Surrealists were always looking for the unusual, the surprise, the oddity. The surrealism movement began in Paris in the 1920s, after World War I, and spread around the world, infiltrating film, music, literature, and culture.

A popular example of surrealism can be found in Rene Magritte's painting of a pipe with the caption "This is not a pipe." Other well known surrealists are Marc Chagall and Salvador Dali.