Love in Surrealism

In his 1939 writing on Masson, in Le Surrealisme et la peinture, Breton reiterates his strong sense of the significance of love by believing “que l’art, avant tout, doit être amour plutôt que colère ou pitié”. Art must be love, not in the sense of adoration, but rather as a path towards collectivity. In L’Amour fou, Breton explains how when a man loves, he cannot help but engage with “la sensibilité de tous les hommes” and that in order to do them justice, he must delve into the very depths of their way of being. Love brings man into contact with another and creates an interest in partaking of another worldview.

In the Surrealist Dictionary, the definition for “amour” includes the quote from L’Immaculée Conception that reciprocal love is that which “met en jeu l’inhabitude dans la pratique, l’imagination dans le poncif, la foi dans la doute, la perception de l’objet intérieure dans l’objet extérieure”. Love then creates this charged space where contraries can co-exist. Neither the imagination nor thinking is dominant.