A Brief History of Surrealist Art: From the Bible and Ancient Egypt to Salvador Dalí’s Dream Worlds

The term surrealism — or rather, surréalisme — originates from the French words for “beyond reality.” That’s a zone, we may assume, reachable by only daring, and possibly unhinged, artistic minds. But in fact, even the most down-to-earth among us go beyond reality on a nightly basis. We do so in our dreams, where the accepted mechanics of space and time, life and death, and cause and effect do not apply. Or rather, they’re replaced by another set of rules entirely, which feels perfectly consistent and convincing to us in the moment.