• Join Puck

    Directly Supporting Authors

    A new economic model in which writers are also partners in the business.

    Personalized Subscriptions

    Customize your settings to receive the newsletters you want from the authors you follow.

    Stay in the Know

    Connect directly with Puck talent through email and exclusive events.

  • What is puck? Newsletters Authors Podcasts Events Gift Puck Careers

Have We Reached Peak Surrealism?

Museum orthodoxy is starting to give greater weight to surrealism as a force in art history. And fascination with the movement is helping the private market regain some of its mojo.

Art collection Sotheby's
In the auction market, Pauline Karpidas’s surrealist works—not just the Lalanne works with their absurdly low estimates—saw very solid bidding this week. Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Sotheby's
Marion Maneker
September 19, 2025

Join Puck to listen to this article

Earlier this week at the press preview for the Whitney Museum’s new show, Sixties Surreal, curators Dan Nadel and Laura Phipps posed a question: “What if surrealism, not cubism, had emerged as the dominant force to shape the course of postwar art in America?” Their presentation made an impressive case, and the show itself has many interesting and provocative works by more than 100 artists. But sitting there, I couldn’t help but notice that the curators’ counterfactual actually expressed our current reality. Surrealism has become the dominant force in the art world right now.