Surrealism will usher you into death, which is a secret society. It will glove your hand, burying therein the profound M with which the word Memory begins.
Andre BretonRead
It is hard not to see into the future, faced with today's blind architecture - a thousand times more stupid and more revolting than that of other ages. How bored we shall be inside!
Interpretation
What this quote means
Breton critiques contemporary architecture, suggesting it lacks inspiration and foresight compared to the past.
In this quote, Andre Breton expresses his discontent with modern architecture, arguing that it fails to engage with the future and lacks the creativity seen in previous eras. He emphasizes a sense of boredom and dissatisfaction with the sterile and uninspired designs of contemporary buildings, highlighting a disconnect between human experience and the spaces we inhabit.
Themes
ArchitectureFutureBoredomCritiqueArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about city planning, one might quote Breton to emphasize the need for imaginative architecture.
More from Andre Breton
All quotes →The mind, placed before any kind of difficulty, can find an ideal outlet in the absurd. Accommodation to the absurd readmits adults to the mysterious realm inhabited by children.
Andre BretonRead
Beauty is like a train that ceaselessly roars out of the Gare de Lyon and which I know will never leave, which has not left. It consists of jolts and shocks, many of which do not have much importance, but which we know are destined to produce one Shock, which does...The human heart, beautiful as a seismograph...Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or will not be at all.
Andre BretonRead
I maintain that anyone who still refuses to see, for instance, a horse galloping on a tomato, must be an idiot. A tomato is also a child's balloon - Surrealism, again, having suppressed the word "like."
Andre BretonRead
There is no use being alive if one must work. The event from which each of us is entitled to expect the revelation of his own life’s meaning - that event which I may not yet have found, but on whose path I seek myself - is not earned by work.
Andre BretonRead
Let us not mince words: the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful.
Andre BretonRead
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We are all regionalists in our origins, however 'universal' our themes and characters, and without our cherished hometowns and childhood landscapes to nourish us, we would be like plants set in shallow soil. Our souls must take root - almost literally.
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