The early part of the 20th century saw Surrealism as the latest manifestation of the fantastic. It had just replaced the art of the symbolists who by that stage had not only fallen out of favour but had virtually disappeared into oblivion. What surrealism achieved though was the liberation of art from the constraints of the narrative...art liberated from the limitations of illustrating stories whether they be those of Shakespeare, Wagner, or Christianity. Not constrained by the superfluity of the narrative, art could then serve in the elucidation of all that is bizarre, wonderful and unexpected. Art is only limited by the imagination of its practitioners.

Since the middle ages art of the imagination has seen a recurrent ebb & flow in European civilization, rolling in like a wave before receding again back into the ocean of the human imagination. And when it seems that enough disdain is placed upon those with imagination by those devoid of it, the wave of the imagination rolls back in again.

Despite the ramblings of orthodox art theory, surrealism never quite disappeared after the second world war. No longer an organised movement per se it has continued to thrive. But it survives as a dichotomy. On the one hand the veristic side thrives, and in a diffuse way, nourishes the exponents of fantasy art with whom contemporary surrealism is often confused and whose art is often used erroneously as an ?example? of surrealism?s failures. On the other hand it survives as the complete abstract. Jackson Pollock was the example par excellence of Breton?s definition of surrealism: ?Pure psychic automatism...in the absence of all control exercised by reason...?. Whenever you see a scribbler who claims to release their innermost soul unencumbered by skill or control, you are looking at Breton?s definition of surrealism taken to its logical conclusion!

It must always be remembered that when Breton was looking for an exemplary surrealist he chose Picasso, not Ernst. It always begs the question: did Breton ever really know what he was talking about?

Surrealism liberated the mind from the moribund strictures of a bygone age and allowed the imagination to invent its own wild and fantastic iconographic lexicon and symbology.

Artists of the Vienna school of Fantastic Realism learnt the lessons of surrealism and applied them in an all new fantastic sense, taking the art of the imagination to hitherto uncharted waters. HR Giger spawned an alien monster which has since entered into popular culture. And as we have just entered the last year of the 20th century, the year 2000, it would seem that the computer & film industry is going to enter another epoch of the fantastic - this time a digital world, animated and 3 dimensional which whether it is conscious of or not owes its imaginative force to surrealism.