repudiates most of the techniques of pleasing that have been devised by the great artists of the past and that the artist now seeks something more than the pleasure of the eye. Apollinaire says this will be an entirely new art that is pure painting. The new art was preoccupied with geometry, and geometrical figures were the essence of the artists' drawing. This new approach was more cerebral than sensual, requiring that the image be intellectually comprehended and dissected by the viewer as the model had been by the artist. Abstract art followed Cubism, with several specific manifestations of the larger movement. Cubism abandoned the certitude of the Renaissance for ambiguities and contradictions in both form and content, reflecting changes in the way society viewed itself and the world. At the same time, Cubism proclaimed the absolute validity of its own pictorial world. Subsequent artists took the language of Cubism and made significant innovations (Hunter and Jacobus 148-149).
Breton was part of the Dada movement for a time and wrote for the review Dada. This was an important step in the formation of his own views, and it helped "to liberate him from residual influences which would have impeded the full development of his poetic independence" (Matthews 5). Breton later attached himself to various experiments in writing, leading to the publication in 1924 of the Manifesto of Surrealism, followed in 1930 by the Second Manifesto. For Breton, surrealism was the only possible answer to the problem of man's relationship to the world, a world in which everything conspires to frustrate man's desires (Matthews 7).
One of the artistic traditions against which the surrealist movement was directed, as had been Cubism and Dadaism, was imitation, as Breton notes:
In the belief that they are only capable of reproducing more or less fortunately the image of that which moves them, painters have been far too easy-going in their ...