subrealism

Noun

subrealism (uncountable)

1. An artistic movement that seeks to explore the basis of perception.
   • The infection of Surrealism (subrealism) in the painter's and sculptor's art naturally found its way into the practice of the most universal of the arts.1937, Henry Rankin Poore, Art's Place in Education, page 90
   • But as the development of cubism and other tendencies shows, contemporary art tends to slip away into antirealist abstraction, subrealism and subjectivist creationism, obeying no laws but its own.1959, Luis Díez del Corral, The Rape of Europe, page 214
2. The artistic exploration of perverse and unpleasant subject matter.
   • While we wait for the necessary publication of a book about "subrealism" in the cinema, almost entirely devoted to French cinema, with an additional chapter on neo-subrealism , Shoot the Piano Player already presents us with a repertoire sufficiently stocked with the characteristic traits of the...1972, Leo Braudy, Focus on Shoot the Piano Player, page 71
   • Thus the fight between socialist realism and Gulag subrealism was not a fight for a dominant artistic method or aesthetic principle, nor even for an adequate epistemological approach, but a fight for the true communist ontology.1995, Vladislav Todorov, Red Square, Black Square, page 121
3. An attitude toward life that lacks genuine engagement or meaning.
   • But our creative political vision of 150 years ago had so deteriorated through a century of short-time efficiency and subrealism, that people did not realize how great the moment was.1945, Pierre Combret de Lanux, European Manifesto, page 128
   • Alas! after that labor of obstinate subrealism, the mind has not become more alert and more alive, but more weary and disenchanted.1966, Jim Evrard, Revolutionary Consciousness, page 15