surrealism
[suh-ree-uh-liz-uh m]
- a style of art and literature developed principally in the 20th century, stressing the subconscious or nonrational significance of imagery arrived at by automatism or the exploitation of chance effects, unexpected juxtapositions, etc.
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Origin of surrealism
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for surrealist
Contemporary Examples
Di Bello described the color-splashed works as “abstract expressionism” with “surrealist” methods.
Last year he purchased three paintings by the Mexican surrealist Meme Artist at the Galeria Libertad in Querétaro.
By the time that you see them, they're bloated into surrealist Arcimboldo paintings, into soft constructions of rotten fruit.
Whatever You Do Someone Will Die. A Short Story About Impossible Choices in IraqNathan Bradley Bethea
August 31, 2014
The best way to pay tribute to the surrealist artist: get a tattoo of his work.
Many of your stories are very visual, and readers come away with a surrealist image.
Historical Examples
The screen was a surrealist painting, come alive, solid and real.
Shock TreatmentStanley Mullen
There was a surrealist flash of the jaygee's face before he clipped him into the back of the square little truck.
The SyndicC.M. Kornbluth
Somebody had turned on the electric fans, and long streams of flimsy fabric were blowing about like a surrealist maypole dance.
Null-ABCHenry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
surrealism
- (sometimes capital) a movement in art and literature in the 1920s, which developed esp from dada, characterized by the evocative juxtaposition of incongruous images in order to include unconscious and dream elements
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Word Origin
C20: from French surréalisme, from sur- 1 + réalisme realism
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Word Origin and History for surrealist
surrealism
n.
1927, from French surréalisme (from sur- "beyond" + réalisme "realism"), coined c.1917 by Guillaume Apollinaire, taken over by Andre Breton as the name of the movement he launched in 1924 with "Manifeste de Surréalisme." Taken up in English at first in the French form; the anglicized version is from 1931.
De cette alliance nouvelle, car jusqu'ici les décors et les costumes d'une part, la chorégraphie d'autre part, n'avaient entre eux qu'un lien factice, il este résulté, dans 'Parade,' une sorte de surréalisme. [Apollinaire, "Notes to 'Parade' "]
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
surrealism
A movement in art and literature that flourished in the early twentieth century. Surrealism aimed at expressing imaginative dreams and visions free from conscious rational control. Salvador Dali was an influential surrealist painter; Jean Cocteau was a master of surrealist film.
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The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.