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When one attempts to justify surrealism, one is instantly faced with a disconcerting paradox: the surrealist movement is celebrated as art, yet its purpose is to celebrate the opposite.
This was the problem I faced when I visited a surrealist art exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), Brisbane. The so-called ‘art’ that was on display there perplexed me; in no way would I have classified the majority of it as art if I had seen it anywhere other than the walls of an art gallery.
As I casually dawdled through the display at GoMA, I looked at the people around me, expecting perhaps an example of how one should appear when viewing such strange, nonsensical material. But when I surveyed the crowd, I was slightly surprised to find the majority of my fellow observers wearing the same confused, slightly uncomfortable expression as my own.
My first thought in reaction to this was, ‘What kind of “art” provokes this sort of response from people?’ It made absolutely no sense to me. Many people clearly did not enjoy the exhibit and were trying, in vain, to find elements that were likeable or, at the very least, understandable.
It was then that a realisation struck me: Surrealism cannot be art. It fails to give any meaning to us anymore. As Leo Tolstoy wrote in a very definitive essay, ‘If only the spectators or auditors are infected by the feelings which the author has felt, it is art.’1
Unless every surrealist artist who was featured in that exhibition intended their artworks to evoke a feeling of distaste and emotional detachment, the exhibition fails to qualify as a display of art... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline