What’s so special about surrealism compared to other “big” styles – realism and symbolism, and how does one go about analyzing and apprehending surrealist paintings? Surrealists combine the artistic techniques of both realists and symbolists, and the peculiarities of the style are more of an expressive than representational nature. First things first – you need to understand the basic viewpoints behind the three styles. Realists see the world as a rational, perceptible and consistent system that can be examined and influenced. They represented the reality in a postulational way. For instance, whether they choose to portray the vast spectacular view of wheat-land, or to connote the status by masterful depiction of a heavy oak desk, or to capture the brutal fierceness of a battle, regardless of the artist’s attitude to the event or a notion, the nature and the actual fact of their existence is not subjected to any questioning. It’s the reality, and it’s totally rational. Symbolists, on the other hand, considered everything we see as reality to be just another stage of human learning. There is some trandescent reality behind what we actually see, the mastermind that cannot be perceived by human mind due to the inherent limitations of the latter, but the mystery reveals itself through symbols that are to be interpreted. Irrational reality cannot be apprehended by human mind, but it is open to the soul, to emotions that empower a man to read the symbols. As for the surrealists, they refuse to believe in the rational, consistent and sound universal order whatsoever. Their reality is as mysterious and absolute as we see it in symbolism, but for different reasons – in this case the reason is its absurdity. There is no mastermind or a universal order, everything in this world – things, people or places – are incogerent and contradict each other. An irrational person living in the irrational world does not see these contradictions as a burden or a challenge – they are inherent to him as well, and thus appealing. He is free from any laws or moral imperatives, he easily jumps into the conflict with himself, driven by the subconscious rather than rational reasons. What is depicted in surrealist paintings? Stork-legged elephants, apples on the shoulders, liquid clocks and raining office clerks… These subjects do not convey real objects or phenomena, but the state of an artist at the time of creating the works – the peculiar “twilight” state of the mind when a person travels beyond the limits of rational perception and demonstrates his subconscious drives. These surrealist states – like dreams, hallucinations, memories, illusions – blur the boundaries between the rational and irrational, and make the irrational take the upper hand. Unless you include the twilight state into the subject, you can portray whatever stupid combinations of images you want (a fly with an umbrella on a volume of Stendhal first popped in my mind) – and still you won’t reach the expressive quality of a surrealist painting. Let’s dig in…