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perhaps most fundamental to Surrealist visual techniques when he wrote, quite simply, that Surrealism had suppressed the world "like" a tomato is no longer "like" a child's balloon. It has never been sufficiently stressed that the question of the interchangeability of images had been posed, within the context of twentieth century art, by Synthetic Cubism, and most markedly by that of Picasso “ (Breton qtd. in Golding 114).

Picasso's friend Sabartes gave the example of Picasso receiving an oval cherimoya fruit from Spain which reminded Picasso of an owl “Observing the fruit before him, Picasso sees the exact position of the eyes and the bill; as he observes the fruit from the side, the image which comes to his mind is confirmed. With his finger he follows the curve of the fruit, which then suggests: "The little feet here and the bill here." So strong is his conviction that he effortlessly remarks to whoever is with him: "Even the feathers, you see?" And indeed, even the feathers; it is enough that he sees them for us to see them. If the cherimoya brought him memories of his native land only in passing, the impression produced by it stirred up in him different ideas. His brain apparently received the poetic emotion which, in the service of his own feelings, produced a version of the bird much more telling than truth itself. For his artificial owl is the product of an imagination "in the state of grace" (Sabartes 24).

Sabartes gave another example “Picasso, who saw me constantly, knew that I was not the same without a cigar between my teeth. (In Paris during World War II tobacco was scarce.) This was enough to cause him to envision the image of a cigar in a piece of wood. A few strokes of oil paint performed the "miracle" of suggesting the cigar I lacked. Had not the imagination of Picasso intervened, the little stick would have been thrown forever in the fire or on the trash heap. Something memorable had been created” (Sabartes 24).

Gilot asked Picasso why he troubled himself to incorporate bits and pieces of junk into his sculptures instead of starting from scratch using whatever material he chose to build up his forms. Picasso responded “There's a good reason for doing it this way," he told me. "The material itself, the form and texture of those pieces, often gives me the key to the whole sculpture. The shovel in which I saw the vision of the tail- feathers of the crane e the idea of doing a crane. Aside from that it's not that I need that ready-made element, but I achieve reality through the use of metaphor. My sculptures are plastic metaphors. It's the same principle as in painting. I've said that a painting shouldn't be a trompe-l'oeil but a trompe-l'esprit. I'm out to

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