The Prompt
In Second Manifesto of Surrealism (1929), Andre Breton called for “the profound, the veritable occultation of Surrealism.”
Of the Surrealist painters and writers who dove whole hog into arcane imagery, my favorites include Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Max Ernst, and Leonor Fini.
Choose a single Surrealist painting and do some fun, casual research to decipher its symbolism and “occult” elements. If you need help finding a painting, check out the list below.
After developing a personal interpretation of the work, write a short piece of surreal fiction about the character(s) and situation(s) in the painting.
If there are multiple characters, you might choose one to narrate the story (in first-person or third-person limited point of view) or use an omniscient perspective to jump around among the characters.
Instead of attempting to make a logical narrative that rationalizes the surreal situation, revel in the painting’s odd elements and tell a strange tale inspired by the imagery.
Recommended Paintings
Leonora Carrington:
Self-Portrait, Inn of the Dawn Horse, 1937-38
Queen of the Mandrills, 1959
The Giantess (The Guardian of the Egg), 1947
The House Opposite, 1945
Darvault, 1950
Friday the Thirteenth, 1965
Bird Bath, 1974
Sissygy, 1957
Max Ernst:
Attirement of the Bride, 1940
Napoleon in the Wilderness, 1941
Men Shall Know Nothing of This, 1923
The Antipope, 1941-42
Europe After the Rain II, 1940-1942
Leonor Fini:
The Shepherdess of the Sphinxes, 1941
Chthonian Divinity Watching over the Sleep of a Young Man, 1946
The Botany Lesson, 1974
Two Women, 1939
Donna del Lago or Le Bout du monde II, 1953
Remedios Varo:
The Call, 1961
Witch Going to the Sabbath, 1957
Creation of the Birds, 1957
Celestial Pablum, 1958
Woman Leaving the Psychoanalyst, 1960
Vegetarian Vampires, 1962
Julia Elliott
Julia Elliott’s Hellions was published in April 2025. She is also the author of the story collection The Wilds, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and the novel The New and Improved Romie Futch (both from Tin House). Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Tin House, Conjunctions, Granta (online), and the New York Times. She has won a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, and her stories have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. She teaches English and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina and lives in Columbia with her husband, daughter, and five hens. Her new story collection Hellions came out in April 2025.
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Here’s your next Game Piece. save the image and share on social media with #storyaday
Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version
I unfortunately didn’t have much time and opportunity this day to do much research beyond browsing paintings, but I nevertheless managed to write a quick ‘going-with-the-flow’ story inspired by ‘The Kitchen Garden on the Eyot’. It turned into a short exchange between the three figures on the left, using the various elements in the painting (and a tiny bit from another one) for world-building and to describe the journeys one of the figures went on.
Ended up choosing another painting called “The massacre of the innocents” to create an inspirational story. Surrealism is so unreal and real at the same time that this makes you thing a lot. Everytime you see the same image over and over again you always find another element and meaning that you didn’t realize before. This is a great technique to get new ideas when stuck.
Surrealist story #2 based on a hen in one of the paintings:
A spendy woman is about to go bankrupt. She visits a psychic who tells her the dream she keeps having means she will come into money soon. This doesn’t happen so she gets an extra job. Not feeling well, she has a hard time working extra hours and is plagued by her continuing chicken dreams. She goes to a dream therapist who tells her the hen may represent building a home or having a baby. Finding she’s pregnant, the man she’s been sleeping with asks her to marry him. She accepts gladly and doesn’t mind the chicken dreams continuing. This story turned out to have unplanned humor. 191 words so far.
Since surrealism can be inspired by dreams, I looked up the meaning of riding a brown or a white horse in your dreams, per the first painting. My story is about a woman living what she considers a boring life, who rides a brown horse uphill in her dreams. When she decides to change her life, she begins having dreams where she’s riding a white horse through verdant scenery. However, when she runs out of money having quit her boring job and leaving her husband, she begins riding the brown horse again in her dreams. The story turned out to be kind of humorous, to my surprise.
Magritte is I guess my favorite of the surrealist painters; also, one of the few I can stand. I went with his The Lovers I (Les Amants I) – a man and woman kissing passionately, but both heads completely covered in veiling cloth.
Two characters, Claude, and Elise. Close third person narration through Elise. I tried to model my writing on some of Erik Satie’s.
The piece (mine, not Magritte’s) has an undergraduate feel to it. It’s immediately pleasing in some ways, naive and shallow in others. Still, an interesting and challenging prompt.
I chose The House Opposite. My character wishes that she was young and carefree again.
I did a story inspired by “Self Portrait” by Leonora Carrington. About a character who owns the horses and lives a minimalist lifestyle. She’s having a conversation with the pony in front of her and the rocking horse on the wall.
I wrote a piece inspired by Syssigy by Leonora Carrington. “Research” included learning more about her, cruising around through her other works, staring at the painting itself, and watching three minutes of a Youtube video about plants prized by Medieval Europeans. (Angelica!)
It is fun to write in a counternarrative mode. Since my stories usually make meaning (or try to), I aimed to keep this one loosey goosey. I made up a little bit about what the figures in the painting were doing, and I broke the fourth wall a bunch, like two of them. 314 words.
I checked out the prompt around 4am, decided to write about “The Giantess” and then fell back into much needed sleep. I eventually created a Drabble with which I’m moderately satisfied…but may eventually improve.
That’s the painting I chose also!