How can you tell the difference between a surrealist portrait and, say, a realist or romanticist one? Well, first of all consider the subject. It looks simple – a portrait should by definition portray a person. The style defines the perspective, the expression, the stresspoints. In realism a person is depicted clearly, strictly to the point, and… the artistic devices and expressive means are aimed at stating the facts – social and financial status, a profession, peculiarities of a type of people rather than individual characteristics. Romanticists depict a person as a fighter, driven by inner conflicts, the necessity of hard choice, connoting the struggle between a person’s mind and feelings, the duties and the desires, love and social doctrines, history and modern day, fate and will. These portraits are highly emotional and contain lots of symbols that assist in revealing the conflicts we mentioned earlier. In impressionism the personality of the model did not matter much, the portrait was a canvas to convey the fleeting moment – the patches and play of light reflecting from hair and the eyes, the froufrou of the dress, the movement of an arm, the ephemeral, evasive impression from a person you glance at and walk by. Surrealist portraits suggest a drastic difference. These artist do not generally depict phenomena, events, people or subjects as seen in life, which makes it hard to attribute a painting to a specific genre – like a portrait, landscape, battle piece etc. The irrational images and their integral qualities are mixed and matched, and so our classifications of genres in surrealism and singling out surrealist portraits as a separate genre is a point for discussion. So, how are people different in surrealist portraits? First, the images follow the principles of the style and head for the craziest horizons of the irrational. The reality is absurd from the point of view of surrealists, and revelas itself through the conflicts and inconsistencies, in breaking the physical and artistic laws, in crashing together the adverse qualities and placing real but mutually exclusive, real and phantastic objects next to each other. Hence you see apples instead of faces in Rene Magritte, the face of Mae West as an interior for a room in Salvador Dali, double images, the unpredictable and even freakish backgrounds etc. Surrealist portraits need to be interpreted the way you analyze your dreams. Despite the seeming irrationality, the images are still possible to construe – not as symbols, but as associations. Instead of wondering why they are rendered here and what they mean, try analyzing why they emerged in the artist’s mind at all, what associations stand behind.