ELI5: What Is the Difference Between Cubism and Surrealism?

The difference is that Cubism shows the real world broken into puzzle pieces seen from different sides at the exact same time, while Surrealism shows the weird world of your dreams where impossible things happen.

Imagine you are in your kitchen making breakfast. Here is how each art style would show your morning:

• The Cubist Breakfast: Imagine your favorite coffee mug. If you take a photo of it from the front, you cannot see the bottom. But with Cubism, an artist breaks the mug into flat shapes like cubes, triangles, and squares. They paint the top, the handle, the side, and the bottom all glued together on the same flat page. It looks like you dropped the mug on the floor and pieced it back together like a flat jigsaw puzzle. You still know it is a mug, but it is shown from every angle at once.

• The Surrealist Breakfast: Now imagine you are dreaming about that same breakfast. In a Surrealist painting, the mug is not broken into shapes; instead, it is made of soft fur, or it is melting like warm butter over the edge of the kitchen table. Maybe your toaster is flying like a bird, or your fried egg has an open eye looking right back at you. Everything looks painted realistically and smooth, but the scene itself makes no sense in real life.

• Cubism is like looking at a real object through a cracked mirror or building a toy house using mixed-up plastic blocks.
• Surrealism is like waking up and trying to explain a crazy, magical dream where your dog was driving a car made of cheese.