ABSTRACT
Breton in his introduction to the first Paris
exhibition of 1929, ‘it is perhaps the first time
that the mental windows have been opened
really wide, so that one can feel oneself glid-
ing up towards the wild sky’s trap.’ For
Surrealism it was a year of crisis and redirec-
tion. Since the movement’s inception in
1924 the emphasis had been on automatism
and the advantage of chance discovery as a
contribution in artistic and literary creation.
The Surrealists were to draw their inspiration
not from reality but from a ‘purely interior
model’. But it was becoming increasingly
apparent that the process had inherent weak-
nesses. The essentially passive role in which
the writer and painter became instruments no
longer had any validity. That ‘state of effer-
vescence’ had degenerated into repetition,
monotony and disillusionment. It did not
mean a lack of faith in the process, but rather
a recognition that it no longer constituted for
Surrealism an end in itself. Dalı´ fully shared
the Surrealists’ commitment to the automatic
processes, which he had read about in various
reviews and catalogues. In 1927, according to
his own The Secret Life of Salvador Dalı´ (1942),