Was Surrealism the inspiration for the social upheavals and artistic and sexual revolution of the 1960s?
The slogans of the May ’68 uprisings in France came right out of Surrealism, and that era and those circles. The desires expressed in 1968 in intellectual and artistic circles owe a lot to Surrealism—as does that period’s political naiveté. Some called Lee Miller and Roland Penrose “champagne socialists.” As such, they were similar to the radical chic circles of the 1960s and 1970s in the U.S. But it’s good to have progressives backing left-wing movements. For example, Roland contributed his paintings to anti-Franco art exhibitions and Picasso joined the Communist Party after World War II, but their political sense was not always as acute as others might have wished. The Communist Party used Picasso as its star. Lee Miller had sharp political sense. She was a good social analyst. But I don’t know how much the youth culture of the swinging 1960s in Britain actually looked to the Surrealists. They might have seen them as old geezers! But in the artistic world, Dada and Surrealism are sti
