surrealistisk

Surrealistisk is an adjective used in Swedish to describe art, literature, and ideas connected to surrealism, a twentieth‑century cultural movement that sought to release the unconscious mind. The term comes from the French surrealiste (surrealist), itself built from sur- meaning over or beyond and réel meaning real. Surrealism arose in the early 1920s in Paris, with André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto (1924) establishing a program that blended Dada sensibilities with psychoanalytic thought to reveal hidden associations through dreamlike logic and automatic processes.

Characteristics commonly associated with surrealistisk work include dreamlike or fantastical imagery, irrational juxtapositions, and a sense of surprise or dislocation. Methods often linked to surrealistisk creation are automatism (producing without full conscious control), dream analysis, frottage, and the exquisite corpse. In the visual arts, figures such as Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst, and Joan Miró are frequently cited; in literature, Breton, Paul Éluard, and Louis Aragon are core references. Surrealistisk film and photography frequently employ unexpected pairings, uncanny atmospheres, and perplexing narratives.

Today, surrealistisk is used beyond the strict confines of the original movement to describe works that evoke the irrational, the strange, or the uncanny. It appears in painting, sculpture, film, literature, fashion, and design to signal a mood or approach rather than membership in a historical group. While rooted in a defined tradition, the term can describe contemporary art that channels dream logic or subverts ordinary reality.