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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Surrealism explores the subconscious and offers a unique perspective on existence and memory.
In this quote, AndrΓ© Breton suggests that surrealism, as an artistic movement, leads individuals to confront deep existential truths, including the concept of death, which he metaphorically describes as a 'secret society.' He implies that through surrealism, one can discover profound insights about memory and existence, represented by the letter M, which opens the window to deeper understanding and reflection on our past and its impact on life.
Themes
SurrealismMemoryExistenceDeathArt
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote in a discussion about the role of surrealism in contemporary art critiques.
More from Andre Breton
All quotes βBeauty 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 lifeβs 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
The simplest act of surrealism is to walk out into the street, gun in hand, and shoot at random.
Andre BretonRead
Similar quotes
Film is the manipulative medium par excellence. When you think back on the history of film and the 20th century, you see the propaganda that's been made. So there are moral demands on the director to treat the spectators as seriously as he or she takes himself and not to see them merely as victims that can be manipulated to whatever ends they have.
Michael HanekeRead
The thing is, as a film director, you're essentially alone: You have to tell a story primarily through pictures, and only you know the film you see in your head.
Mike NicholsRead
I walk into the kitchen, look at the typer down there on the floor. It's a dirty floor. It's a dirty typer that types dirty stories
Charles BukowskiRead
Write your own songs. It helps you to mean what you're singing, which will then make it mean something to listeners.
Natasha BedingfieldRead
It would be a lowly art that allowed itself to be understood all at once.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
Oh Woman, come before us, before our eyes longing for beauty, and tired of the ugliness of civilization, come in simple tunics, letting us see the line and harmony of the body beneath, and dance for us. Dance us the sweetness of life. Give us again the sweetness and the beauty of the true dance, give us again the joy of seeing the simple unconscious pure body of a woman. Like a great call it has come, and women must hear it and answer it.
Isadora DuncanRead