Having believed fervently in soviet communism and having been disillusioned by stalinism, André Breton and the surrealists became impassionned by Fourier after the Second World War. He appeared to them to be a forerunner of surrealism, because of his proposal of a different civilisation based on the use of analogical thought and liberation of the passions. Breton dedicated to Fourier the long poem Ode à Charles Fourier and he used Fourier’s way of thinking as a compass, guiding him in his work as an art critic, and more generally as a critic of morals - as was shown in the collective exhibitions EROS (1959) and L’Ecart absolu (Absolute Divergence)in 1965.

Guy Girard, peintre et poète, prépare une thèse d’esthétique sur les affinités entre la pensée utopique d’Ernst Bloch et celle d’André Breton. Il est l’auteur de : L’Ombre et la demande, projections surréalistes (Atelier de Création Libertaire, Lyon, 2005) et il collabore régulièrement aux revues Analogon et SURR.