Viviane Sassen’s photography collection, Venus and Mercury (2020), reimagines one of France’s most famous art styles through a dreamlike, contemporary lens. Representing themes of duality and femininity, the Dutch artist’s photographs may appear far removed from the century-old French movement that inspired them. However, Surrealism has featured “a complex mix of intentions — literary, personal, and political” (Spector, 1989, p. 290) — since its foundation in 1924. Sassen’s work is no exception to the only rule of Surrealist art: that there are no rules.

Surrealism stems from founder André Breton’s belief in the psychic power of poetry, dreams, and illogical thought. The French art and literary movement may evoke black-and-white images of Parisian poets, contemplating the inner workings of their minds. However, apart from being a writer, André Breton was also a political radical, aligning his Surrealist principles with Marxism to create a complex legacy that continues to influence an ever-diversifying range of artists and medial forms all over the world. To evaluate the evolution of Surrealism over time, Breton’s two Manifestes du surréalisme will act as the principal media artefact informing the basis of this analysis: a point of comparison to Viviane Sassen’s 21st-century surrealist photograph. 

In the first of his Manifestes du surréalisme (1924), André Breton defined the movement as the expression of the unconscious mind through “automatisme psychique pur par lequel on se propose d’exprimer”, in line with Sigmund Freud’s emphasis on the psychological importance of dreams, or “la toute-puissance du rêve” (Breton, 1969, p. 37). The second manifesto, published in 1930, features provocative, extreme, and even violent statements, such as “L’acte surréaliste le plus simple consiste, revolvers aux poings, à descendre dans la rue et à tirer au hasard, tant qu’on peut, dans la foule” (Breton, 1969, p.78). This allows it to communicate Surrealism’s liberationist cause in an inflammatory way, eliciting shock and engagement from a public audience. By challenging expectations, this hyperbolic image also aligns with the unconventional, spontaneous principles of Surrealism itself, serving as an evocative example of the movement.

Alongside references to French poets, including Arthur Rimbaud and Louis Aragon, Breton cites an experimental, automist book he wrote alongside Philippe Soupault in 1920, Les Champs magnétiques, as “[le] premier ouvrage purement surréaliste” (Breton, 1969, p. 49). According to the first Manifeste du surréalisme, as a literary text in itself, the book’s narrative employs “interlocuteurs impartiaux” as a way to free the dialogue from “obligations de la politesse” and to establish “vérité absolue” (Breton, 1969, p. 49). By blending bold descriptions of Surrealism with literary examples, the text both encourages artistic freedom and challenges social order more widely. These manifestoes would have circulated at cheap costs in the form of short, readable pamphlets to attract as wide an audience as possible at their initial publication, establishing André Breton as the voice of a revolutionary movement. 

In the period between the publication of André Breton’s two surrealist manifestoes, twelve issues of a publication named La Révolution surréaliste reinforced Surrealism’s status as a boundarybreaking, revolutionary movement. In the medium of a magazine, its cause is exemplified through art, literature, and photography as opposed to a manifesto of core principles. The first edition, published in 1924, features a sketch of a fish as an unofficial symbol of the movement, as seen in Fig. 3. This could allude to the notion of the free-flowing depths of the unconscious mind, whilst also challenging conventional reality via an unexpected image. This notion is more explicitly reflected in René Magritte’s painting, The Collective Invention (1934), depicting a woman with a fish’s head to subvert the traditional image of a mermaid, and André Breton’s Poisson Soluble (1924), a poetic book which launched the Surrealist movement alongside his first manifesto.

If André Breton represented Surrealism in the 1920s, then his political alignments complicated a movement typically associated with art, literature, and philosophy. In 1927, enticed by the poetic style of Leon Trotsky’s essay on Vladimir Lenin, the Surrealist intellectual joined the French Communist Party (Breton, 1978, p. 40). Like the principles of the Communist Manifesto, Surrealism gave a voice to those — whether it was the proletariat or the human mind — who had “no country” (Breton, 1978, p. 35). Where communism aimed to tear down social hierarchies, Surrealism targeted social conformity. Both movements were revolutionary, envisioning a world free from oppressive structures. 

Some have argued that Surrealists intrinsically refused to truly commit to “any real revolutionary cause” because it would have restricted their liberty (Short, 1966, p. 6). However, Breton remained a Marxist and Trotskyite even after his eventual split from the French Communist Party, connecting sentimentally to communist literature rather than through objective ideology (Taminiaux, 2006, p.56). If communism was based on political theory and material reality, Breton’s Surrealism was grounded in the intangible and irrational aspects of the mind, or “les profondeurs de notre esprit [qui] recèlent d’étranges forces capables d’augmenter celles de la surface” (Breton, 1969, p. 19). This informed a conflicted mix of revolutionary principles and a philosophy removed from political action.

The movement’s refusal to be neatly boxed into one category is reflected in a surreal photograph by Dutch artist Viviane Sassen. In comparison to the work of André Breton, this media artefact offers an insight into the diversifying evolution of Surrealism from a 21st-century perspective. 

Viviane Sassen’s Venus and Mercury series mirrors the unrefined chaos of early French Surrealists’ photography, which differed from the commercial press’ aim to “seduce” its audience, delighting in the ability of unstable images to “trigger uncontrollable associations in the mind of the viewer” (Donkin, 2017, p. 2). Sassen’s Leila (2019) similarly blurs the line between dreams and reality, contrasting two opposing worlds: the gold-adorned walls of the historical Palace of Versailles, and the figure of a woman concealed behind contemporary denim streetwear. Like the Manifestes du surréalisme, which called for liberation from the constraints of bourgeois society in the wake of World War One, the photograph captures a setting of French aristocratic wealth in a subverted, paradoxical, and abstract way.

Sassen’s vision is described in an article from Dazed magazine as “one of ever-present duality”, shaped by “a lifelong affinity with Surrealism”, the “role that the subconscious plays in our identity”, and a way of seeing the world that is “unbiased, free of judgement and convention” (Baconsky, 2018). Leila visually focuses on the contrast between cool-toned materials and warmtoned architecture, merging time periods and transcending the viewer’s expectations. Although the photograph originates from a very different cultural and temporal context to Breton’s written work, it elicits contradictory, subconscious sentiments in the viewer that mirror notions of the hidden, disorganised psyche in the Manifestes du surréalisme: “Les confidences des fous, je passerais ma vie à les provoquer” (Breton, 1969, p. 14).

However, Viviane Sassen’s Leila differs from Breton’s 20th-century version of Surrealism in its representation of women, featuring a figure of a woman concealed almost entirely behind clothes as a form of resistance to the commodification of women’s bodies. In contrast, Breton’s second manifesto depicts “[un] cortège de femmes jeunes et nues glissant le long des toits”, praising “l’hystérie” and describing “la femme” as “tout ce qu’il y a de merveilleux et de trouble” (Breton, 1969, p. 141). On the surface, this may allude to an admiration of women’s role in Surrealism, depicting feminine stereotypes as the epitome of the movement’s philosophy. However, by portraying “le problème des femmes” as a kind of inaccessible enigma, with a sole purpose to restore the faith in love of “un homme non corrompu” (Breton, 1969, p. 141), Breton reduces women to stereotypes of psychic instability, an aesthetic symbol of the movement rather than active participants with equally complex inner worlds. 

Even so, early Surrealism was not exclusive to male artists. Gisèle Prassinos’ Surrealist book, La Sauterelle arthritique (1935), draws on the movement in the form of absurd, illogical, and dreamlike poems. As a teenager, she even read her poems aloud to the original Surrealists in the 1930s, captured in an iconic photograph which has come to symbolise the Surrealist “femme-enfant” (Hopkins, 2014). Additionally, the paintings of female Argentine-British artist Eileen Agar in the 1930s and 1940s play with natural, marine imagery to subvert viewers’ expectations. This contradicts Breton’s implication that women served only as symbols of the movement. Instead, the active participation of female Surrealists like Gisèle Prassinos did not receive sustained attention in art history discourse up until the 1980s (Suleiman, 1988, p. 164). Though their contributions may have been erased, overlooked, or disregarded, the continuing influence of female Surrealists, from Eileen Agar to Viviane Sassen, proves that the movement has never been inherently confined to male artists behind the veil of historic stereotypes.

The diffusion of Surrealism since its foundation has also been influenced by changes in technology and medial forms over time, aiding in the diversification of the movement’s image beyond the visions of André Breton and his peers. From printed pamphlets and magazines such as La Révolution surréaliste in the 1920s to surreal films, social media posts, and televised adverts broadcast a century later, cultural perceptions of the movement have been shaped by the mode through which Surrealist art aims to engage its audience, inspiring contemporary artists, like Viviane Sassen, with no official ties to the movement.

Whilst André Breton’s Manifestes du surréalisme outlines unconventional, anti-establishment principles as an art and literary movement, it has ironically acted as a springboard for an array of media content commodified in mass culture. This is illustrated by the work of the Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí, whose many commercial collaborations included the design of the iconic Chupa Chups lollipop wrapper in 1969 (Benzine, 2025). The influence of aestheticised, commodified versions of Surrealism can also be seen in more recent television adverts, such as this Kenzo World perfume commercial, relying on disorientating, dreamlike, or abstract visuals to advertise a scent otherwise intangible via broadcast media. Alongside Dalí’s work, this symbolises the commodification of a movement, once aligned with communism, designed to challenge material realities rooted in a capitalist society.

However, even if some media forms influenced by Surrealism seem to have strayed far from the principles of André Breton’s manifestoes, the free-flowing, unconventional qualities of the movement can still be found in other formats more closely aligned with its revolutionary foundations. In an era of commodified, single-purpose videos and photographs spread via social media, Sassen’s Leila is the foil of commercialised art, challenging viewers’ expectations and evoking reflections on materialism, feminine rebellion, and reality itself. The coexistence of these different forms of art and media exemplifies the impact of a shift in cultural climate on Surrealism, evolving from a singular politicised cultural movement to an art style with influences all over the world, from marketing campaigns to increasingly visible, feminist visions of Surrealist art.

Ultimately, like the images, films, and texts it has informed, the meaning of Surrealism remains “open to various interpretations” (Donkin, 2017 p. 2). Underpinned by notions of complete philosophical, psychological, political, and artistic freedom, its traces can be found in dream exploration, anti-establishment political movements entwined with Marxism, and even the freespirited American Hippie movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Whilst the early Surrealist movement may be associated with a group of elite male French artists and thinkers, due to the tendency for women’s role to be overlooked in art history discourse, Surrealism in the 21st century has influenced a diverse array of artists and medial forms, from paintings and photographs to adverts and commercials. The broad influence of this cultural movement illustrates, in practice, the evolution of French intellectual André Breton’s artistic philosophy, becoming much more wide-reaching in practice than the list of principles first set out in his Manifestes du surréalisme.

Appendix

Fig. 1: Blanchetti, S. (1924) Cover of the first issue of La Révolution surréaliste, Bridgeman Images https://hyperallergic.com/1006369/the-small-magazines-that-birthed-surrealism/ [accessed 31 October 2025].

Fig. 2: Sassen, V. (2019) ‘Leila’, from Venus and Mercury https://www.vivianesassen.com/works/venus-mercury/carousel/#leila [accessed 23 October 2025].

Bibliography and Further Reading

Baconsky, I. (2018) ‘Viviane Sassen’s latest show is a Surrealist dream’, Dazed, 25 June https://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/40482/1/viviane-sassen-hot-mirrorhepworth-gallery-show-surrealist-dream [accessed 23 October 2025].

Benzine, V. (2024) ‘Art bites: Dalí’s most famous design is at a drugstore near you’, Artnet News, 31 March https://news.artnet.com/art-world/art-bites-salvador-dali-chupa-chups-2446377 [accessed 1 November 2025].

Breton, A. (1969) Manifestes du surréalisme. Paris: Gallimard.

Breton, A. (1978) What is Surrealism?: Selected writing, ed. by Franklin Rosemont. New York: Monad.

Caws, M. A. (2001) Surrealist painters and poets: An anthology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Donkin, H. (2017) ‘André Breton and Vladimir Mayakovsky: Poeticizing politics and politicizing poetry’, Dada/Surrealism, 21, pp. 1-19.

Hopkins, D. (2014) ‘Duchamp, Childhood, Work and Play: The Vernissage for First Papers of Surrealism, New York, 1942’, Tate Papers, 22 https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tatepapers/22/duchamp-childhood-work-and-play-the-vernissage-for-first-papers-of-surrealism-newyork-1942 [accessed 1 November 2025].

Levy, S. (1996) Surrealism: Surrealist visuality. Keele: Keele University Press.

Short, R. S. (1966) ‘The politics of Surrealism’, Journal of Contemporary History, 1(2), pp. 3-25.

Spector, J. J. (1989) ‘André Breton and the politics of dream: Surrealism in Paris, ca. 1918-1924’, American Imago, 46(4), pp. 287-317.

Storm, K. (2023) The Routledge companion to Surrealism. New York: Routledge.

Suleiman, S. R. (1988) ‘A double margin: Reflections on women writers and the avant-garde in France’, Yale French Studies, 75, pp. 148-172.

Taminiaux, P. (2006) ‘Breton and Trotsky: The revolutionary memory of Surrealism’, Yale French Studies, 109, pp. 52-66.

Watz, A. (2020) Surrealist women’s writing: A critical exploration. Manchester: Manchester University Press.