of these artists has helped define what Surrealism means, and contributed greatly to the art world and popular culture. In discussing these figures, this website seeks to demonstrate the diversity and complexity of surrealism. It's a genre that was truly ahead of its time; it depicted subjects in a way that had never been done, in extremely unique and original ways, and using new and interesting techniques. These works were the face of a new era in human thinking, and forced people to redefine art itself.
Surrealism was not only a visual art movement, but also a movement in literature. It began in the early 1920s, and was borne from the earlier Dada movement. André Breton's The Surrealist Manifesto defined Surrealism as “pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express…the real process of thought. It is the dictation of thought, free from any control by the reason and of any aesthetic or moral preoccupation.” It blurred the lines between conscious and unconscious, dream and reality; it let the two sides interact freely in a state that had never been explored. Some other notable Surrealists were Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, and Yves Tanguy.