Surrealism

Surrealism is a movement variously – and convincingly – assessed as both short-lived and continuous; gnomic and popular; international and very French; historically specific, and resonant with a range of contemporary art practices so broad as to render the very notion of “influence” meaningless. In fact, what is consistent in surrealism is inconsistency itself: a persistent ludic indeterminacy welcomed in its ranks as the only guarantee of sustained revolutionary potential. Once understood as a series of radical displacements of identity and intention, it is easier, perhaps, to identify the surrealist legacy in postwar and postmodern expansions of art practice than if that assessment were made based on surrealism's most canonic legacy in the visual arts, painting. Equivocation was the soul of the movement; definitive purpose, so long as the ludic element was strong, remained evasive.