“Poetic Insubordination”

Abstract The Surrealist movement in Paris has kept alive, since the early 1970s, the red and black flame of rebellion, the antiauthoritarian dream of radical freedom, the poetical insubordination to the powers that be, and the obstinate desire to reenchant the world. Unfortunately, most academic or mainstream accounts of surrealism take it for granted that the group dissolved itself in 1969. It is quite strange that this attitude persisted despite the very visible presence of the surrealist movement in Paris after 1970. Historians have been trying to decree the end of surrealism for years. For most of them, surrealism was nothing else than one of the innumerous artistic vanguards, such as Cubism or Futurism.