Can you be a Surrealist and NOT be in the Surrealist Movement?

Jay — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 05:09:30 +0000

My “Dada and Surrealism” professor made the distinction between Surrealists and surrealists. According to him, the people who were deemed to be in the surrealist movement at any given time (by Andre Breton) were surrealists, and the people who weren’t in the movement weren’t surrealists, even if their work was surreal.
I like the professor, but sometimes these academic arguments, are, well academic. (In the pedantic sense of the word.)

Take this for example:

sur-re-al-ism
n.
1. A 20th-century literary and artistic movement that attempts to express the workings of the subconscious and is characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtaposition of subject matter.
2. Literature or art produced in this style.

(http://www.thefreedictionary.com/surrealism)

sur-re-al
adj.
1. Having qualities attributed to or associated with surrealism: “Even with most facilities shut down … a few mavericks managed to slip into the park to sample the almost surreal emptiness before the shutdown ended.” Peter H. King.
2. Having an oddly dreamlike quality.

(http://www.thefreedictionary.com/surreal)

Well, those words seem to mean a style of art, second to the movement, and with good reason.

What else is there to call artwork that have the qualities of a dream?

According to Andre Breton you don’t have to be in the movement to be a surrealist:

Rimbaud is a surrealist in the way he lived, and elsewhere. // Jarry is a surrealist in absinthe.

Andre Breton, “Manifesto of Surrealism” p 27.

Rimbaud died in 1891 and Jarry died in 1907.

They were both dead before the movement started.

Jay Gidwitz » Contemporary Art

Can you be a Surrealist and NOT be in the Surrealist Movement?