Quote

Artistic imagination must remain free. It is by definition free from any fidelity to circumstances, especially to the intoxicating circumstances of history.

Andre Breton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Artistic
Remain
Circumstances
Especially
Imagination
Intoxicating
Free
Fidelity
History
Definition
Must
Definitions

More quotes by Andre Breton

Image
The simplest act of surrealism is to walk out into the street, gun in hand, and shoot at random.
Andre Breton
Image
The pure playfulness of certain wholly whimsical portions of (Charles) Cros’s work should not obscure the fact that at the center of some of his most beautiful poems a revolver is leveled straight at us.
Andre Breton
Image
I myself shall continue living in my glass house where you can always see who comes to call, where everything hanging from the the ceiling and on the walls stays where it is as if by magic, where I sleep nights in a glass bed, under glass sheets, where who I am will sooner or later appear etched by a diamond.
Andre Breton
Image
When will the arbitrary be granted the place it deserves in the formation of works and ideas?
Andre Breton
Image
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
Image
Humor (is) the process that allows one to brush reality aside when it gets too distressing.
Andre Breton
Image
The eye is not open when it is limited to the passive role of a mirror... if it has only the capacity to reflect.
Andre Breton
Image
If I place love above everything, it is because for me it is the most desperate, the most despairing state of affairs imaginable.
Andre Breton
Image
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
Image
There are fairy stories to be written for adults. Stories that are still in a green state.
Andre Breton
Image
It was in the black mirror of anarchism that surrealism first recognised itself.
Andre Breton
Image
May night continue to fall upon the orchestra
Andre Breton
Image
I insist on knowing the names, on being interested only in books left ajar, like doors I will not go looking for keys.
Andre Breton
Image
Under his (Marc Chagall, ed.) sole impulse metaphor made its triumphal entry into modern painting.
Andre Breton
Image
Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all.
Andre Breton
Image
My wish is that you may be loved to the point of madness.
Andre Breton
Image
Trust in the inexhaustible character of the murmur.
Andre Breton
Image
The lamentable expression: 'But it was only a dream, the increasing use of which - among others in the domain of the cinema - has contributed not a little to encourage such hypocrisy, has for a long while ceased to merit discussion.
Andre Breton
Image
The clouds were disappearing rapidly, leaving the stars to die. The night dried up.
Andre Breton
Image
Nothing that surrounds us is object, all is subject.
Andre Breton