Considering those painters whose art, finding at least some im-
petus in surrealism, has received most acclaim outside the surrealist
movement, we notice they are the very ones whose work has been
evaluated most consistently in a manner conflicting with Schuster's
views. This, apparently, is because critics incline to share a tendency
to minimize their favorite painters' debt to surrealism. They often treat
participation in surrealism as an accessory activity on the artist's part,
something of a péché de jeunesse, even. Quite exceptionally, Patrick
Waldberg gives surrealism full credit for imposing on René Magritte's
work its distinctive characteristics. ² Far more typical of critical com-
mentary is Carola Giedion-Welcker's dismissal of Jean Arp's associa-
tion with surrealism, in flagrant disregard of Arp's own declaration in
his Jours effeuillés: "It was during the surrealist period that my poetic
writing and my plastic writing came closest together" (p. 446).

We have the distinct impression that art critics who speak with
respect of Max Ernst, André Masson, and Joan Miré, for instance, aim
to detach these artists from the surrealist movement, as though af-
firmation of artistic merit as well as of respectability must presuppose
severance of all ties with the surrealists. We shall see that the sur-
realists' negative attitude toward esthetic preoccupations provides
critics with apparently good reasons for thinking it necessary to act
this way. Even before examining this attitude, however, we can de-
tect one immediate consequence of a widespread critical approach
that virtually eliminates surrealism from discussion, as if it were a
stigma to be erased by convenient forgetfulness. Some of the most
significant effects of surrealism upon the work of a number of painters
who have become famous in the twentieth century are either distorted
or ignored altogether. Thus Jacques Dupin, a poet who has nothing
to do with surrealism, feels it appropriate to refer to Miré's "dream
painting" (from 1925 onward) as "the very opposite of the 'painted
dreams' into which other [unnamed] Surrealist painters too often, and
too complacently, sank" (p. 162). The most Dupin is willing to grant,
when he cannot avoid admitting that Miré has acted upon occasion in

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