Surrealism Assignment 110

 Surrealism

Introduction:

Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. (Barnes) Its aim was, according to leader André Breton, to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality", or surreality. It produced works of painting, writing, theatre, filmmaking, photography, and other media. (Chilvers)

The term "Surrealism" originated with Guillaume Apollinaire in 1917. (Éluard et al.) However, the Surrealist movement was not officially established until after October 1924, when the Surrealist Manifesto published by French poet and critic André Breton succeeded in claiming the term for his group over a rival faction led by Yvan Goll, who had published his own surrealist manifesto two weeks prior. The most important centre of the movement was Paris, France. From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe, impacting the visual arts, literature, film, and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy, and social theory.

Works of Surrealism 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 (for instance, of the "pure psychic automatism" Breton speaks of in the first Surrealist Manifesto), with the works themselves being secondary, i.e. artefacts of surrealist experimentation. (Breton et al.) Leader Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a revolutionary movement. At the time, the movement was associated with political causes such as communism and anarchism. It was influenced by the Dada movement of the 1910s.

The Beginnings and growth of Surrealism:

Dadaism developed nearly at the same time in Zurich, New York, and Paris during the First World War. It further made an appearance in Germany before concentrating in France. It flourished from 1966 to 1922. With the aim of ridiculing what its adherents regarded to be the worthlessness of the modern world, it promoted anti-war and anti-art works (De la Croix and Tansey). Many people joined the movement since they disputed the bourgeois nationalist and colonialist interests. This is because many of them believed they were the major causes of the First World War.

Therefore, the Dadaists conveyed their denunciation of the ideology using artistic expressions. These expressions appeared to reject the reason and logic of bourgeois capitalist society, which resulted in the First World War. In general, the Dadaists embraced chaos and irrationality. The movement of Dada was anti-art since anything for which art stood, it depicted as the opposite (Dada and Surrealism). This was an attempt by the Dadaists to purify art by mocking it. This made the proponents of this movement develop pieces that were very playful and teasing.

For example, Marcel Duchamp developed a popular portrait of the Mona Lisa having a moustache. Nearly every Dada piece arouses a reaction, which was the intended objective since the movement hoped to annihilate all the traditional elements of culture and aesthetics. Despite existing for a short time, Dadaism left an enduring legacy to contemporary art, advertising and the social order, and if it were not present, it is unlikely that Surrealism and other modern art movements would have existed.

Surrealism is largely considered an outgrowth of the earlier Dada movement, but its ideas are better organized and more relevant to the real world (Klingsohr-Leroy and Grosenick). Andre Breton, the founder of Surrealism, was trained in medicine and psychiatry.

Surrealism in Literature:

Thereafter, based on Sigmund Freud’s theories that the unconscious was a wellspring of imagination, they started by experimenting with automatic writing in which they spontaneously noted down their thoughts without censoring them. They then published the writings in the journal together with some accounts of dreams.

Breton and Soupault continued their investigations on surrealist automatism and published The Magnetic Fields in 1919, which is considered by most people to be the first truly surrealist text. As they delved deeper into automatism, more and more people embraced surrealist principles since they considered them better approaches for transforming the society than Dada's attack on prevailing values.

The surrealist philosophers and artists felt that Dadaism did not allow categories and labels. The proponents of surrealism perceived that ordinary and depictive expressions are essential in liberating the imagination. However, they upheld the idea that the sense of that arrangement ought to be in the full arrangement according to the Hegelian dielectric and the Marxist dialectric.

The surrealists adopted the thoughts of Sigmund Freud to suit their own purposes (Historical Origins of Surrealists). They considered Freud’s ideas as the accidental rediscovery of the power of dreams and imagination, which had been hidden for a long time under the purely rational outlook that was common during the early twentieth century. The surrealists predicted that as the artists would develop perspectives that would give them the strength of freeing themselves from the control of reason, a new intellectual tendency will inevitably come up.

Freud had attempted to define and illustrate the subconscious mind as a genuine phenomenon that controlled thought and behaviour; therefore, the surrealists translated this understanding into an artistic and literary methodology that was based on the subconscious and the imagination. They believed that these had been repressed by rationalism, civilization, and progress. In 1924, the Surrealist movement was officially founded when Breton published the first “Surrealist Manifesto” which defined its intentions (“Surrealism,”)

The document defined Surrealism as “psychic automatism in its pure state by which we propose to express- verbally, in writing, or in any other manner- the real process of thought. The dictation of thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason and outside any aesthetic or moral concerns” (Leslie). This implies that surrealists advocated for nonconformity, which was not as excessive as that of the Dadaists.

This is because when Dada was existing, it was considered an art. The document gives many instances in which Surrealist thoughts can be applied to poetry and literature. However, it emphasizes that Surrealist principles are relevant in any circumstance of life. This implies that they are not limited to the artistic realm.

The text outlines the vital role that the earlier Dada movement played in the Development of Surrealism (Hopkins). The manifesto highlights the essence of the dream as a reservoir of Surrealist inspiration and details the experiences of Breton with the surreal in a famous description of a hypnagogic state whereby a strange phrase mysteriously came into his view. The text, which was written with a great deal of absurdist humor, has references to several precursors of Surrealism that represented the Surrealist spirit before the declaration of the manifesto and the works of other Surrealists, who participated in the development of the Surrealist style, are also included.

The manifesto concludes by affirming that the activities of the movement do not follow any plan or conventional pattern. Besides Breton, other renowned Surrealists, who acknowledged that they are ultimately nonconformists, signed the manifesto.

The emerging of groups from surrealism:

The Surrealists eventually divided into two groups: the Automatists and the Veristic Surrealists. Ortolano explains that the “Automatists were only interested in the artistic expression but oblivious to finding meaning to it, that is, they considered the abstract expression to be more important than analyzing it”. Their motto was “No meaning, just expression.” As implied in the earlier sections of this paper, Automatists followed Breton’s form of Surrealistic art.

On the other hand, Veristic Surrealists differed from Automatists by defining the unconscious as psychiatrist Carl Jung visualized it; therefore, they endeavoured to communicate deeper thoughts by analyzing the metaphoric importance of the work of art and its relationship with the universal unconscious. Veristic Surrealists held the belief that Surrealism could best express the unconscious when the images of the dreams are captured in an art form and later decoded through analysis. The universal expression of the unconscious was according to Jung’s position who maintained that every person has an inherent knowledge and comprehension of images that are usually universal in nature and are portrayed in most literature and art.

Two Opposing Approaches to Art:

The theories of Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso are the two conflicting art theories that define the direction that art should take in this century. Dali had excellent painterly skills and in the early 1930s, he developed the Paranoic-critical method in the production of paintings and artworks.

This technique requires an artist to let the images arrive at the conscience. Thereafter, the artist is required to freeze them on a canvas so as to give consciousness ample time for grasping their full meaning. After some time, he brought in other aspects and called the technique the Oniric–Critical Method. In this case, the artist is required to concentrate on his dreams, freeze them through art, and simultaneously evaluate them (“History of Surrealism,”).On the other hand, by embracing the scandal and chaos of Dadaism and the position of the Automatists, Picasso took a different approach to art. He refused to acknowledge the ability to become ‘primitive.’

Since even in his early years he exhibited a mysterious talent in art, he decided that the ingenuity of childhood should form the foundation of art and artists should paint as children, that is, become less preoccupied with the craft. However, Dali was for the idea of upholding the inquisitiveness and enthusiasm of a kid all through the life of a person, not just painting as a kid.

Conclusion:

Surrealism as a cultural movement of visual arts and writings borrowed some of its tenets from the earlier Dada movement. Most of the Surrealist artists had great imaginations and the works of the earlier philosophers such as Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung influenced their Surrealistic thoughts. The publication of the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924 served as a turning point for the movement since the declaration enabled it to gain official status.

Works Cited

Andrews, Wayne. The Surrealist parade. New York, N.Y.: New Directions, 1990. Print.

Barnes, Rachel. The 20th Century Art Book. Phaidon Press, 1996. Accessed 9 May 2022.

Breton, André, et al. The automatic message; The magnetic fields; The immaculate conception. Translated by David Gascoyne, et al., Atlas Press, 1997. Accessed 9 May 2022.

Chilvers, Ian. The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists. Edited by Ian Chilvers, Oxford University Press, 2009. Accessed 9 May 2022.

“Dada and Surrealism.” The archive. The archive, n.d. Web.

De la Croix, Horst, and Richard Tansey. Art Through the Ages. Atlanta: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1970. 

Éluard, Paul, et al. The Automatic Message: The Magnetic Fields; The Immaculate Conception. Translated by Jon E. Graham and David Gascoyne, Atlas Press, 1997. Accessed 9 May 2022.

“Historical Origins of Surrealist.” Lilithgallery, Lithgallery, n.d. Web.

“History of Surrealism.” Go Surreal. Go Surreal, n.d. Web.

Hopkins, David. Dada and Surrealism: a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 

Klingsohr, Cathrin, and Uta Grosenick. Surrealism. Köln ; Los Angeles : Taschen, 2006. 

Leslie, Richard. Surrealism: The Dream of Revolution. New York: Smith mark, 1997. 

Ortolano, Glauco. Humaniqueness: The Gift of Your Inner God. Raleigh, North Carolina: Lulu Enterprises, 2008.

“Surrealism.” Heilbrunn timeline of art history. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010. Web.