The Rise of the Value of Surrealism

There is no doubt that Surrealism is a highly undervalued and under appreciated movement that has the potential for a significant increase in desirability and value in the not too distant future for reasons that I will explain later on. The most famous Surrealist artist would have to be Salvador Dali with the other major Surrealist painters being Jean Arp, Max Ernst, André Masson, René Magritte, Yves Tanguy, Pierre Roy, Paul Delvaux, and Joan Miró. It is interesting to note that if you go to google and search for “dali auction record” (with quotation marks) you get no results but if you search for “warhol auction record” you get 47 results or if you search for “picasso auction record” you get 29 results. Even more interesting is the fact that the auction record for Picasso is US$104 million dollars and the auction record for Warhol is US$71 million dollars whereas the auction record for Dali is a mere US $3.6 million dollars. Is Dali any less important or an less talented than Picasso or Warhol? The other Surrealists don’t fair much better with Andre Breton, the father of the Surrealism movement, managing an auction record of US$3 million and most of the other major players achieving around the same prices for their Surrealist works with a few exceptions.

The most successful of those artists who dabbled in Surrealism based on the value of their work would have to be Joan Miro who has a current auction record of $16.7 million for the work ‘La caresse des étoiles’. According to the Christie’s catalogue entry for this work “It is a 20th century masterwork in the most profound sense, for in addition to its exceptional pictorial qualities as a work of art, it offers illuminating insight into the tragic drama of modern history in which it was created”. The phenomenal price achieved for ‘La caresse des étoiles’ can, however, be attributed to the history and provenance of the work, it’s cultural and historical significance as well as the fact that Miro chose not to become a fully fledged member of the Surrealist movement in order to remain free to experiment with other styles. For these reasons the price achieved for ‘La caresse des étoiles’ could be considered to be anomalous.

The main reasons that Surrealism has failed to achieve the same success as other art movements is that Surrealism is relatively ambiguous, ill defined and difficult to understand which make the works much less attractive. Also, many of the artists who produced work that is considered to be Surrealist were not solely dedicated to the pursuits of the Surrealist movement and did not adhere to the rules and regulations of the movement which makes the task of contextualising Surrealist artworks even more difficult. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica “The work of these artists is too diverse to be summarized categorically as the Surrealist approach in the visual arts. Each artist sought his own means of self-exploration”

Surrealism is, however, beginning to receive the attention and respect that it deserves which is being reflected in the market for Surrealist works.