André Breton wasn’t the first to use the term “Surrealism,” but the French writer became the movement’s godfather with the publication of his 1924 Surrealist Manifesto.
In the wake of World War I and the Spanish flu, Breton, along with his comrades, such as Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, and Max Ernst, looked for creative freedom amid what they saw as an oppressive modern society plagued by an excess of rationality.
Inspired by the Dadaist rejection of logic and embrace of nonsense, Breton also drew on Jean-Martin Charcot and Sigmund Freud’s theories of hypnosis, free association, and the subconscious. But it was Pierre Janet’s idea of psychic automatism that inspired the Surrealist practice of drawing and writing without any control, reason, or moral preoccupation.
To celebrate the centennial of Surrealism, the global community of freelance graphic artists at 99designs by Vista have reimagined the logos of today’s biggest brands in the movement’s style. More than 500 designs were submitted during a week-long contest hosted by the creative platform, resulting in six winners.
The artists looked at social media and technology as well as at consumer brands, entertainment and media platforms, and nonprofit organizations. This might seem paradoxical given Surrealism’s anti-capitalist ideals, but even Dalí dipped into commercial work, such as designing the logo for Chupa Chups lollipops.
One of the contest winners, Isca Marin González, used Instagram’s camera icon to create a portal into a Dalí-inspired dreamscape populated by red “like” buttons with legs—“creatures that fascinate us and now live in the real world and feed on our attention,” in González’s words.
Echoing Magritte’s The False Mirror (1928), a graphic designer using the handle bo_rad reconceived YouTube’s familiar rounded rectangle as a collection of eyes, a symbol often used by the Surrealists to convey both selfhood and surveillance. Are we looking into new worlds or being watched in our own?
In an era marked both by technological progress and political unreality, these designs ask us to wonder: What would Breton and his cohort have made of the 21st century?
Jeanne Malle is an Associate Editor at AIR MAIL
