Surrealists feasted on the unconscious. They believed that Freud's theories on dreams, ego, superego and the id opened doors to the authentic self and a truer reality (the "surreal"). Like the Dadaists, they relished the possibilities of chance and spontaneity.
Their leader, the "Pope of Surrealism," was French writer André Breton (1896-1966), who joined fellow writers Philippe Soupault, Louis Aragon, Paul Éluard, and Robert Denos (among many others) in their appreciation of nineteenth-century "bad boys" Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) and Isidore Ducasse (whose pseudonym was Comte de Lautrémont, 1846-1870).
One quote from Lautrémont's prose-poem Les Chants de Maldoror expresses the Surrealist spirit concisely: "the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella!"
Man Ray's The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse (1920) refers to this quotation.
This approach to art was radical! Art schools and studios from time immemorial stressed the methodical application of one's skill. To let go of deliberate action - however, quickly or slowly executed it might be - seemed antithetical to the whole concept of art itself.
For the Surrealists, the idea of skill from training was understood. Their philosophy was to let go of the constraints of learned skills and tradition