ABSTRACT
It is only to be expected that today’s commentators, historians and curators of surrealism should attend above all to the movement’s public face. After all, it is through its books and magazines, exhibitions, café meetings and public demonstrations that the surrealist movement has addressed its audiences, and through adopting radical and active group positions that it has presented itself as a current of social as well as cultural thought. What seems most relevant, then, about André Breton’s often cited ’simplest surrealist act’ – ‘to go down into the street, revolvers in hand’ – is precisely the call to leave the safety of one’s private space and embrace the thrill of the public world. 1
