Dreams on Canvas

In 1924, writer André Breton published the Surrealist Manifesto, calling for art that tapped the unconscious mind — dreams, automatic writing, chance encounters. Inspired by Freud's theories, the Surrealists believed that rational thought was a prison and that the irrational held deeper truths about human existence.

Breton had a precise label for it: "pure psychic automatism." The point was to record thought before reason could edit it. In practice that meant automatic drawing, writing down dreams the moment you woke, and chance-based methods that handed part of the decision to luck rather than the artist.