(Redirected from Surrealist)
'Surrealism'
[In 1917, Guillaume Apollinaire coined the term "Surrealism" in the program notes describing the ballet ''Parade'' which was a collaborative work by Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie, Pablo Picasso and Léonide Massine: "From this new alliance, for until now stage sets and costumes on one side and choreography on the other had only a sham bond between them, there has come about, in ''Parade'', a kind of super-realism ('sur-réalisme'), in which I see the starting point of a series of manifestations of this new spirit ('esprit nouveau')."] is a cultural movement that began in the mid-1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members. The works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and
non sequitur, however many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost with the works being an artifact, and leader
André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was above all a revolutionary movement. From the
Dada activities of
World War I Surrealism was formed with the most important center of the movement in Paris and from the 1920s spreading around the globe, eventually affecting films such as the
Angel's Egg and
El Topo, amongst others.
Founding of the movement
World War I scattered the writers and artists who had been based in Paris, and while away from Paris many involved themselves in the
Dada movement believing that excessive rational thought and bourgeois values had brought the terrifying conflict upon the world. The Dadaists protested with anti-rational
anti-art gatherings, performances, writing and art works. After the war when they returned to Paris the Dada activities continued.
During the war Surrealism's soon-to-be leader
André Breton who had trained in medicine and psychiatry, served in a neurological hospital where he used the psychoanalytic methods of
Sigmund Freud with soldiers who were
shell-shocked. He also met the young writer
Jacques Vaché and felt that he was the spiritual son of writer and
pataphysician Alfred Jarry, and he came to admire the young writer's anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition. Later Breton wrote, "In literature, I am successively taken with
Rimbaud, with Jarry, with
Apollinaire, with
Nouveau, with
Lautréamont, but it is Jacques Vaché to whom I owe the most."
Back in Paris Breton joined in the Dada activities and also started the literary journal ''Littérature'' along with
Louis Aragon and
Philippe Soupault. They began experimenting with
automatic writingâspontaneously writing without censoring their thoughtsâand published the "automatic" writings, as well as accounts of dreams, in ''LittĂ©rature''. Breton and Soupault delved deeper into automatism and wrote the novel ''
The Magnetic Fields (Les Champs Maqnétiques)'' in 1920. They continued the automatic writing, gathering more artists and writers into the group, and coming to believe that automatism was a better tactic for societal change than the Dada attack on prevailing values. In addition to Breton, Aragon and Soupault the original Surrealists included
Paul Ăluard,
Benjamin PĂ©ret,
René Crevel,
Robert Desnos,
Jacques Baron,
Max Morise,
Marcel Noll,
Pierre Naville,
Roger Vitrac,
Simone Breton,
Gala Ăluard,
Max Ernst,
Man Ray,
Hans Arp,
Georges Malkine,
Michel Leiris,
Georges Limbour,
Antonin Artaud,
Raymond Queneau,
André Masson,
Joan MirĂł,
Marcel Duchamp,
Jacques Prévert and
Yves Tanguy.
[Dawn Ades, with Matthew Gale: "Surrealism", ''The Oxford Companion to Western Art''. Ed. Hugh Brigstocke. Oxford University Press, 2001. Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press, 2007. Accessed March 15, 2007, http://www.groveart.com/]
As they developed their philosophy they felt that while Dada rejected categories and labels, Surrealism would advocate the idea that ordinary and depictive expressions are vital and important, but that the sense of their arrangement must be open to the full range of imagination according to the
Hegelian Dialectic. They also looked to the
Marxist dialectic and the work of such theorists as
Walter Benjamin and
Herbert Marcuse.
Freud's work with free association, dream analysis and the hidden unconscious was of the utmost importance to the Surrealists in developing methods to liberate imagination. However, they embraced
idiosyncrasy, while rejecting the idea of an underlying madness or darkness of the mind. (Later the idiosyncratic
Salvador DalĂ explained it as: "There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad."
[1])
The group aimed to revolutionize human experience, including its personal, cultural, social, and political aspects, by freeing people from what they saw as false rationality, and restrictive customs and structures.
Breton proclaimed, the true aim of Surrealism is "long live the social revolution, and it alone!" To this goal, at various times surrealists aligned with
communism and
anarchism.
In 1924 they declared their intents and philosophy with the issuance of the first
Surrealist Manifesto. That same year they established the
Bureau of Surrealist Research, and began publishing the journal ''
La Révolution surréaliste''.
Surrealist Manifesto
Main articles: Surrealist Manifesto
Breton wrote the
manifesto of 1924 (another was issued in 1929) that defines the purposes of the group and includes citations of the influences on Surrealism, examples of Surrealist works and discussion of Surrealist automatism. He defined Surrealism as:
Towards another definition
The English word "Surrealism" is a mis-translation of the French word "Surréalisme." The correct translation should be "Superrealism." Breton somewhere said that the "surréel is to the réel what the surnaturel is to the naturel." English-speakers say "supernatural". The reason why this matters is that the prefix "surr-" in English is often, not always, associated with the Latin prefix "sub" e.g. surreptitious (Fr. subreptice), surrogate (Fr. subrogé), implying exactly the opposite of the intended meaning.
Breton would later qualify the first of these definitions by saying "in the absence of conscious moral or aesthetic self-censorship," and by his admission through subsequent developments, that these definitions were capable of considerable expansion.
''La Révolution surréaliste''
Main articles: La Révolution surréaliste
Shortly after releasing the first
Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, the Surrealists published the inaugural issue of ''
La Révolution surréaliste'' and publication continued into 1929.
Pierre Naville and
Benjamin Péret were the initial directors of the publication and modeled the format of the journal on the conservative scientific review ''La Nature.'' The format was deceiving, and to the Surrealists' delight ''La Révolution surréaliste'' was consistently scandalous and revolutionary. The journal focused on writing with most pages densely packed with columns of text, but also included reproductions of art, among them works by
Giorgio de Chirico,
Max Ernst,
André Masson and
Man Ray.
Bureau of Surrealist Research
Main articles: Bureau of Surrealist Research
The
Bureau of Surrealist Research (Centrale Surréaliste) was the Paris office where the Surrealist writers and artists gathered to meet, hold discussions, and conduct interviews with the goal of investigating speech under trance.
Expansion
The movement in the mid-1920s was characterized by meetings in cafes where the Surrealists played collaborative drawing games and discussed the theories of Surrealism. The Surrealists developed techniques such as
automatic drawing. (See
Surrealist techniques and .)
Breton initially doubted that visual arts could even be useful in the Surrealist movement since they appeared to be less malleable and open to chance and
automatism. This caution was overcome by the discovery of such
techniques as
frottage, and
decalcomania.
Soon more visual artists joined Surrealism including
Giorgio de Chirico,
Salvador DalĂ,
Enrico Donati,
Alberto Giacometti,
Valentine Hugo,
MĂ©ret Oppenheim,
Toyen,
Grégoire Michonze, and
Luis Buñuel. Though Breton admired
Pablo Picasso and
Marcel Duchamp and courted them to join the movement, they remained peripheral.
[2]
More writers also joined, including former Dada leader
Tristan Tzara,
René Char,
Georges Sadoul,
André Thirion and
Maurice Heine.
In 1925 an autonomous Surrealist group formed in Brussels becoming official in 1926. The group included the musician, poet and artist
E.L.T. Mesens, painter and writer
René Magritte,
Paul Nougé,
Marcel Lecomte,
Camille Goemans, and
André Souris. In 1927 they were joined by the writer
Louis Scutenaire. They corresponded regularly with the Paris group, and in 1927 both Goemans and Magritte moved to Paris and frequented Bretonâs circle.
The artists, with their roots in
Dada and
Cubism, the abstraction of
Wassily Kandinsky and
Expressionism, and
Post-Impressionism, also reached to older "bloodlines" such as
Hieronymus Bosch, and the so-called primitive and naive arts.
André Masson's
automatic drawings of
1923, are often used as the point of the acceptance of visual arts and the break from Dada, since they reflect the influence of the idea of the
unconscious mind. Another example is
Alberto Giacometti's
1925 ''Torso'', which marked his movement to simplified forms and inspiration from preclassical sculpture.
However, a striking example of the line used to divide Dada and Surrealism among art experts is the pairing of
1925's '' Little Machine Constructed by Minimax Dadamax in Person (Von minimax dadamax selbst konstruiertes maschinchen)''
[1] with ''The Kiss (Le Baiser)''
[2] from
1927 by
Ernst. The first is generally held to have a distance, and erotic subtext, whereas the second presents an erotic act openly and directly. In the second the influence of
MirĂł and the drawing style of
Picasso is visible with the use of fluid curving and intersecting lines and colour, where as the first takes a directness that would later be influential in movements such as
Pop art.
Giorgio de Chirico, and his previous development of
Metaphysical art, was one of the important joining figures between the philosophical and visual aspects of Surrealism. Between
1911 and
1917, he adopted an unornamented depictional style whose surface would be adopted by others later. '' from
1913 shows the stark colour contrasts and illustrative style later adopted by Surrealist painters. His
1914 '' The Nostalgia of the Poet (La Nostalgie du poete)''
[3] has the figure turned away from the viewer, and the juxtaposition of a bust with glasses and a fish as a relief defies conventional explanation. He was also a writer, and his novel ''
Hebdomeros'' presents a series of dreamscapes with an unusual use of punctuation, syntax and grammar designed to create a particular atmosphere and frame around its images. His images, including set designs for the
Ballets Russes, would create a decorative form of visual Surrealism, and he would be an influence on the two artists who would be even more closely associated with Surrealism in the public mind:
Salvador DalĂ and
Magritte. He would, however, leave the Surrealist group in 1928.
In
1924,
Miro and
Masson applied Surrealism theory to painting explicitly leading to the ''La Peinture Surrealiste'' exhibition.
Breton published ''Surrealism and Painting'' in
1928 which summarized the movement to that point, though he continued to update the work until the
1960s.
'Major exhibitions in the 1920s'
★ 1925 - ''La Peinture Surrealiste'' - The first ever Surrealist exhibition at Gallerie Pierre in Paris. Displayed works by
Masson,
Man Ray,
Klee,
MirĂł, and others. The show confirmed that Surrealism had a component in the visual arts (though it had been initially debated whether this was possible), techniques from Dada, such as
photomontage were used.
★
Galerie Surréaliste opened on
March 26,
1926 with an exhibition by
Man Ray.
Writing continues
The first Surrealist work, according to leader
Breton, was ''
Magnetic Fields (Les Champs Magnétiques)'' (1921). But even before that, in 1919, ''Littérature'' contained automatist works and accounts of dreams. The magazine and the portfolio both showed their disdain for literal meanings given to objects and focused rather on the undertones, the poetic undercurrents present. Not only did they give emphasis to the poetic undercurrents, but also to the connotations and the overtones which "exist in ambiguous relationships to the visual images."
Because Surrealist writers seldom, if ever, appear to organize their thoughts and the images they present, some people find much of their work difficult to parse. This notion however is a superficial comprehension, prompted no doubt by Breton's initial emphasis on automatic writing as the main route toward a higher reality. But â as in Breton's case itself â much of what is presented as purely automatic is actually edited and very "thought out". Breton himself later admitted that automatic writing's centrality had been overstated, and other elements were introduced, especially as the growing involvement of visual artists in the movement forced the issue, since automatic painting required a rather more strenuous set of approaches. Thus such elements as collage were introduced, arising partly from an ideal of startling juxtapositions as revealed in
Pierre Reverdy's poetry. And â as in
Magritte's case (where there is no obvious recourse to either automatic techniques or collage) the very notion of convulsive joining became a tool for revelation in and of itself. Surrealism was meant to be always in flux â to be more modern than modern â and so it was natural there should be a rapid shuffling of the philosophy as new challenges arose.
Surrealists revived interest in
Isidore Ducasse, known by his pseudonym "Le Comte de Lautréamont" and for the line "beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella", and
Arthur Rimbaud, two late
19th century writers believed to be the precursors of Surrealism.
Examples of Surrealist literature are
Crevel's ''Mr. Knife Miss Fork'' (1931),
Aragon's ''Irene's Cunt'' (1927),
Breton's ''Sur la route de San Romano'' (1948),
Peret's ''Death to the Pigs'' (1929), and
Artaud's ''Le Pese-Nerfs'' (1926).
''
La Révolution surréaliste'' continued publication into 1929 with most pages densely packed with columns of text, but also included reproductions of art, among them works by
de Chirico,
Ernst,
Masson and
Man Ray. Other works included books, poems, pamphlets, automatic texts and theoretical tracts.
Films from Surrealists
Main articles: Surrealism and film
Early films by Surrealists include:
★ ''
Entr'acte'' by
René Clair (1924)
★ ''
La Coquille et le clergyman'' by
Germaine Dulac, screenplay by
Antonin Artaud (1927)
★ ''
Un chien andalou'' by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalà (1928)
★ ''
L'Ătoile de mer'' by
Man Ray (1928)
★ ''
L'Ăge d'Or'' by Luis Buñuel and
Salvador DalĂ (1930)
★ ''
Le sang d'un poĂšte by
Jean Cocteau (1930)
Music from Surrealists
Main articles: Surrealism (music)
In the
1920s several composers were influenced by Surrealism, or by individuals in the Surrealist movement. Among them were
Bohuslav MartinĆŻ,
André Souris, and
Edgard VarĂšse, who stated that his work ''Arcana'' was drawn from a dream sequence. Souris in particular was associated with the movement: he had a long relationship with
Magritte, and worked on
Paul Nouge's publication ''Adieu Marie''.
Germaine Tailleferre of the French group
Les Six wrote several works which could be considered to be inspired by Surrealism, including the 1948 Ballet ''Paris-Magie'' (scenario by
Lise Deharme), the Operas ''La Petite SirĂšne'' (book by Philippe Soupault) and ''Le MaĂźtre'' (book by EugĂšne Ionesco). Tailleferre also wrote popular songs to texts by Claude Marci, the wife of Henri Jeanson, whose portrait had been painted by Magritte in the 1930s.
Even though Breton by
1946 responded rather negatively to the subject of music with his essay ''Silence is Golden,'' later Surrealists have been interested in—and found parallels to—Surrealism in the improvisation of
jazz and the
blues. Surrealists such as
Paul Garon have written articles and full-length books on the subject. Jazz and blues musicians have occasionally reciprocated this interest. For example, the
1976 World Surrealist Exhibition included performances by
Honeyboy Edwards.
Surrealism and international politics
Surrealism as a political force developed unevenly around the world, in some places more emphasis was on artistic practices, in other places political and in other places still, Surrealist praxis looked to supersize both the arts and politics. During the 1930s the Surrealist idea spread from
Europe to
North America,
South America,
Central America,
the Caribbean, and throughout
Asia. As both an artistic idea and as an ideology of political change.
Politically Surrealism was ultra-leftist,
communist, or
anarchist. The split from Dada has been characterised as a split between anarchists and communists, with the Surrealists as communist. Breton and his comrades supported
Leon Trotsky and his International Left Opposition for a while, though there was a certain openness to anarchism that manifested more fully after
World War II. Some Surrealists such as
Benjamin Peret aligned with forms of
left communism.
DalĂ supported capitalism and the fascist dictatorship of
Francisco Franco but cannot be said to represent a trend in Surrealism in this respect; in fact he was considered, by Breton and his associates, to have betrayed and left Surrealism.
Bretonâs followers, along with the
Communist Party, were working for the "liberation of man." However, Bretonâs group refused to prioritize the
proletarian struggle over radical creation such that their struggles with the Party made the late 1920s a turbulent time for both. Many individuals closely associated with Breton, notably
Louis Aragon, left his group to work more closely with the Communists.
Surrealists have often sought to link their efforts with political ideals and activities. In the
"Declaration of January 27, 1925" for example, members of the Paris-based
Bureau of Surrealist Research (including André Breton, Louis Aragon, and, Antonin Artaud, as well as some two dozen others) declared their affinity for revolutionary politics. While this was initially a somewhat vague formulation, by the 1930s many Surrealists had strongly identified themselves with communism. The foremost document of this tendency within Surrealism is the
"Manifesto for a Free Revolutionary Art" published under the names of Breton and
Diego Rivera but actually co-authored by Breton and
Leon Trotsky.
[3]
However, in 1933 the Surrealistsâ assertion that a 'proletarian literature' within a capitalist society was impossible led to their break with the Association des Ecrivains et Artistes RĂ©volutionnaires, and the expulsion of Breton, Ăluard and Crevel from the Communist Party.
In
1925, the Paris Surrealist group and the extreme left of the
French Communist Party came together to support
Abd-el-Krim, leader of the
Rif uprising against French colonialism in
Morocco. In an open letter to writer and French ambassador to Japan,
Paul Claudel, the Paris group announced:
:"We Surrealists pronounced ourselves in favour of changing the imperialist war, in its chronic and colonial form, into a civil war. Thus we placed our energies at the disposal of the revolution, of the proletariat and its struggles, and defined our attitude towards the colonial problem, and hence towards the colour question."
The anticolonial revolutionary and proletarian politics of "Murderous Humanitarianism" (1932) which was drafted mainly by
Rene Crevel, signed by
André Breton,
Paul Ăluard,
Benjamin Peret,
Yves Tanguy, and the Martiniquan Surrealists
Pierre Yoyotte and
J.M. Monnerot perhaps makes it the original document of what is later called 'black Surrealism',
[4] although it is the contact between
Aimé Césaire and Breton in the 1940s in Martinique that really lead to the communication of what is known as 'black Surrealism'.
Anticolonial revolutionary writers in the
NĂ©gritude movement of
Martinique, a French colony at the time, took up Surrealism as a revolutionary method - a critique of European culture and a radical subjective. This linked with other Surrealists and was very important for the subsequent development of Surrealism as a revolutionary praxis. The journal ''
Tropiques'', featuring the work of Cesaire along with
René Ménil,
Lucie Thésée,
Aristide Maugée and others, was first published in
1940.
[5]
It is interesting to note that when in 1938 André Breton traveled with his wife the painter Jacqueline Lamba to
Mexico to meet Trotsky; staying as the guest of
Diego Rivera's former wife Guadalupe Marin; he met
Frida Kahlo and saw her paintings for the first time. Breton declared Kahlo to be an "innate" Surrealist painter.
[6]
Internal politics
In 1929 the satellite group around the journal ''Le Grand Jeu'', including
Roger Gilbert-Lecomte,
Maurice Henry and the Czech painter
Josef Sima, was ostracized. Also in February, Breton asked Surrealists to assess their "degree of moral competence", and theoretical refinements included in the second ''
manifeste du surréalisme'' excluded anyone reluctant to commit to collective action:
Leiris,
Limbour,
Morise,
Baron,
Queneau,
Prévert,
Desnos,
Masson and
Boiffard. They moved to the periodical ''
Documents'', edited by
Georges Bataille, whose anti-idealist materialism produced a hybrid Surrealism exposed the base instincts of humans.
Other members were ousted over the years for a variety of infractions, both political and personal, and others left of to pursue creativity of their own style.
Golden age
Throughout the 1930s, Surrealism continued to become more visible to the public at large. A
Surrealist group developed in Britain and, according to Breton, their 1936
London International Surrealist Exhibition was a high water mark of the period and became the model for international exhibitions.
DalĂ and
Magritte created the most widely recognized images of the movement. DalĂ joined the group in
1929, and participated in the rapid establishment of the visual style between
1930 and
1935.
Surrealism as a visual movement had found a method: to expose psychological truth by stripping ordinary objects of their normal significance, in order to create a compelling image that was beyond ordinary formal organization, in order to evoke empathy from the viewer.
1931 marked a year when several Surrealist painters produced works which marked turning points in their stylistic evolution: Magritte's ''Voice of Space (La Voix des airs)''
[5] is an example of this process, where three large spheres representing bells hang above a landscape. Another Surrealist landscape from this same year is
Yves Tanguy's '', with its molten forms and liquid shapes. Liquid shapes became the trademark of DalĂ, particularly in his ''
The Persistence of Memory'', which features the image of watches that sag as if they are melting.
The characteristics of this style - a combination of the depictive, the abstract, and the psychological - came to stand for the alienation which many people felt in the
modern period, combined with the sense of reaching more deeply into the psyche, to be "made whole with one's individuality".
Long after personal, political and professional tensions fragmented the Surrealist group, Magritte and DalĂ continued to define a visual program in the arts. This program reached beyond painting, to encompass photography as well, as can be seen from a
Man Ray self portrait, whose use of assemblage influenced
Robert Rauschenberg's collage boxes.
''L'Ange du Foyeur ou le Triomphe du Surréalisme''. 1937. Oil on canvas, 114 x 146 cm. Private collection.
During the
1930s Peggy Guggenheim, an important American art collector, married
Max Ernst and began promoting work by other Surrealists such as
Tanguy and the British artist
John Tunnard.
'Major exhibitions in the 1930s'
★ 1936 - ''
London International Surrealist Exhibition'' is organised in London by the art historian
Herbert Read, with an introduction by
André Breton.
★ 1936 -
Museum of Modern Art in New York shows the exhibition ''Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism''.
★ 1938 - A new ''International Surrealist Exhibition'' was held at the Beaux-arts Gallery, Paris, with more than 60 artists from different countries, and showed around 300 paintings, objects, collages, photographs and installations. The Surrealists wanted to create an exhibition which in itself would be a creative act and called on
Marcel Duchamp to do so. At the exhibition's entrance he placed
Salvador DalĂ's ''
Rainy Taxi'' (an old taxi rigged to produce a steady drizzle of water down the inside of the windows, and a shark-headed creature in the driver's seat and a blond mannequin crawling with live snails in the back) greeted the patrons who were in full evening dress. ''Surrealist Street'' filled one side of the lobby with mannequins dressed by various Surrealists. He designed the main hall to seem like subterranean cave with 1,200 coal bags suspended from the ceiling over a coal brazier with a single light bulb which provided the only lighting,
[6] so patrons were given flashlights with which to view the art. The floor was carpeted with dead leaves, ferns and grasses and the aroma of roasting coffee filled the air. Much to the Surrealists' satisfaction the exhibition scandalized the viewers.
World War II and the Post War period
World War II created havoc not only for the general population of
Europe but especially for the European artists and writers that oppossed Fascism, and Nazism. Many important artists fled to
North America, and relative safety in the
United States. The art community in
New York City in particular was already grappling with Surrealist ideas and several artists like
Arshile Gorky,
Jackson Pollock,
Robert Motherwell, and
Roberto Matta, converged closely with the surrealist artists themselves, albeit with some suspicion and reservations. Ideas concerning the unconscious and dream imagery were quickly embraced. By the
Second World War, the taste of the American
avant-garde swung decisively towards
Abstract Expressionism with the support of key taste makers, including
Peggy Guggenheim,
Leo Steinberg and
Clement Greenberg. However, it should not be easily forgotten that Abstract Expressionism itself grew directly out of the meeting of American (particularly New York) artists with European Surrealists self-exiled during WWII. In particular,
Arshile Gorky influenced the development of this American art form, which, as Surrealism did, celebrated the instantaneous human act as the well-spring of creativity. The early work of many Abstract Expressionists reveals a tight bond between the more superficial aspects of both movements, and the emergence (at a later date) of aspects of
Dadaistic humor in such artists as
Rauschenberg sheds an even starker light upon the connection. Up until the emergence of
Pop Art, Surrealism can be seen to have been the single most important influence on the sudden growth in American arts, and even in Pop, some of the humor manifested in Surrealism can be found, often turned to a cultural criticism.
The Second World War overshadowed, for a time, almost all intellectual and artistic production. In 1940
Yves Tanguy married American Surrealist painter
Kay Sage.
In 1941, Breton went to the United States, where he co-founded the short-lived magazine ''
VVV'' with
Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, and the American artist
David Hare. However, it was the American poet,
Charles Henri Ford, and his magazine ''
View'' which offered Breton a channel for promoting Surrealism in the United States. The ''View'' special issue on Duchamp was crucial for the public understanding of Surrealism in America. It stressed his connections to Surrealist methods, offered interpretations of his work by Breton, as well as Breton's view that Duchamp represented the bridge between early modern movements, such as
Futurism and
Cubism, to Surrealism.
Though the war proved disruptive for Surrealism, the works continued. Many Surrealist artists continued to explore their vocabularies, including Magritte. Many members of the Surrealist movement continued to correspond and meet. While DalĂ may have been excommunicated by Breton, he neither abandoned his themes from the
1930s, including references to the "persistence of time" in a later painting, nor did he become a depictive pompier. His classic period did not represent so sharp a break with the past as some descriptions of his work might portray, and some, such as Thirion, argued that there were works of his after this period that continued to have some relevance for the movement.
During the
1940s Surrealism's influence was also felt in England and America.
Mark Rothko took an interest in
biomorphic figures, and in England
Henry Moore,
Lucian Freud,
Francis Bacon and
Paul Nash used or experimented with Surrealist techniques. However,
Conroy Maddox, one of the first British Surrealists whose work in this genre dated from
1935, remained within the movement, and organized an exhibition of current Surrealist work in
1978 in response to an earlier show which infuriated him because it did not properly represent Surrealism. Maddox's exhibition, titled ''Surrealism Unlimited'', was held in Paris and attracted international attention. He held his last one-man show in
2002, and died three years later.
Magritte's work became more realistic in its depiction of actual objects, while maintaining the element of juxtaposition, such as in
1951's ''Personal Values (Les Valeurs Personneles)''
[7] and
1954's ''Empire of Light (LâEmpire des lumiĂšres)''.
[8] Magritte continued to produce works which have entered artistic vocabulary, such as ''Castle in the Pyrenees (La Chateau des Pyrenees)'',
[9] which refers back to ''Voix'' from
1931, in its suspension over a landscape.
Other figures from the Surrealist movement were expelled. Several of these artists, like
Roberto Matta (by his own description) "remained close to Surrealism."
Many new artists explicitly took up the Surrealist banner for themselves.
Dorothea Tanning and
Louise Bourgeois continued to work, for example, with Tanning's ''Rainy Day Canape'' from
1970. Duchamp continued to produce sculpture in secret including an installation with the realistic depiction of a woman viewable only through a peephole.
Breton continued to write and espouse the importance of liberating of the human mind, as with the publication ''
The Tower of Light'' in 1952. Breton's return to France after the War, began a new phase of Surrealist activity in Paris, and his critiques of rationalism and dualism found a new audience. Breton insisted that Surrealism was an ongoing revolt against the reduction of humanity to market relationships, religious gestures and misery and to espouse the importance of liberating of the human mind.
'Major exhibitions of the 1940s, '50s and '60s'
★ 1942 - ''First Papers of Surrealism'' - New York - The Surrealists again called on Duchamp to design an exhibition. This time he wove a 3-dimensional web of string throughout the rooms of the space, in some cases making it almost impossible to see the works.
[10] He made a secret arrangement with an associate's son to bring his friends to the opening of the show, so that when the finely dressed patrons arrived they found a dozen children in athletic clothes kicking and passing balls, and skipping rope. His design for the show's catalog included "found", rather than posed, photographs of the artists.
★ 1947 - International Surrealist Exhibition - Paris
★ 1959 - International Surrealist Exhibition - Paris
★ 1960 - ''Surrealist Intrusion in the Enchanters' Domain'' - New York
Post Breton Surrealism
There is no clear consensus about the end of Surrealism, or if there is an end, of the Surrealist movement. Some art historians suggest that WWII effectively disbanded the movement. However, art historian
Sarane Alexandrian (1970) states, "the death of AndrĂ© Breton in 1966 marked the end of Surrealism as an organized movement." There have also been attempts to tie the obituary of the movement to the 1989 death of Salvador DalĂ.
In the 1960s, avantegardists grouped around the Parisian
Situationist were closely associated with Surrealism. While the leadership - especially
Guy Debord was critical and distanced himself from Surrealism, others such as
Asger Jorn were explicitly using Surrealist techniques and methods. The
1968 General strike and student revolt in France included a number of Surrealist ideas, and among the slogans the students spray-painted on the walls of the Sorbonne were familiar Surrealist ones.
Joan MirĂł would commemorate this in a painting titled ''May 1968.''
There were also groups who associated with both currents and were more atttached to Surrealism, such as the
Revolutionary Surrealist Group and the
Chicago Surrealist Group [8] [9] [10] [11] The so-called
Surrealist Movement of the USA which grew out of the CSG is still active today.
[12]. .
In Europe and all over the world since the 1960s, artists have combined Surrealism with what is believed to be a classical 16th century technique called
mischtechnik, a kind of mix of
egg tempera and oil paint rediscovered by
Ernst Fuchs, a contemporary of DalĂ, and now practiced and taught by many followers, including the highly regarded
Robert Venosa and
Chris Mars who has recently exhibited at major museums. The former curator of the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Michael Bell, has called this style of Surrealism "
veristic Surrealism". Veristic Surrealism, depicts with meticulous clarity and often in great detail a world analogous to the dream world. Other
tempera artists, such as
Robert Vickrey, regularly depict Surreal imagery.
During the 1980s, behind the
Iron Curtain, Surrealism again entered into politics with an underground artistic opposition movement known as the
Orange Alternative. The Orange Alternative was created in 1981 by
Waldemar Fydrych (alias 'Major'), a graduate of history and art history at the University of
WrocĆaw. They used Surrealist symbolism and terminology in their large scale happenings organized in the major Polish cities during the
Jaruzelski regime, and painted Surrealist graffiti on spots covering up anti-regime slogans. Major himself was the author of a "Manifesto of Socialist Surrealism". In this manifesto, he stated that the socialist (communist) system had become so Surrealistic that it could be seen as an expression of art itself.
Surrealistic art remains enormously popular with museum patrons. The
Guggenheim Museum in New York City held an exhibit, ''Two Private Eyes'', in 1999, and in 2001
Tate Modern held an exhibition of Surrealist art that attracted over 170,000 visitors. In 2002 the
Metropolitan Museum in New York City had a blockbuster show, ''Desire Unbound,'' and the
Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris had a show called ''La Révolution surréaliste''.
A contemporary development is known as
Massurrealism.
Impact of Surrealism
While Surrealism is typically associated with the arts, it has been said to transcend them; Surrealism has had an impact in many other fields. In this sense, Surrealism does not specifically refer only to self-identified "Surrealists", or those sanctioned by Breton, rather, it refers to a range of creative acts of revolt and efforts to liberate imagination.
In addition to Surrealist ideas that are grounded in the ideas of
Hegel,
Marx and
Freud, Surrealism is seen by its advocates as being inherently dynamic and as dialectic in its thought. Surrealists have also drawn on sources as seemingly diverse as
Clark Ashton Smith,
Montague Summers,
Horace Walpole,
Fantomas,
The Residents,
Bugs Bunny,
comic strips, the obscure poet
Samuel Greenberg and the
hobo writer and humourist
T-Bone Slim. One might say that Surrealist strands may be found in movements such as
Free Jazz (
Don Cherry,
Sun Ra,
Cecil Taylor etc.) and even in the daily lives of people in confrontation with limiting social conditions. Thought of as the effort of humanity to liberate imagination as an act of insurrection against society, Surrealism finds precedents in the
alchemists, possibly
Dante,
Hieronymus Bosch,
Marquis de Sade,
Charles Fourier,
Comte de Lautreamont and
Arthur Rimbaud.
Surrealists believe that non-Western cultures also provide a continued source of inspiration for Surrealist activity because some may strike up a better balance between instrumental reason and imagination in flight than Western culture. Surrealism has had an identifiable impact on radical and revolutionary politics, both directly â as in some Surrealists joining or allying themselves with radical political groups, movements and parties â and indirectly â through the way in which Surrealists' emphasize the intimate link between freeing imagination and the mind, and liberation from repressive and archaic social structures. This was especially visible in the
New Left of the 1960s and 1970s and the
French revolt of May 1968, whose slogan "All power to the imagination" rose directly from French Surrealist thought and practice.
Many significant literary movements in the later half of the 20th century were directly or indirectly influenced by Surrealism. This period is known as the
Postmodern era; though there's no widely agreed upon central definition of
Postmodernism, many themes and techniques commonly identified as Postmodern are nearly identical to Surrealism. Perhaps the writers within the Postmodern era who have the most in common with Surrealism are the playwrights of
Theatre of the Absurd. Though not an organized movement, these playwrights were grouped together based on some similarities of theme and technique; these similarities can perhaps be traced to influence from the Surrealists.
Eugene Ionesco in particular was fond of Surrealism, claiming at one point that Breton was one of the most important thinkers in history.
Samuel Beckett was also fond of Surrealists, even translating much of the poetry into English; he may have had closer ties had the Surrealists not been critical of Beckett's mentor and friend
James Joyce. Many writers from and associated with the
Beat Generation were influenced greatly by Surrealists.
Philip Lamantia and
Ted Joans are often categorized as both Beat and Surrealist writers. Many other Beat writers claimed Surrealism as a significant influence. A few examples include
Bob Kaufman,
Gregory Corso, and
Allen Ginsberg. In popular culture much of the
stream of consciousness song writing of the young
Bob Dylan, c. 1960s and including some of
Dylan's more recent writing as well, (c. mid - 1980s-2006) clearly have Surrealist connections and undertones.
Magic Realism, a popular technique among novelists of the latter half of the 20th century especially among Latin American writers, has some obvious similarities to Surrealism with its juxtaposition of the normal and the dream-like. The prominence of Magic Realism in Latin American literature is often credited in some part to the direct influence of Surrealism on Latin American artists (
Frida Kahlo, for example).
Surrealist groups
Surrealist individuals and groups have attempted to carry on with Surrealism after the death of Andre Breton in 1966. The original Paris Surrealist Group was disbanded by member Jean Schuster in 1969.
Surrealism and theatre
Surrealist theater depicts the subconscious experience, moody tone and disjointed structure, sometimes imposing a unifying idea.
[11]
Antonin Artaud, one of the original Surrealists, rejected Western theatre as a perversion of the original intent of theatre, which he felt should be a religious and mystical experience. He thought that rational discourse comprised "falsehood and illusion," which embodied the worst of discourse. Artaud wanted to create a new form of theater that would be immediate and directly understandable, linking the unconscious minds of the actors and the spectator, a sort of ritual event.
[12] Such sentiments led to the
Theatre of the Absurd whose inspiration comes from silent film and comedy, as well as the tradition of verbal nonsense in early sound film (
Laurel and Hardy,
W. C. Fields, the
Marx Brothers). Theatre of the Absurd creates a ritual-like, mythological, archetypal, allegorical vision, closely related to the world of dreams.
[13]
Today, Surrealist theatre continues to combine music, words and movement, most ostensibly in works introduced by
Peter Dizozza at the
La MaMa, E.T.C. Experiments Reading Series in Manhattan and often produced at the
Williamsburg Art & Historical Center in Brooklyn.
The Dizozza surrealist works include "The Marriage at the Statue of Liberty" (after
Cocteau), "The Last Dodo," "The Golf Wars," "The Eleventh Hour," "Hermaphroditism Through the Ages" and âPrepare to Meet Your Makerâ inspired by Religious
mystery plays of the 16th century depicting the meeting of the exquisite corpse, Cementeria, and a gravedigger, Quasimodo, who, through contact with one another, are both invigorated and revitalized.
Surrealism and television
:''See also,
Surrealism and film.''
Surrealism on
television has come mainly in the form of comedy, but a few examples of serious uses of surreal imagery can be found in ''In The Looking Glass, BBC2 1978'', ''
Spaced'', ''
The Twilight Zone'', ''
The Prisoner'', ''
Aeon Flux'', ''
Twin Peaks'', ''
Northern Exposure'' and even ''
The Sopranos''.
Surrealism and comedy
Some branches of comedy (chiefly
British, and also
Japanese) are known for being very surreal. Perhaps the most famous example of Surrealist comedy can be seen in the late 1960s-early 1970s British sketch show
Monty Python. Also influential as an earlier example of
British satire was ''
Beyond the Fringe'' a British comedy stage revue written and performed in
London from 1960 through 1966, and in
New York from 1962 through 1964, by
Peter Cook,
Dudley Moore,
Alan Bennett and
Jonathan Miller. The original cast was replaced in
London after 1964.
During the mid-1990s the American television program
Mr. Show on
HBO and
Comedy Central has been described as surreal and its main performers have acknowledged being highly influenced by Monty Python on Mr. Show's DVD commentaries.
Criticism of Surrealism
Feminist
Feminists have in the past critiqued the Surrealist movement, claiming that it is fundamentally a male movement and a male fellowship, despite the occasional few celebrated woman Surrealist painters and poets. They believe that it adopts typical male attitudes toward women, such as worshipping them symbolically through stereotypes and sexist norms. Women are often made to represent higher values and transformed into objects of desire and of mystery.
[13]
One of the pioneers in feminist critique of Surrealism was
XaviÚre Gauthier. Her book ''Surréalisme et sexualité'' (1971) inspired further important scholarship related to the marginalization of women in relation to "the
avant-garde." However these criticisms are perhaps more so of other avant-garde movements like
Situationism, where women had a much more subordinate role to the men. Also, despite the theoretical objectification, Surrealism as a living praxis allowed room for women artists and painters in particular to work and produce work on their own terms.
Freudian
Freud initiated the psychoanalytic critique of Surrealism with his remark that what interested him most about the Surrealists was not their unconscious but their conscious. His meaning was that the manifestations of and experiments with psychic automatism highlighted by Surrealists as the liberation of the unconscious were highly structured by ego activity, similar to the activities of the dream censorship in dreams, and that therefore it was in principle a mistake to regard Surrealist poems and other art works as direct manifestations of the unconscious, when they were indeed highly shaped and processed by the ego. In this view, the Surrealists may have been producing great works, but they were products of the conscious, not the unconscious mind, and they deceived themselves with regard to what they were doing with the unconscious. In psychoanalysis proper, the unconscious does not just express itself automatically but can only be uncovered through the analysis of resistance and transference in the psychoanalytic process.
Situationist
While some individuals and groups on the core and fringes of the
Situationist International were Surrealists themselves, others were very critical of the movement, or indeed what remained of the movement in the late 1950s and '60s. The Situationist International could therefore be seen as a break and continuiation of the Surrealist praxis.
A List of Surrealists
See also
★
Western painting
★
Chicago Surrealist Group
★
Surrealist Movement in the United States
★
1976 World Surrealist Exhibition
★
Peggy Guggenheim
★
Fantastic art
★
Impossible object
★
Neosurrealism
★
Social criticism
★
Simulated reality
★
Visionary art
★
Bodley Gallery
'Techniques, games and humor'
★
Surrealist games
★
Surreal humour
★
Surrealist techniques
'Surrealist publications'
★ ''
La Révolution surréaliste'' - the Surrealist publication between
1924 and
1929 in Paris
★ ''
Documents'', a Surrealist journal edited by
Georges Bataille from
1929 through
1930
★ ''
Acéphale'' - a review created by Georges Bataille which from
1936 to
1939
★ ''
Minotaure'' - was a primarily Surrealist-oriented publication founded by Albert Skira in Paris from
1933 to
1939
★ ''
View'' - an American art magazine published in the 1940s
★ ''
VVV'' - a
New York journal published by emigré European Surrealists from
1942 through
1944
References
1. DalĂ, Salvador, ''Diary of a Genius'' quoted in ''The Columbia World of Quotations'' (1996)
2. Tomkins, Calvin, ''Duchamp: A Biography''. Henry Holt and Company, Inc, 1996. ISBN 0-8050-5789-7
3. Lewis, Helena. ''Dada Turns Red''. 1990. University of Edinburgh Press. A history of the uneasy relations between Surrealists and Communists from the 1920s through the 1950s.
4. Kelley, Robin D.G. ''A Poetics of Anticolonialism''. Nov. 1999.
5. Kelley, Robin D.G. "Poetry and the Political Imagination: Aimé Césaire, Negritude, & the Applications of Surrealism". July 2001
6. [4]
7. Surrealist Art from Centre Pompidou. Accessed March 20, 2007
8. by Ron Sakolsky
9. , Charles H Kerr. 2005. ISBN 0882863010
10. http://www.artscope.net/VAREVIEWS/ChicagoSurreal0702.shtml
11. http://www.mmoca.org/news/InDepth.html
12. http://www.surrealistmovement-usa.org/
13. Greer, Germaine, "Double vision: Surrealism's women thought they were celebrating sexual emancipation. But were they just fulfilling men's erotic fantasies?", ''Guardian Unlimited'', March 5, 2007. (Accessed March 25, 2007).
'
André Breton'
★ Breton, AndrĂ©, ''Manifestoes of Surrealism'' containing the first, second and introduction to a possible third manifesto, the novel ''The Soluble Fish'', and political aspects of the Surrealist movement. ISBN 0-472-17900-4 .
★ Breton, AndrĂ©, ''What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings of AndrĂ© Breton''. ISBN 0-87348-822-9 .
★ Breton, AndrĂ©, ''Conversations: The Autobiography of Surrealism'' (Gallimard 1952) (Paragon House English rev. ed. 1993). ISBN 1-56924-970-9.
★ Breton, AndrĂ©, ''The Abridged Dictionary of Surrealism'', reprinted in:
★
★ Bonnet, Marguerite, ed. (
1988). ''Oeuvres complĂštes'', 1:328. Paris: Ăditions Gallimard.
'Other sources'
★ Alexandrian, Sarane. ''Surrealist Art'' London: Thames & Hudson, 1970.
★
Appollinaire, Guillaume 1917, 1991. Program note for ''Parade'', printed in ''Oeuvres en prose complĂštes'', 2:865-866, Pierre Caizergues and Michel DĂ©caudin, eds. Paris: Ăditions Gallimard.
★ Brotchie, Alastair and Gooding, Mel, eds. ''A Book of Surrealist Games'' Berkeley, CA: Shambhala, 1995. ISBN 1-57062-084-9.
★
Caws, Mary Ann ''Surrealist Painters and Poets: An Anthology'' 2001, MIT Press.
★ Durozoi, Gerard, ''History of the Surrealist Movement'' Translated by Alison Anderson University of Chicago Press. 2004. ISBN 0-226-17411-5.
★ Lewis, Helena. ''Dada Turns Red.'' Edinburgh, Scotland: University of Ednburgh Press, 1990.
★ Lewis, Helena. ''The Politics Of Surrealism'' 1988
★ Melly, George ''Paris and the Surrealists'' Thames & Hudson. 1991.
★ Moebius, Stephan. ''Die Zauberlehrlinge. Soziologiegeschichte des
CollĂšge de Sociologie. Konstanz: UVK 2006. About the
College of Sociology, its members and sociological impacts.
★ Nadeau, Maurice. ''History of Surrealism'' Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1989. ISBN 0-674-40345-2.
External links
'André Breton writings'
★
''Manifesto of Surrealism'' by André Breton. 1924.
★
''What is Surrealism?'' Lecture by Breton, Brussels 1934
'Overview websites'
★
Dutch Surrealism,
★ Dutch
Surrealisme on Wikipedia.
★
Timeline of Surrealism from
Centre Pompidou.
★
Belgian Surrealism
★
Surrealism
★
The Surrealism Server
★
Surrealist.com, A general history of the art movement with artist biographies and art.
★
Reviewed Surrealism links
'Surrealism and politics'
★
The radical politics of Surrealism, 1919-1950 â an article looking at Surrealism and Surrealists' connections to anarchist, socialist and working class politics
★
"Herbert Marcuse and the Surrealist Revolution", an article from ''Arsenal/Surrealist Subversion''
★
How the Surrealists sold out, The Guardian, 28 March 2007
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