(Tate Modern, 25 April 2022)
Surrealism is the (mostly) visual expression of freedom of thought. Surrealism as a political movement asserts that everyone is entitled to this freedom. There is no requirement to be good at being free in order to have the right to be free.
War is inimical to freedom. It is therefore natural that surrealism would flourish at the run-up to, during, and in the aftermath of wars.
A society comprised of rational individuals—those who know what they want, want consistently, and choose accordingly—has little use for freedom. Such a society would be quite happy with a totalitarian system in which the government would give everyone what he would have chosen for himself anyway. Because a totalitarian regime cannot predict how an irrational person would choose, however, the totalitarian regime would necessarily constrain the irrational. The commitment to accommodate the irrational is what gives surrealism its distinctive look.
