Surrealism Art Quotes & Sayings

In our modern world, this elemental quality of storytelling is denied. We live today in a world in which everything has its place and function and nothing is left out of place. Storytelling is thus at a discount and like everything else in a world ruled by the laws of exchange value, literature is required to submit itself to the requirements of the market and must learn, like any other commodity, to adapt and serve needs that lie outside of itself and its concrete value. It is forced to stand not for itself but for an ideological cause of one sort or another, whether it be political, social or literary. It cannot exist for itself: like everything else it has to be justified. And for this very reason the power of storytelling is automatically devalued. Literature is reduced to the status of complimentary utilitarian functions: as a pastime to provide distraction and entertainment, or as a heightened activity that would claim to explore 'great truths' about the human condition. — Michael Richardson

Surrealism is not a movement. It is a latent state of mind perceivable through the powers of dream and nightmare. — Salvador Dali

The type of work I do, which is often called 'Pop Surrealism,' is very separate from Gagosian and Mary Boone type of gallery art. — Molly Crabapple

[David] Salle's earlier work had been marked by a kind of spaciousness, sometimes an emptiness, such as surrealist works are prone to. But here everything was condensed, impacted, mired. The paintings were like an ugly mood. — Janet Malcolm

Surrealism! What is Surrealism? In my opinion, it is above all a reawakening of the poetic idea in art, the reintroduction of the subject but in a very particular sense, that of the strange and illogical. — Paul Delvaux

You know you lose a lot of social skills if you're a writer. You spend too long alone. And its forced me to address that. — Anthony Minghella

Ignorance leads men into a party, and shame keeps them from getting out again. — Benjamin Franklin

Nobody can live on a bridge or plant potatoes but it is fine for comings and goings, meetings, partings and long views and a real connection to someplace else where you may in the crazy weathers of struggle how and again want to be. — Marge Piercy

I loved surrealism and abstract painting, and anything related to those. I always thought painting was the highest form of art. What led me to drawing was seeing so much self-important, pretentious, conceptual-type art in university. I wanted to reject that by making quick, fun art. — Neil Farber

Painting, by its nature, cannot provide an object of simultaneous collective reception ... as film is able to do today ... And while efforts have been made to present paintings to the masses in galleries and salons, this mode of reception gives the masses no means of organizing and regulating their response. Thus, the same public which reacts progressively to a slapstick comedy inevitably displays a backward attitude toward Surrealism. — Walter Benjamin

American art in general ... takes to surreal exaggerations and metaphors; but its Puritan work ethic has little use for the playful self-indulgence behind Parisian Surrealism. — John Updike

I spoke fire, laughed smoke, and madness spilled forth from my inspiration. — Arthur Holitscher

yes, i have dated Salvador Dali guy when i was a high school girl. he was a great lover. but i had to dump him because he stole my inspiration of bent clock*~* .... who cares... — Hiroko Sakai

Christlike communications are expressions of affection and not anger, truth and not fabrication, compassion and not contention, respect and not ridicule, counsel and not criticism, correction and not condemnation. They are spoken with clarity and not with confusion. They may be tender or they may be tough, but they must always be tempered. — L. Lionel Kendrick

I am the soul in limbo. — Andre Breton

Every page should explode, either because of its staggering absurdity, the enthusiasm of its principles, or its typography. — Tristan Tzara

The one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous. — Salvador Dali

Surrealism is the magical surprise of finding a lion in a wardrobe, where you were 'sure' of finding shirts. — Frida Kahlo

I have the picture of Barack [Obama] and me dancing right outside of my dressing room door, I see it every single day, and it makes me very happy. — Ellen DeGeneres

Friends carry our sadness for us when we're terrified we'll be crushed under the weight of it. — Lisa-Jo Baker

That's what dreams are really like, you know? They're not full of melting clocks or floating roses or people made out of rocks. Most of the time, dreams look just like the normal world. It's your feelings that tell you something's off. Not your mind, not your intellect, not something as obvious as that. The only part of you that really knows what's going on is the part of you that's most a mystery. If that's not Surrealism, I don't know what is. — Amy Reed

I've always enjoyed feeling a connection to the avant-garde, such as Dada and surrealism and pop art. The only thing the artist can do is be honest with themselves and make the art they want to make. That's what I've always done. — Jeff Koons

Everyday objects shriek aloud. — Rene Magritte

From the classically executed lifelike bouquets, tempting you to reach for the petals that fell on a three-dimensional tablecloth, to a new and disturbing style in which the colors seemed to blaze with such intensity they destroyed the old lines, the old solidity, to make a vision like those states which I'm nearest my delirium and flowers grow before my eyes and crackle like the flames of lamps. — Anne Rice

Long live transfinite mountains, the hollow earth, time machines, fractal writing, aliens, dada, telepathy, flying saucers, warped space, teleportation, artificial reality, robots, pod people, hylozoism, endless shrinking, intelligent goo, antigravity, surrealism, software highs, two-dimensional time, gnarly computation, the art of photo composition, pleasure zappers, nanomachines, mind viruses, hyperspace, monsters from the deep and, of course, always and forever, the attack of the giant ants! — Rudy Rucker

Correct division should be preferred over corrupt unity. — Mark Dever

I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters. — Henry David Thoreau

I can't walk away from someone I love without saying 'I love you' one last time. I've known how very
much I've loved you for a long time. You think I'm a child and I know nothing about the world or about
love. But I know about love. I know about loss. And I know about loneliness, and goodbyes, and about
never being able to voice those feelings again.
"Perhaps you've said those words, Richard, and don't mean them. But I never have. — Jill Barnett

My life is not merely a public phenomenon, it is a solitary adventure as well. — Tom Robbins

Mistakes are normal and human. Make them small, accept them, correct them, and forget them. — Carlos Slim

One can show one's contempt for the cruelty and stupidity of the world by making of one's life a poem of incoherence and absurdity. — Alfred Jarry

When someone throws trash on you, shake it off, stomp on it, and use it to rise to the top! — John Hagee

I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music. — Joan Miro

Surrealism: An archaic term. Formerly an art movement. No longer distinguishable from everyday life. — Brad Holland

God will shout during your storms, whisper during your sunshine and sing during the rarest rainbows you will encounter. — Shannon L. Alder

Dive again and again into the river of uncertainty. Create in the dark, only then can you recognize the light. — Jyrki Vainonen

Possible reality [is obtained] by slightly bending physical and chemical laws. — Marcel Duchamp

Everyone on your team should be connected to your customers - maybe not every day, but at least a few times throughout the year. That's the only way your team is going to feel the hurt your customers are experiencing. It's feeling the hurt that really motivates people to fix the problem. And the flip side is true too: The joy of happy customers or ones who have had a problem solved can also be wildly motivating. So — Jason Fried

People love mystery, and that is why they love my paintings. — Salvador Dali

John, the self-made man, self-made in every sense, out of nowhere, penniless, parentless, tie-less ... but I've always thought of him as if he had come into the world like Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, who sprang forth from Jupiter's head, fully grown and fully armed. — Ayn Rand