Surrealism Movement Overview - TheArtStory
Surrealism Movement Overview - TheArtStory
Surrealism Movement Overview - TheArtStory
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Surrealism
Started: 1924
Ended: 1966
"Although the dream is a very strange phenomenon and an
Surrealism inexplicable mystery, far more inexplicable is the mystery and aspect
our minds confer on certain objects and aspects of life."
Summary
Key Ideas 1 of 17
Key Artists
Important Art +
History and Ideas
Summary of Surrealism
Beginnings The Surrealists sought to channel the unconscious as a means to unlock the power of the
Concepts, Styles, imagination. Disdaining rationalism and literary realism, and powerfully influenced by
and Trends
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psychoanalysis, the Surrealists believed the rational mind repressed the power of the
Later Developments + imagination, weighing it down with taboos. Influenced also by Karl Marx, they hoped that the
psyche had the power to reveal the contradictions in the everyday world and spur on
Useful Resources
revolution. Their emphasis on the power of personal imagination puts them in the tradition of
Similar Art and Related Romanticism, but unlike their forebears, they believed that revelations could be found on the
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street and in everyday life. The Surrealist impulse to tap the unconscious mind, and their
interests in myth and primitivism, went on to shape many later movements, and the style
remains influential to this today.
André Breton defined Surrealism as "psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one
proposes to express - verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner - the
actual functioning of thought." What Breton is proposing is that artists bypass reason and
rationality by accessing their unconscious mind. In practice, these techniques became
known as automatism or automatic writing, which allowed artists to forgo conscious
thought and embrace chance when creating art.
The work of Sigmund Freud was profoundly influential for Surrealists, particularly his book,
The Interpretation of Dreams (1899). Freud legitimized the importance of dreams and the
unconscious as valid revelations of human emotion and desires; his exposure of the
complex and repressed inner worlds of sexuality, desire, and violence provided a theoretical
basis for much of Surrealism.
Surrealist imagery is probably the most recognizable element of the movement, yet it is
also the most elusive to categorize and define. Each artist relied on their own recurring
motifs arisen through their dreams or/and unconscious mind. At its basic, the imagery is
outlandish, perplexing, and even uncanny, as it is meant to jolt the viewer out of their
comforting assumptions. Nature, however, is the most frequent imagery: Max Ernst was
obsessed with birds and had a bird alter ego, Salvador Dalí's works often include ants or
eggs, and Joan Miró relied strongly on vague biomorphic imagery.
Key Artists
Overview of Surrealism
Object (1936)
Artist: Meret Oppenheim
Mannequin (1938)
Artist: Man Ray
Birthday (1942)
Artist: Dorothea Tanning
The Surrealist movement began as a literary group strongly allied to Dada, emerging in the
wake of the collapse of Dada in Paris, when André Breton's eagerness to bring purpose to
Dada clashed with Tristan Tzara's anti-authoritarianism. Breton, who is occasionally described
as the 'Pope' of Surrealism, officially founded the movement in 1924 when he wrote "The
Surrealist Manifesto." However, the term "surrealism," was first coined in 1917 by Guillaume
Apollinaire when he used it in program notes for the ballet Parade, written by Pablo Picasso,
Leonide Massine, Jean Cocteau, and Erik Satie.
The Bureau for Surrealist Research or Centrale Surréaliste was also established in Paris in
1924. This was a loosely affiliated group of writers and artists who met and conducted
interviews to "gather all the information possible related to forms that might express the
unconscious activity of the mind." Headed by Breton, the Bureau created a dual archive: one
that collected dream imagery and one that collected material related to social life. At least
two people manned the office each day - one to greet visitors and the other to write down the
observations and comments of the visitors that then became part of the archive. In January of
1925, the Bureau officially published its revolutionary intent that was signed by 27 people,
including Breton, Ernst, and Masson.
Surrealism shared much of the anti-rationalism of Dada, the movement out of which it grew.
The original Parisian Surrealists used art as a reprieve from violent political situations and to
address the unease they felt about the world's uncertainties. By employing fantasy and dream
imagery, artists generated creative works in a variety of media that exposed their inner minds
in eccentric, symbolic ways, uncovering anxieties and treating them analytically through visual
means.
Surrealist Paintings
There were two styles or methods that distinguished Surrealist painting. Artists such as
Salvador Dalí, Yves Tanguy, and René Magritte painted in a hyper-realistic style in which
objects were depicted in crisp detail and with the illusion of three-dimensionality, emphasizing
their dream-like quality. The color in these works was often either saturated (Dalí) or
monochromatic (Tanguy), both choices conveying a dream state.
Several Surrealists also relied heavily on automatism or automatic writing as a way to tap into
the unconscious mind. Artists such as Joan Miró and Max Ernst used various techniques to
create unlikely and often outlandish imagery including collage, doodling, frottage,
decalcomania, and grattage. Artists such as Hans Arp also created collages as stand-alone
works.
Hyperrealism and automatism were not mutually exclusive. Miro, for example, often used both
methods in one work. In either case, however the subject matter was arrived at or depicted, it
was always bizarre - meant to disturb and baffle.
A li i d b fS li k f h i h di i l k A h b
A limited number of Surrealists are known for their three-dimensional work. Arp, who began
as part of the Dada movement, was known for his biomorphic objects. Oppenheim's pieces
were bizarre combinations that removed familiar objects from their everyday context, while
Giacometti's were more traditional sculptural forms, many of which were human-insect hybrid
figures. Dalí, less known for his 3D work, did produce some interesting installations,
particularly, Rainy Taxi (1938), which was an automobile with mannequins and a series of
pipes that created "rain" in the car's interior.
Surrealist Sculpture - Movement Page
Surrealist Photography
Photography, because of the ease
with which it allowed artists to
produce uncanny imagery,
occupied a central role in
Surrealism. Artists such as Man
Ray and Maurice Tabard used the
medium to explore automatic
writing, using techniques such as
double exposure, combination
printing, montage, and
solarization, the latter of which
eschewed the camera altogether.
Other photographers used rotation or distortion to render bizarre images.
The Surrealists also appreciated the prosaic photograph removed from its mundane context
and seen through the lens of Surrealist sensibility. Vernacular snapshots, police photographs,
movie stills, and documentary photographs all were published in Surrealist journals like La
Révolution surréaliste and Minotaure, totally disconnected from their original purposes. The
Surrealists, for example, were enthusiastic about Eugène Atget's photographs of Paris.
Published in 1926 in La Révolution surréaliste at the prompting of his neighbor, Man Ray,
Atget's imagery of a quickly vanishing Paris was understood as impulsive visions. Atget's
photographs of empty streets and shop windows recalled the Surrealist's own vision of Paris
as a "dream capital."
Dada & Surrealist Photography - Movement Page
Surrealist Film
Surrealism was the first artistic movement to experiment with cinema in part because it
offered more opportunity than theatre to create the bizarre or the unreal. The first film
characterized as Surrealist was the 1924 Entr'acte, a 22-minute, silent film, written by Rene
Clair and Francis Picabia, and directed by Clair. But, the most famous Surrealist filmmaker
was of course Luis Buñuel. Working with Dalí, Buñuel made the classic films Un Chien Andalou
(1929) and L'Age d'Or (1930), both of which were characterized by narrative disjunction and
their peculiar, sometimes disturbing imagery. In the 1930s Joseph Cornell produced surrealist
films in the United States, such as Rose Hobart (1936). Salvador Dalí designed a dream
sequence for Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945).
Surrealist Film - Movement Page
Abstract Expressionism
In 1936, the Museum of Modern Art in New York staged an exhibition entitled Fantastic Art,
Dada, Surrealism, and many American artists were powerfully impressed by it. Some, such as
Jackson Pollock, began to experiment with automatism, and with imagery that seemed to
derive from the unconscious - experiments which would later lead to his "drip" paintings.
Robert Motherwell, similarly, is said to have been "stuck between the two worlds" of
abstraction and automatism.
Largely because of political upheaval in Europe, New York rather than Paris became the
emergent center of a new vanguard, one that favored tapping the unconscious through
abstraction as opposed to the "hand-painted dreams" of Salvador Dalí. Peggy Guggenheim's
1942 exhibition of Surrealist-influenced artists (Rothko, Gottlieb, Motherwell, Baziotes,
Hoffman, Still, and Pollock) alongside European artists Miró, Klee, and Masson, underscores
the speed with which Surrealist concepts spread through the New York art community.
Abstract Expressionism Movement Page
Abstract Expressionism Movement Page
While most of the male Surrealists, especially Man Ray, Magritte, and Dalí, repeatedly focused
on and/or distorted the female form and depicted women as muses, much in the way that
male artists had for centuries, female Surrealists such as Claude Cahun, Lee Miller, Leonora
Carrington, and Dorothea Tanning, sought to address the problematic adoption of Freudian
psychoanalysis that often cast women as monstrous and lesser. Thus, many female
Surrealists experimented with cross-dressing and depicted themselves as animals or mythic
creatures.
British Surrealism
<i>Circle of the Monoliths</i> (1937-38) by Interestingly, many notable female
Paul Nash features many aspects particular to Surrealists were British. Examples
British Surrealism include Eileen Agar, Ithell Colquhoun,
Edith Rimmington, and Emmy Bridgwater.
Particular to the British interpretation of
Surrealist ideology was an ongoing
exploration of human relations with their
surrounding natural environment and
most prominently, with the sea. Alongside
Agar, Paul Nash developed an interest in
the object trouvé, usually in the form of items collected from the beach. The focus on the
border where land meets the sea, and where rocks anthropomorphically resemble people
struck a cord with British identity and more generally, with Surrealist principles of reconciling
and uniting opposites.
The International Surrealist Exhibition (1936) held in London was a particular catalyst for many
British artists. Headed by Roland Penrose and Herbert Read, the movement thrived in Britain,
creating the international icons Leonora Carrington and Lee Miller, and also spurring on the
practice of another important circle of artists surrounding Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth,
and Henry Moore. Overall, the privileging of an eccentric imagination and essential rejection
of standardized and rational modes of doing things resonated well from the outset. This
golden period for art in general in the UK, and more specifically the legacies of British
Surrealism continue to influence the country’s art practice today.
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