André Breton Writes the Surrealist Manifesto

One of the most important predecessors of generative art due to its use of chance, Breton called for artists to bypass reason and rationality by accessing their unconscious mind. Contemporary language artist, Sasha Stiles details its importance: “The French poet, critic and editor André Breton publishes the Surrealist Manifesto, in which he lays the groundwork for subsequent automated and aleatory writing techniques by defining Surrealism as ‘Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express…the actual functioning of thought…in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.’”