surrealism is a recuperation of the dadaist movement by the capital, guy debord's opinion, but i will further add that surrealism was a recuperation of the revolutionary artistic spirit of the early 20th century in general. futurists, cubists, dadaists all expressing important points about the nature of art and man, the future of art, its relationship to a common man as opposed to aristocrat which was a completely novel thing, and at its core the political and sexual potential of art. all of that, reduced to dali walking an anteater.

dadaist ideas were continued to be picked up by the avant guard over years, and as predictable recuperated with various degrees of success. one can trace a line of ideas from dadaists to punks, for example, and its easier to understand what is the relationship between dadaism and surrealism, by looking at the way punk was very rapidly stripped of its political potential and reduced to representation only.

it has become significantly hard to do, but one should go see kazemir malevich's "black square" at the tretyakov galery of art in moscow. none of the digital copies, that are mere representation, do it justice. the piece oozes power in person, it's a long subdued power, that we also have to see through the prism of gulags and terror that followed, but its a raw power of men, an ability to accomplish things both awesome and terrifying, to wrought matter into form. that power terrifies those who were in power at the time AND those who are in power now. disregard all that peasant, look it's a fish floating through a rain of melting clocks! dahlin, isn't it so maavelous and inventive.