The first Surrealist manifesto was issued by André Breton – leader and principal theorist of Surrealism – in 1924, two years after the Dada movement split. Breton published two more manifestos in 1930 and 1934. In the first Manifesto, Surrealism is defined not so much as a formal movement as a spiritual orientation, embracing ethics and politics as well as the arts. Recourse to dreams, to the unconscious, to chance events, to automatism were crucial to the Surrealist undertaking.
The long list of artists associated with Surrealism includes several whose influence and perennial popularity are today as pronounced as ever, among them Ernst, Miró, Duchamp, Magritte and Dali. The key documents included in this book, in addition to Breton’s manifestos, are Eluard’s Food for Vision; Dali’s Conquest of the Irrational; Ernst’s Beyond Painting; and articles from the Surrealist magazine La Révolution Surréaliste. Patrick Waldberg introduces these in surveying Surrealism from its beginnings to the present time.

ISBN 0500200408