Surreal. It’s one of those words like insane or awesome that’s taken a beating from aggressive misuse. I’ve heard the term applied to both a bus driver wearing a funny hat and the sight of the second ...

An exhibition of Wifredo Lam is about as safe a bet as the Museum of Modern Art can place and still plausibly say that it’s a bet on expanding the canon. The Cuban artist is one of the most famous ...

The art market has a strong Surrealist vibe entering the fall season. It struck me as I rushed around New York last week, from the Armory Show to satellite events and gallery exhibitions. The ...

At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, or LACMA, there is an artwork on display, a medium-sized painting of a pipe on a cream-colored background, underneath which is written in plain letters: “Ceci ...

Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney A century ago, French writer André Breton published a manifesto that would go on to become one of the most influential artistic ...

To bring her surrealist works to life, British artist Ithell Colquhoun employed techniques ranging from fumage to decalcomania, entopic graphomania and parsemage. The first uses smoke from a lighted ...

“Surreal” is a slippery word. No longer used to refer exclusively to the art movement that began in the 1920s, the term is tossed around as a synonym for “dreamlike” or “bizarre.” It has been so ...