Women Artists Are Painting Fresh Visions of Sex with a Surrealistic Twist

When describing the main conduits of the human subconscious, psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein determined in her 1912 essay “Destruction as the Cause of Coming into Being” that mankind’s drive can be condensed to two points—sex and death. While Spielrein’s analysis might not be a truism for everyone, its accuracy can be seen in 20th- and 21st-century art influenced by the subconscious, specifically in Surrealism.