THE MAISON GOES FOR SUR\/REALITY

With the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto by French writer and theorist André Breton, it was no surprise that Paris went all out in celebrating the art movement through exhibits like the labyrinthine one at Centre Pompidou and those at the recent design, decorating and lifestyle show Maison & Objet which adopted the theme "Sur\/Reality" for 2025.

- RICKY TOLEDO & CHITO VIJANDRE

"We wanted to explore surrealism through a much more contemporary lens. This ability to reintroduce wonder, to challenge the status quo, is an incredibly rich and fertile ground for imagining new forms of reality," explains Charlotte Cazals, trend forecaster of Peclers Agency.

She cited the influence of Yorgos Lanthimos' film, Poor Things, which we absolutely loved for its production design.

"Its powerful, fantastical aesthetic codes rest on a distorted reality, one that is both strangely familiar and deliciously unsettling. This distortion is a long-lasting creative tool, giving rise to realities less bound by societal conventions," she elaborates.

"It's an attitude that fuels today's contemporary creation, which allows itself to be intriguing, extravagant, and poetic. It's exciting to explore the wildly imaginative visions that emerge as a necessary escape from an anxiety-inducing reality."

Surrealism, after all, emerged during similar circumstances, developing in Europe in the aftermath of World War I. Inspired by both the political theories of Karl Marx and the study of the unconscious mind (psychoanalysis) developed by Sigmund Freud in the 1890s, the term was first coined in 1917 by the art critic and poet Guillaume Apollinaire and was used in 1924 by Breton for his politically radical movement aimed at changing perceptions of the world by analyzing dreams and the irrational. Breton wanted to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality or surreality."

The element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequiturs feature in works of painting, writing, theater, filmmaking, photography and other media.