surrealism
Art defying logic
Surrealism is a style or approach that features dreamlike, illogical, or bizarre imagery and ideas.
The term comes from the formal art movement but applies broadly to anything with that uncanny, reality-bending quality: The movie had a surrealism that made you question what was real. (Capitalized Surrealism is the artistic movement.)
Hazy and fantastical
- disorientingCausing loss of direction
- nonlinearNot in sequence
- symbolicRepresenting through signs
- nightmarishFrightening like bad dreams
uncanny · montage · absurd · hallucinatory · fragmented · unsettling · subversive · experimental
Not awake or aware
- subconsciousBelow conscious awareness
- dreamSleeping mind's narrative
- nightmareFrightening dream causing wakefulness
- hallucinationPerception without external cause
oneiric · phantasmagoric · ethereal · visionary · otherworldly · illusory · distortion · metamorphosis
Seemingly absurd truth
- incongruityLack of harmony
- illogicalContrary to valid reasoning
- nonsensicalWithout coherent meaning
- bizarreStrikingly unconventional
grotesque · dissonance · contradiction · unexpected · disruption · defamiliarization · estrangement · shock
dreamlike
Hazy and fantastical
- disorientingCausing loss of direction
- nonlinearNot in sequence
- symbolicRepresenting through signs
nightmarish · uncanny · montage · absurd · hallucinatory · fragmented · unsettling · subversive · experimental
unconscious
Not awake or aware
- subconsciousBelow conscious awareness
- dreamSleeping mind's narrative
- nightmareFrightening dream causing wakefulness
hallucination · oneiric · phantasmagoric · ethereal · visionary · otherworldly · illusory · distortion · metamorphosis · dissolution
paradox
Seemingly absurd truth
- incongruityLack of harmony
- illogicalContrary to valid reasoning
- nonsensicalWithout coherent meaning
bizarre · grotesque · dissonance · contradiction · unexpected · disruption · defamiliarization · estrangement · shock · provocation
- art movementsPop Art, pop art, Impressionism, impressionism, Cubism
- French ModernismMarcel Proust, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Colette
- Art & Culturepainting, sculpture, music, dance, theater
- art formspainting, drawing, sculpture, photography, music
- art stylesimpressionism, cubism, pop art, minimalism, expressionism
- art worldartist, painter, painting, paintings, sculpture
surrealismrealism
Accepting things as they are
naturalism · photorealism · hyperrealism · verisimilitude · documentary
surrealismrationalism
Reason as knowledge source
classicism · neoclassicism · formalism · academicism · order
surrealismrealism
Accepting things as they are
empiricism · craftsmanship · documentary photography · reportage
- surrealist movementArt rejecting rational reality
- surrealist imageryIllogical visual compositions
- surrealist filmMovie rejecting conventional narrative
surrealist, surrealistic, surrealists, surreality, surrealistically