It turns 100 this year, but what is surrealism and why is it more relevant than ever?

By Cath Pound, CNN

(CNN) — From a steam train shooting out of a fireplace (“Time Transfixed,” by René Magritte) or to the nude back of a woman transformed into a violin (“Le Violin D’Ingres” by Man Ray) surrealist art still has the power to intrigue.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the movement, yet its influence still resonates with artists around the world.

Surrealism’s origins are in the collective trauma of World War I and the global flu epidemic of 1918. Convinced that the rational, masculine world was to blame for such horrors, the group’s founder, French writer André Breton, sought an “irrational” alternative rooted in the world of the subconscious and dream states. In the first “surrealist manifesto” — an explanatory booklet published in Paris in October 1924 which outlined the group’s ideals — Breton called for a revolution in thinking “dictated by the absence of all control exercised by reason.” Although that might sound somewhat bewildering, it was in effect a call for freedom and a rejection of the status quo.

“It’s a movement of rebellion against institutions, religion, the army and all the powers who tried to imprison the mind,” said Xavier Canonne, curator of the show “Histoire De Ne Pas Rire” — which translates as A History of Not Laughing — at the Bozar Center for Fine Arts in Brussels, Belgium.

A movement with unique freedoms

Having begun as a literary movement, surrealism soon morphed into an artistic one. Dreamlike imagery and visual games are its recurring features, as are an underlying political sensibility and a desire to make the viewer question the world around them. However, the absence of a defined aesthetic gave surrealist artists a unique freedom to express themselves in whatever way they chose.

In “Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War)” painted in 1936, the Spanish artist Salvador Dalí depicts a delirious, bizarrely distorted giant figure gleefully ripping itself apart in reference to the tragic self-destruction brought about by the Spanish civil war. René Magritte’s “The Treachery of Images” from 1929 takes a more coolly cerebral approach. Combining an image of a pipe with the words “Ceci N’est Pas Un Pipe,” (which translates as “This is not a pipe”), it forces us to question what we see and what we are told.

The movement caught fire as it traversed geographical boundaries and decades, with artists from different countries and eras adapting its ideals to their own styles and preoccupations.

“Metamorphosis is one of the key ideas of the entire movement and of course it has changed over time. Different artists from different backgrounds can use Surrealism to explore their individual concerns,” said Francisa Vandepitte, curator of “Imagine! 100 Years of Surrealism” currently showing at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium before moving to the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Germany, Madrid’s Fundación Mapfré and lastly the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Each host venue will show a core selection of works and add to them with others from their own collections, emphasizing how the movement developed in different regions.

Influencing a new generation of artists

While surrealism had a reputation for misogyny — Breton and the group’s early male hierarchy thought of women within the movement as simply “muses” — women were making and exhibiting art alongside male peers right from the start. Their work, however, was overlooked for many years by an art historical establishment which certainly was misogynistic.

To redress the balance, the Brussels exhibitions are showing the work of Belgian artists Jane Graverol and Rachel Baes who “took advantage of the movement’s calls for freedom and explored it on their own terms,” said Vandepitte.

Other notables — such as British painter and writer Leonora Carrington, who pursued freedom in both her life and work — continue to be influential to a new generation of artists. Carrington moved to Mexico in the 1940s and together with Remedios Varo and Hungarian-Mexican photojournalist Kati Horna, developed a uniquely feminine version of surrealism which referenced matriarchal societies and mysticism. Her work, which also focused on ecological issues and androgyny, inspired the theme of the 2022 Venice Biennale whose virtually all female line-up included many influenced by her practice.

Which is not to say that it is only female artists who are embracing Surrealism today. In his book “New Surrealism: The Uncanny in Contemporary Painting,” artist and writer Robert Zeller explores why and how contemporary artists are engaging with surrealist ideas and imagery.

Zeller believes that surrealism’s appeal to today’s artists is down to the freedom it gives them to express themselves in a way that is accessible to everyone – i.e., the language of dreams. “By using a visual language that would normally be reserved for dreams, artists can be indirect, more obtuse in communicating through the use of absurdity, non-sequiturs and hidden meanings,” said Zeller.

Artists are engaging with classic surrealist tropes such as presenting the familiar as unfamiliar and uncanny, the juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated imagery and the use of absurdity to critique political or social issues “but in new ways that speak to a younger generation,” Zeller said.

Given our current political and social situation, which in some ways mirrors that of the 1920s, there is much that contemporary artists want to speak about. “It’s not as dire, at least in terms of the many millions of casualties of World War I, but we do have many wars that are ongoing, and a subsiding global pandemic,” said Zeller.

The ambiguous language of surrealism may be the perfect one in which to have those conversations, too. As Zeller noted, “It can be hard to express oneself, one’s beliefs without offending someone. But no one is going to be offended by the use of dream language.”

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