André Breton—theorist, poet, novelist, editor, and author of the 1924 Surrealist Manifesto—famously defined surrealism as “psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express . . .

Ninety years ago André Breton asked: “Can’t the dream be used in solving the fundamental problems of life?” The answer, of course, is no. The unconscious does not offer some insight into the mystery ...

“Surreal” is a slippery word. No longer used to refer exclusively to the art movement that began in the 1920s, the term is tossed around as a synonym for “dreamlike” or “bizarre.” It has been so ...

In her first solo San Francisco show since 1984, Marie Wilson's work surprises, delights and is overdue for rediscovery.

The history of art has Pablo Picasso to thank for Ren Magritte. “You see, like many young painters in the 1920s I wanted to live in Paris,”Magritte once told a pair of journalists visiting his ...

Surreal. It’s one of those words like insane or awesome that’s taken a beating from aggressive misuse. I’ve heard the term applied to both a bus driver wearing a funny hat and the sight of the second ...

The Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos’s newest film, “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” (out Oct. 27), is about a man confronted with a nightmarish (and mythic) choice: kill his son, his daughter or his ...

At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, or LACMA, there is an artwork on display, a medium-sized painting of a pipe on a cream-colored background, underneath which is written in plain letters: “Ceci ...

Surrealism is celebrating its 100th birthday this year. The poet Guillaume Apollinaire coined the term to describe his play “Les Mamelles de Tiresias” (The Teats of Tiresias), which opened in a small ...