SURREAL WORLD

According to a once-standard narrative, the Surrealist movement began in France in the early 1920s, flourished in Europe and to a lesser extent in the U.S. until World War II, and then petered out in the late ’40s and early ’50s when Abstract Expressionism took over. Of course, we already know that this story isn’t true, that Surrealism never submitted to the strictures imposed on it by André Breton and that it never died. Recently, new attention paid to less-known women artists such as Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, and Ithell Colquhoun has expanded the Surrealist canon and made it clear not only that women were key contributors to the movement but also that places like Mexico, formerly considered to be off the Surrealist track, were actually important centers for some of its most creative practitioners.

But for the full picture of just how vast and diverse the Surrealist phenomenon really was and is, we had to wait for the new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, “Surrealism Beyond Borders” (October 11–January 30). Co-organized with the Tate Modern in London and made possible by the Barrie A. and Deedee Wigmore Foundation, it brings together a