Surrealism ... is the forbidden flame of the proletariat embracing the insurrectional dawn--enabling us to rediscover at last the ...revolutionary moment: the radiance of the workers' councils as a life profoundly adored by those we love.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The vice named surrealism is the immoderate and impassioned use of the stupefacient image or rather of the uncontrolled provocatio...n of the image for its own sake and for the element of unpredictable perturbation and of metamorphosis which it introduces into the domain of representation; for each image on each occasion forces you to revise the entire Universe.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express, whether verbally or in writing, or in any other way, t...he real process of thought. Thought's dictation, free from any control by the reason, independent of any aesthetic or moral preoccupation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a tendency to discuss surrealism and cubism as if one proceeds out of the other, but in fact there is no similarity. Cubi...sm was a way of painting that a group of painters imposed on themselves, surrealism a philosophy of life put forward by a band of poets. The first was essentially a method of breaking up the object and putting it together again according to concepts of pictorial structure, a phase of the greatest importance in the development of such painters as Picasso, Braque, Marcoussis, and Gris, but affecting literature only through Apollinaire, and life hardly at all. The second was the attempt of a highly organized group to change life altogether, to make a new kind of man.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An aesthetic movement with a revolutionary dynamism and no popular appeal should proceed quite otherwise than by public scandal, p...ublicity stunt, noisy expulsion and excommunication.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Instead of stubbornly attempting to use surrealism for purposes of subversion, it is necessary to try to make of surrealism someth...ing as solid, complete and classic as the works of museums.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Like all revolutions, the surrealist revolution was a reversion, a restitution, an expression of vital and indispensable spiritual... needs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »