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It was in the black mirror of anarchism that surrealism first recognised itself.

Andre Breton

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Andre Breton
Age: 70 †
Born: 1896
Born: February 18
Died: 1966
Died: September 28
Art Theorist
Drawer
Essayist
Novelist
Photographer
Poet
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Andre Breton
D'André Breton
Andre Breto
René Dobrant
Recognised
Anarchism
Mirror
Mirrors
Black
Firsts
First
Surrealism

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Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that leads to everything.
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I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak.
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At the outset, it is only liking, not understanding, that matters. Gaps in understanding ... are not only important, they are perhaps even welcome, like clearings in the woods, the better to allow the heart's rays to stream out without obstacle. The unlit shadows should remain obscure, which is the very condition of enchantment.
Andre Breton
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Humor (is) the process that allows one to brush reality aside when it gets too distressing.
Andre Breton
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To see, to hear, means nothing. To recognize (or not to recognize) means everything.
Andre Breton
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It is more or less a given that nothing is less favorable to clairvoyance than the bright sun: physical light and mental light coexist on very poor terms.
Andre Breton
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Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express - verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner - the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.
Andre Breton
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It is the whole modern concept of love which should be re-examined, such as is commonly but transparently expressed in phrases like 'love at first sight' and 'honeymoon'. All this shoddy terminology is on top of that tainted with the most reactionary irony.
Andre Breton
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The approval of the public is to be avoided like the plague. It is absolutely essential to keep the public from entering if one wishes to avoid confusion. I must add that the public must be kept panting in expectation at the gate by a system of challenges and provocations.
Andre Breton
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Surrealism is based on the belief in the omnipotence of dreams, in the undirected play of thought.
Andre Breton
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All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.
Andre Breton
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What one hides is worth neither more nor less than what one finds. And what one hides from oneself is worth neither more nor less than what one allows others to find.
Andre Breton
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Surrealism does not allow those who devote themselves to it to forsake it whenever they like. There is every reason to believe that it acts on the mind very much as drugs do like drugs, it creates a certain state of need and can push man to frightful revolts.
Andre Breton
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We all love conflagrations. When the sky changes color, it is a dead man's passing.
Andre Breton
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I believe in the pure Surrealist joy of the man who, forewarned that all others before him have failed, refused to admit defeat, sets off from watever point he chooses, along any other pat save a reasonable one, and arrives wherever he can.
Andre Breton
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It is impossible for me to envisage a picture as being other than a window, and why my first concern is then to know what it looks out on.
Andre Breton
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How small these rescued tides appear! Earthly delights flow in torrents. Each object offers paradise.
Andre Breton
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I could spend my whole life prying loose the secrets of the insane. These people are honest to a fault, and their naivety has no peer but my own.
Andre Breton
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The clouds were disappearing rapidly, leaving the stars to die. The night dried up.
Andre Breton
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The art of Frida Kahlo is a ribbon around a bomb.
Andre Breton