Surrealism was a pivotal art movement that emerged in Europe after World War I, aiming to express the unconscious mind through illogical, dreamlike scenes and ideas. Its pioneers include Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali, famous for their iconic paintings depicting melting clocks, a pipe with the words “this is not a pipe”, and other absurd, dreamlike scenes. They were joined by Giorgio de Chirico, known for his eerie and atmospheric paintings of isolated buildings and the Spanish painter, Joan Miro who combined abstract art with surrealist fantasies. While the organized Surrealist movement in Europe faded after the war, Surrealism as a creative principle continues to resonate, influencing artists of diverse art forms to this day.

An interesting question is: where did Surrealist artists get their wacky inspiration from? Some art historians argue that Surrealism grew principally out of the earlier Dada movement, which before World War I produced works of anti-art that deliberately defied reason. But Surrealism’s emphasis was not on negation but on positive expression of what is hidden in the unconscious. For that, I think Surrealist artists looked to the art of the uncivilized world – namely ritual objects made by “primitive” peoples living in Africa and Oceania, such as this fire mask used by the Baining people of New Britain, a remote island in the Pacific, for important ceremonies.

These masks are used exclusively in the night dance, a nocturnal performance lit by firelight to placate the spirits that are believed to reside in the surrounding forests. Though they are laboriously made from bark cloth, bamboo and leaves, the Baining people use them just once – for the fire dance ceremony – before the are thrown away or destroyed. In a totally different context, they provided Western Surrealist artists such as Paul Klee, Joan Miro and Max Ernst with powerful imageries to express the mysteries of the unconscious mind, as the following art works show.