Surrealism Beyond Borders review: Presents the art phenomenon as an inclusive, empowering life-force

This major Tate exhibition darts through works with a mind-boggling array of approaches, and of immensely varied quality – but it is put together with style and curatorial nous

Leonora Carrington Self Portrait ca. 1937–38 Metropolitan Museum of Art (© The estate of the artist, DACS, 2021)

Surrealism is one art phenomenon that everybody feels they understand. It may have been one of the 20^th century’s truly momentous cultural movements, with its aspirations to undermine the entire social and political order by delving into the darker realms of the unconscious, and to explore the limitless visual potential of the language of dreams.

Our conception of Surrealism today, though, boils down to the rackety interwar exploits of a bunch of charismatic Paris-based bad boys – Dali, Magritte, Ernest, Miro et al – and a few of their key images. So if you get, say, Dali’s Lobster Telephone (a telephone with a lobster for a handle) and Magritte’s Time Transfixed (a meticulously painted train hurtling out of a fireplace), you basically get Surrealism. Right? Absolutely wrong, according to this major Tate exhibition.

Surrealism, it argues, was a far more diverse phenomenon than we’ve ever imagined, involving far more women and people of colour, and with critical nodes of activity from Brazil to Tokyo to Mexico City to Baghdad and beyond.