Fables, Forms and Figures

Extract

If we return to the experiences of our youth, we perceive what had the power to awaken our curiosity and ambitions*. The non-conformism of the Surrealists was fostered by Romantic sources and every conceivable symbolism; even if in a roundabout manner, it was through them that the names of Klee and Kandinsky were first heard. The world of the marvellous, the only one decreed worthy of attention, opened out onto painting. The moderns of the group: Dali, Tanguy, Masson, received first prize for poetic adventure, but they harked back to certain selected precursors—rightly or wrongly—for the same gifts that they had themselves: Uccello, Bosch, Dürer, Blake, and Gustave Moreau. And indeed, by retaining only the unexpected, the fantastic, and (often indulgently) the scandalous, a taste was maintained for emotional shock and association, as exemplified by the sustained style of André Breton, and the more supple prose of Aragon.