SURREALISM

Started: 1924
Ended: 1966
• Surrealism began as a philosophical movement that said
the way to find truth in the world was through the
subconscious mind and dreams, rather than through
logical thought. The movement included many artists, poets,
and writers who expressed their theories in their work.

When was the Surrealism movement?

The movement began in the mid-1920s in France and was

born out of an earlier movement called Dadaism. It reached
its peak in the 1930s.

What are the characteristics of Surrealism?

Surrealism images explored the subconscious areas of the

mind. The artwork often made little sense as it was usually
trying to depict a dream or random thoughts.
• subconscious :existing or operating in the mind
beneath or beyond consciousness : the
subconscious self.
Compare preconscious, unconscious.
• imperfectly or not wholly conscious:
subconscious motivations.
• noun
• the totality of mental processes of which the
individual is not aware; unreportable mental
activities.
• Famous Surrealism Artists Giorgio de Chirico - In many ways this Italian artist was the
first of the Surrealist painters. He founded the school of Metaphysical Art which
influenced the Surrealist artists of the future.
• Salvador Dali - Considered by many to be the greatest of the Surrealist painters,
Salvador Dali was a Spanish artist who embraced the idea and art of Surrealism.
• Max Ernst - A German painter who was part of the Dadaist movement and then joined
the Surrealists.
• Alberto Giacometti - A French sculptor who was the leading sculptor of the Surrealist
movement. He is most known for his Walking Man sculpture which sold for over $104
million.
• Marcel Duchamp - A French artist who became involved in both the Dadaist and
Surrealist movements. He was also associated with Cubism.
• Paul Klee - A Swiss painter who mixed Surrealism with Expressionism. His most
famous paintings include Around the Fish, Red Balloon, and Twittering Machine.
• Rene Magritte - Magritte was a Belgian artist who liked to challenge people's ideas on
what they should see through his Surrealist paintings. Some of his famous works
include The Son of Man, The Treachery of Images, and The Human Condition.
• Joan Miro - Joan was a Spanish painter who was known for his Surrealist paintings as
well as his own style and abstract artwork.
• Yves Tanguy - Yves was a French Surrealist known for his abstract landscapes that used
a limited number of colors.
• Metaphysical: pertaining to or of the nature of
metaphysics.
• Philosophy. concerned with abstract thought or
subjects, as existence, causality, or truth.
• concerned with first principles and ultimate grounds, as
being, time, or substance.
• highly abstract, subtle, or abstruse.
• designating or pertaining to the poetry of an early group
of 17th-century English poets, notably John Donne,
whose characteristic style is highly intellectual and
philosophical and features intensive use of ingenious
conceits and turns of wit.
• Archaic. imaginary or fanciful.
• Karl Marx
• Karl Marx was a German philosopher,
historian, economist, and revolutionary who
along with Frederick Engels founded modern
Communism. Although Marx's belief that
socialism would one day replace capitalism did
not come true, he is considered one of the
modern era's most influential thinkers.
• The Surrealists sought to channel the unconscious
as a means to unlock the power of the imagination.
Hold in contempt to rationalism and literary
realism, and powerfully influenced by
psychoanalysis, the Surrealists believed the
rational mind repressed the power of the
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 revolution.
Their emphasis on the power of personal imagination
puts them in the tradition of Romanticism, but unlike
their forebears, they believed that revelations could
be found on the 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.
 Key Ideas
• 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 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.
 The Persistence of Memory (1931)
Salvador Dalí
Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Filmmaker, Printmaker, and
Performance Artist
• This iconic and much-reproduced painting depicts the
fluidity of time as a series of melting watches, their
forms described by Dalí as inspired by a surrealist
perception of Camembert cheese melting in the sun.
The distinction between hard and soft objects highlights
Dalí's desire to flip reality lending to his subjects
characteristics opposite their usually inherent
properties, an un-reality often found in our
dreamscapes. They are surrounded by a group of ants
hungry for the organic processes of decay of which Dalí
held unshakable fascination. Because the melting flesh
at the painting's center resembles Dalí, we might see
this piece as a reflection on the artist's immortality
amongst the rocky cliffs of his Catalonian home.
• Oil on canvas - Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Persistence: the continuance of an effect after
its cause is removed.
• Fluidity: the quality or state of being fluid.
• Camembert: a mellow, soft cheese, the center
of which is creamy and of a golden cream
color, made from cow's milk.
• Immortality: immortal condition or quality;
unending life.
• Catalonia: a region in NE Spain, bordering on
France and the Mediterranean: formerly a
province.
Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus)
(1954)
• Dalí is said to have been a rather poor student in his early years, especially
in mathematics. But as the first nuclear warheads exploded in Japan, Dalí
became very passionate about atomic theory and related topics. This new
interest coincided with a change in his artistic style, leading him back to the
realm of classical techniques. The result were paintings that combined his
earlier passions for Catholicism and Catalan culture with his new
discoveries in math and science - he called this new art theory in
his work "nuclear mysticism."

Dalí became especially interested in representing the fourth dimension as

can be seen in this work. We see the depiction of the familiar Crucifixion,
but instead of painting a regular cross, Dalí uses a mathematical shape
called the tesseract (also known as a hypercube). This tesseract is a
representation of a four-dimensional cube, in a three-dimensional space, a
rather advanced spatial concept. In fact, Dalí worked with Professor
Thomas Banchoff of Brown University (United States ) Mathematics for
many years later in his career to solidify his knowledge.
• Interestingly, Dalí combined his interest in spatial
mathematics with a growing personal struggle with
religion. In later years, he expressed his feelings about
Catholicism in this way: "I believe in God but I have no
faith. Mathematics and science have indisputably
proved that God must exist, but I don't believe it." With
paintings such as Crucifixion, Dalí explores combing
these two in one devotional representation. In fact, his
painting Christ of Saint John of the Cross (1951)
similarly deals with divine mathematics and is
considered by many to be the greatest religious painting
of the 20th century.
• Oil on canvas - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Christ of Saint
John of the
Cross (1951)
Hypercube: math's a figure in a space of four
or more dimensions having all its sides equal
and all its angles right angles.
Catholicism: the faith, system, and practice of
the Catholic Church, especially the Roman
Catholic Church.
Catalan :pertaining to Catalonia, its
inhabitants, or their language.
Tesseract: the generalization of a cube to four
dimensions.
Spatial: of or relating to space.
Lobster Telephone (1936)
Salvador Dalí
• Dalí's Lobster Telephone is one of the most famous Surrealist
objects ever created. The juxtaposition of two objects that have little
to do with each other is a staple of Dada and Surrealist ideas. Here
Dalí combines the telephone, an object meant to be held, intimately
next to one's ear, with a large sharp-clawed lobster, aligned with the
mouthpiece. It presents a literal juxtaposition of a underwater
creature with a normal machine of daily life in the way of dream
pairings, in which we are disconcertedly (disturbed )jarred (to have
a harshly unpleasant effect on one's nerves, feelings, thoughts, etc)
from our reality and viscerally (Anatomy, Zoology. the organs in the
cavities of the body, especially those in the abdominal cavity.
• (not used scientifically) the intestines; bowels) unnerved by the
presence of things that make no sense on a conscious level.
Dalí collector Edward James commissioned Lobster
Telephone and had four made for his own house.
James also commissioned Mae West's Lips sofa
from Dalí, which is simply a very large pair of lips
that serve as a couch.

• Steel, plaster, rubber, resin and paper - Tate,

London
The Mae West Brooch (1949)
• Dalí's renaissance-man mind was exceptionally creative and
prolific and extended into many other fields beyond painting.
For example, throughout his career, he designed enough pieces
of jewelry to fill a museum. In The Mae (a payment or charge)
West brooch, we find continued Surrealism in the way the teeth
are literally pearls, sitting in a slightly plumped leer (to look
with a sideways or oblique glance) of a mouth, ever so slightly
contorted as to make the viewer uneasy. Most designers in the
world of fashion would not get away with such a warped play
on perfection. But Dalí claimed that he was inspired by a
clichéd phrase: "Poets of the ages, of all lands, write of ruby
lips and teeth like pearls," as well as the smile of the brooch's
namesake Hollywood star. Interestingly, New York art stars
such as Willem de Kooning, Andy Warhol and countless others
would go on to create renditions of famous, voluptuous lips in
their own work.
• Rubys and Pearls in setting - Dalí Jewels Museum, Figueres,
Spain.