André Breton | Sandra Kontos

André Breton published his Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924. Freud’s theories on automatic writing & the subconscious significantly informed Breton’s concepts on the psychic origins of the image. (1) Rational analysis and calculated forms of exploration were rejected by the Surrealists, they were seen as blocking imagination. In the Surrealist Manifesto Breton wrote that he wanted to merge the conscious and subconscious in order to create a distinct “new reality.” (2)

Breton and his contemporaries used dreams, intoxication, chance, sexual ecstasy, and madness to access the creative powers of the unconscious. (3) “The images obtained by such means, whether visual or literary, were prized precisely to the degree that they captured these moments of psychic intensity in provocative forms of unrestrained, convulsive beauty.” (4) The Surrealist dilemma of reconciling the contradictory conditions of reality and dreams were compellingly resolved by using photographic techniques. Artists used double exposure, combination printing, montage and solarization to merge the conscious and subconscious mind. (5)