“Making art precipitates self-doubt, stirring deep waters that lay between what you know you should be, and what you fear you might be.”
– DAVID BAYLES AND TED ORLAND, ART & FEAR: OBSERVATIONS ON THE PERILS (AND REWARDS) OF ARTMAKING
Surrealism in its absolute simplicity is imagination, emotion, knowledge of self. Is this not what the aim of art is as a whole?
You could say surrealism seems weirder on its surface. But could that not mean that the artist is more in touch with their inner self or that their psyche differs from the norm?
My pieces I made based on my dreams in 2013 were fully in touch with my unconscious, a surrealist pillar, but I wouldn’t look at the images, in all cases, on their own, not knowing the context, and place them under the surrealist umbrella. So where then is the line that signifies some emotive, imaginative, images of self, over others?
Or maybe, just maybe, this all goes to show how much of an impact the Surrealist movement had on art that came after.