Charm of Occupational Hazards

Charm of Occupational Hazards

Charm of Occupational Hazards

SURREALISM has a highly original way of raising the question of the function of artistic creation, of asking how it comes about, by what means, and for what purpose. Coincidentally it poses a basic problem. How are we to respond to artistic creation, if we do not wish to distort the artist's purpose?

The impression often gained from looking at surrealism from the outside is that of a closed circle of individuals, well content to exclude from appreciation and enjoyment of their activities anyone they have not seen fit to grant the privilege of initiation. If the creative surrealist benefits fully from listening "in the dark wings of being," as Breton loftily put it, then how are the rest of us to react to what he later reports back to us?