The Dream That Won't End

Few 20th-century movements reached further into everyday visual culture than Surrealism:

• Breton's 1924 manifesto set out to liberate the unconscious from rational control
• Automatism, frottage, and exquisite corpse gave artists ways to surface irrational imagery
• Dalí, Magritte, and Ernst painted some of the most recognizable images in all of art

The Surrealists wanted to tear down consumer culture by releasing the unconscious. Instead, consumer culture absorbed their methods and used them to sell things — proof of how powerful surreal imagery really is.