Surrealism is instantly recognizable and widely misunderstood as merely "weird." In fact it was a serious program: a movement that borrowed Freud's theory of the unconscious and tried to unlock it in art and writing. To understand the images, you eventually have to read the ideas.
This path starts with the artists you already half-know, moves to the manifestoes and psychology that drove them, then widens into the poetry, Dada roots, and history of the movement.
Start with the artists
Begin where the pictures are. The Persistence of Memory: A Biography of Dalí introduces the movement's most famous showman, Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary explores its quietest and most philosophical painter, and Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera tells the story of an artist often linked to Surrealism who transformed personal pain into unforgettable images.
Read the ideas that drove it
Now go to the source. Manifestoes of surrealism collects André Breton's founding statements — the movement literally defined itself in these pages — and Nadja, Breton's strange autobiographical novel, shows the theory in living practice.
Surrealism is unreadable without its psychology. The Interpretation of Dreams is Freud's foundational account of the dreaming mind that the Surrealists mined for imagery, and The psychopathology of everyday life extends the same logic to slips and accidents of daily life — the raw material of Surrealist play.
Widen into poetry, Dada, and history
Finally, see the whole landscape. The poetry of Dada and surrealism gathers the literary side of the movement, and The Dada painters and poets documents the anarchic art movement that Surrealism grew out of. For the deeper scholarship, Surrealism and the crisis of the object and The surrealist revolution in France trace the movement's ideas and its turbulent history.
Read in this order and the famous images stop being random and start being legible. Follow the full path to the end.
