Surrealist feasted on the unconscious. They believed that
Freud’s theories on dreams, ego, superego and the id opened doors to the authentic
self and a truer reality the surreal. Like the Dadaists they relished the possibilities
of chance and spontaneity. Their leader the Pope of Surrealism was French
writer Andre Breton (1896-1966) who joined fellow writers Philippe Soupault, Louis
Aragon, Paul Eluard and Robert Denos (among many others) in their appreciation of
nineteenth-century bad boys Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) and Isidore Ducasse (whose
pseudonym was Comet de Lautremont 1848-1870) expresses the Surrealist spirit concisely
the chance of meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing- machine and an
umbrella. For the Surrealists the idea of skill from training was understood. Their
philosophy was to let go of the constraints of learned skills and tradition
methods of making art. They sought out children’s art naïf art (for example Henri
Rousseau) primitive art and outsider art (such as the art made by patients in
mental institutions) to stoke the fires of their almost incoherent inventions
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