Surreal must be one of the most misused terms in common parlance when describing a situation. Take the incredulous British youngster who last year won an Olympic medal, standing in a Tokyo skate park and telling her BBC interviewer, “It’s really surreal!” What would be “really surreal” would have been a giraffe self-combusting in the velodrome, or the adolescent medallist performing her BMX stunts on a rocking horse, dressed as a lobster
But even such Dalí-esque hallucinations fail to define everything that the term Surreal has come to encompass. The Tate Modern exhibition sets out to challenge our notions even further. It defines Surrealism as an “expansive, shifting term” that encompasses a vast array of art beyond the conventional unconventionality of Dali, Magritte and the movement’s superstar names in early 20th century Europe. Surrealist values, rather, have permeated art, literature and popular culture throughout the world: look no further than , , or
