Guardian of Time

Guardian of Time

Guardian of Time

Surrealism originated in the trenches of the First World War when the youthful André Breton - and others - were exposed to the shock of the traumatized human psyche. From these experiences, not only did an ardent anti-war spirit emerge, but the oneiric disorientation witnessed by Breton became a leitmotif of the subsequent Surrealist movement. Surrealism, and its anarchic predecessor Dada, defined themselves in radical opposition to the brutalized societies all around them - and their rejection of the values of European life drew them ineluctably towards non-European beliefs.

The Surrealists found many ways to provoke the ‘irruption of otherness’ amid 1920s Paris: the cultivation of hypnotic trance states and automatic drawing, the purposeful wanderings, and a chance encounter on the streets of the metropolis, the pilgrimages to sites deemed sacred by the group. The Surrealists collected, categorized, displayed, and juxtaposed strange or incongruous artifacts. They organized exhibitions of ‘primitive,’ ‘psychotic,’ ‘found,’ and ‘natural.’