ESSENTIALLY: A philosophical and artistic movement that centered on the unconscious mind.
FIRST INTRODUCED: 1917
EXAMPLE: Landscape With Girl Skipping Rope, Salvador Dalí, 1936

The term surreal gets used a lot. But it's usually in a different context than what the word was originally invented to describe. Most often, it functions as a kind of synonym for strange, a characteristic or element that is just a bit *off* and maybe even a little otherworldly. It's become such an everyday phrase that it can be easy to forget its roots. Originally coined in the preface to a 1917 play by Guillaume Apollinaire, Surrealism came to be defined by a group of Parisian intellectuals in 1924 as "pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought . . . in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation."

Though its use originated in literature, the movement may be best remembered for its impact on visual art. Some of the 20th century's most noted artists – Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Man Ray, Giorgio de Chirico – spent much of their career working in a surrealist style. These artists (and others like them) were collectively fascinated by the subconscious and how depicting realistic things in an unrealistic setting, or vice versa, could have an unsettling effect that questioned the fabric of the world around us – and our own minds.

SURREALISM

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SURREALISM