Surrealism
Surrealism is an artistic, cultural and intellectual movement oriented toward the liberation of the mind by emphasizing the critical and imaginative faculties of the "
unconscious mind" and the attainment of a dream-like state different from, "more than", and ultimately "truer" than everyday reality: the "sur-real", or "more than real".
For many surrealists, this orientation toward transcending everyday reality toward one that incorporates the imaginative and the unconscious has manifested itself in the intent to bring about personal, cultural, political and social revolution, sometimes conceived or described as a complete transformation of life by freedom, poetry, love, and sexuality. In the words of
André Breton, generally regarded as the founder of surrealism: "beauty will be convulsive or not at all."
The word "
surreal" is often used colloquially to describe unexpected juxtapositions or use of
non-sequiturs in art or dialog, particularly where such juxtapositions are presented as self-consistent. This usage has been criticised, often harshly, by some surrealists.
Surrealist philosophy emerged around
1920, partly as an outgrowth of
Dada, with French writer
André Breton as its initial principal theorist.
In Breton's
Surrealist Manifesto of
1924 he defines Surrealism as:
Dictionary: Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, or in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.
Encyclopedia: Surrealism. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life."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.
Like those involved in Dada, adherents of Surrealism thought that the horrors of
World War I were the culmination of the
Industrial Revolution and the result of the rational mind. Consequently,
irrational thought and dream-states were seen as the natural antidote to those social problems.
While
Dada rejected categories and labels and was rooted in negative response to the
First World War, Surrealism advocates 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. The Marxist dialectic and other theories, such as
Freudian theory, also played a significant role in some of the development of surrealist theory and, as in the work of such theorists as
Walter Benjamin and
Herbert Marcuse, surrealism contributed to the development of Marxian theory itself.
The Surrealist diagnosis of the "problem" of the
realism and
capitalist civilization is a restrictive overlay of false rationality, including social and academic convention, on the free functioning of the instinctual urges of the human mind.
Surrealist philosophy connects with the theories of psychiatrist
Sigmund Freud. Freud asserted that
unconscious thoughts (the thoughts of which one is not aware) motivate human behavior, and he advocated
free association (uncensored expression) and
dream analysis to reveal unconscious thoughts.
It is through the practice of automatism, dream interpretation, and numerous other surrealist methods that Surrealists believe the wellspring of imagination and creativity can be accessed.Surrealism also embraces
idiosyncrasy, while rejecting the idea of an underlying madness or darkness of the mind.
Salvador DalÃ, who is considered to have been quite idiosyncratic, explained it as "The only difference between myself and a madman is I am not MAD!"Surrealists look to so-called "
primitive art" as an example of expression that is not self-censored.
The radical aim of Surrealism is to revolutionize human experience, including its personal, cultural, social, and political aspects, by freeing people from what is seen as false rationality, and restrictive customs and structures. As
Breton proclaimed, the true aim of Surrealism is "long live the social revolution, and it alone!".
To this goal, at various times Surrealists have aligned with
communism and
anarchism.
Not all Surrealists subscribe to all facets of the philosophy. Historically many were not interested in political matters, and this lack of interest created rifts in the Surrealism movement.
By the turn of the 21st century, Surrealist philosophy varied amongst Surrealist groups around the globe. Some Surrealist theorists have stated that Surrealism has somehow "gone beyond" or "superseded" philosophy, or that philosophy has been "outclassed" by 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').The Surrealist movement mainly originated in the
Dada movement. While the movement's most important center was Paris, it spread throughout Europe and to North America,
Japan and the Caribbean during the course of the
1920s,
1930s and
1940s, by the
1960s to
Africa,
South America and much of
Asia and by the
1980s to
Australia. There have even been some manifestations of surrealism in
Russia and
China. Some historians mark the end of the movement at
World War II, some with the death of
André Breton, some with the death of
Salvador DalÃ, while others believe that Surrealism continues as an identifiable movement.
Split from Dada
Breton's
Surrealist Manifesto of
1924 and the publication of the magazine
La Révolution surréaliste (
The Surrealist Revolution) marked the split from the more
Dada oriented Surrealists centred around
Tristan Tzara. Five years earlier, Breton and
Philippe Soupault wrote the first "
automatic book" (spontaneously written),
Les Champs Magnétiques. By December of 1924, the publication
La Révolution surréaliste edited by
Pierre Naville and
Benjamin Péret and later by Breton, was started. Also, a
Bureau of Surrealist Research began in Paris and was at one time, under the direction of
Antonin Artaud.
In 1926,
Louis Aragon wrote
Le Paysan de Paris, following the appearance of many Surrealist books, poems, pamphlets, automatic texts and theoretical works published by the Surrealists, including those by
René Crevel.
Many of the popular artists in
Paris throughout the
1920s and
1930s were Surrealists, including
René Magritte,
Joan Miró,
Max Ernst,
Salvador DalÃ,
Alberto Giacometti,
Valentine Hugo,
Méret Oppenheim,
Man Ray,
Toyen and
Yves Tanguy. Though Breton adored
Pablo Picasso and
Marcel Duchamp and courted them to join the movement, they remained peripheral. The movement at this time was characterized by meetings in cafes where the Surrealists would play collaborative drawing games and talk about the theories of Surrealism.
The Surrealists developed
techniques such as
automatic drawing (developed by
André Masson),
automatic painting,
decalcomania,
Frottage,
fumage,
grattage and
parsemage that became significant parts of Surrealist practice. (
Automatism was later adapted to the computer.)
Surrealist games such as the
exquisite corpse also assumed a great importance in Surrealism.
Although sometimes considered exclusively French, Surrealism was international from the beginning, with both the Belgian and
Czech groups developing early; the Czech group continues uninterrupted to this day. Some of what have been described as the most significant
Surrealist theorists such as
Karel Teige from Czechoslovakia,
Shuzo Takiguchi from Japan,
Octavio Paz from Mexico, also
Aimé Césaire and
René Menil from Martinique, who both started the Surrealist journal
Tropiques in 1940, have hailed from other countries. The most radical of Surrealist methods have also originated in countries other than France, for example, the technique of
cubomania was invented by Romanian Surrealist
Gherasim Luca.
Interwar Surrealism: Centrality of Breton
Breton, as the leader of the Surrealist movement, not only he and the Communists were both working for the liberation of man, Breton refused to prioritize the proletarian struggle over radical creation. Their struggles with the Party made the late 1920s a turbulent time for the group. Many individuals closely associated with Breton, notably Louis Aragon, left the group to work more closely with the Communists.
In the 1930s, Surrealism continued to expand in public visibility. A Surrealist group developed in Britain and according to Breton their 1936
London International Surrealist Exhibition was a high water mark of the period. It was the model for Internationl Exhibitions in Paris and elsewhere.
with
Lucian Freud and continued to write in the Surrealist style for the remainder of his life.
Acéphale was one splinter group that formed (mid-1930s). The group was comprised of some of those disaffected by what they claimed was or what they saw as Breton's increasing rigidity, and structured as a "secret society". Led by
Bataille, they published
Da Costa Encyclopedia meant to coincide with the
1947 Surrealist exhibition in Paris.
Surrealism during World War II
The rise of
Adolf Hitler and the events of 1939 through 1945 in Europe, for a time overshadowed almost all else. However, after the war, Breton continued to write and espouse the importance of liberating of the human mind. For example in
The Tower of Light in (
1952).
In
1941, Breton went to the United States, where he cofounded the short lived magazine
VVV with
Max Ernst,
Marcel Duchamp, and American artist
David Hare. VVV boasted high production values and a great deal of content; however, its content was increasingly in French, not English. It was American poet
Charles Henri Ford and his magazine
View which offered Breton a channel for promoting Surrealism in the United States. Ford and Breton had an on/off relationship. Breton felt that Ford should work more specifically for Surrealism and Ford, for his part, resented what he felt to be Breton's attempts to make him "toe the line". Nevertheless,
View published an interview between Breton and
Nicolas Calas, as well as special issues on
Tanguy and
Ernst and in
1945, on Marcel Duchamp.
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.
Breton's return to France after the Second World War, began a new phase of surrealist activity in Paris, one which attracted considerable attention. Membership in the Paris Surrealist Group and interest in it, climbed to above pre-war levels.
Breton's critiques of
rationalism and
dualism, found a new audience after the Second World War, as his argument that returning to old patterns of behavior would ensure a repeated cycle of conflict seemed increasingly prophetic to French intellectuals while the
Cold War mounted. Breton's insistence that Surrealism was not an aesthetic movement, nor a series of techniques and tools, but instead the means for ongoing revolt against the reduction of humanity to market relationships, religious gestures and misery, meant that his ideas and stances were taken up by many, even those who had never heard of Breton, or read any of his work. The importance of living Surrealism was repeated by Breton and by those writing about him.
Post World War II Surrealism
There is no clear consensus about the end of the Surrealist movement: some art historians suggest that the movement was effectively disbanded by WWII (despite the expansion of membership in the Paris group and the creation of others after that date), others treat the movement as extending through the
1950s. In 1959,
Andre Breton organized an exhibiton in
Spain called,
The Homage to Surrealism, to celebrate the Fortieth Anniversary of Surrealism which exhibited works by
Salvador DalÃ,
Joan Miró,
Enrique Tábara, and
Eugenio Granell. Art historian
Sarane Alexandrian (
1970) states, "the death of André 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 DalÃ.) However, this view is disputed by others who point to Breton's statement that surrealism would continue after him, and what they regard as manifestations of surrealism after his death.
Post Breton Surrealism
Many other groups and individuals, not directly connected to Breton (though the relevance of such a connexion could certainly be questioned as the movement was never conceived of as being tied personally to Breton), have claimed the Surrealist label.For example, the Czech Surrealist Group in Prague, though driven underground in
1968, re-emerged in the
1990s.
Also notable is the post surrealist
Situationist current, such as
Chicago Surrealist Group and others on the fringes and core of Situationism. The relationship of the SI to Surrealism is complex, with some members such as
Asger Jorn and
Raoul Vaneigm being openly influenced and referencing of surrealism, while others such as
Guy Debord being very much anti-surrealist. The break with art and more open political attitude is perhaps most distinctive of theis surrealism although the development of
surrealist techniques is still very evident.
More recently there are the groups such as
Massurealists.
In general usage, the term Surrealism is more often considered a movement in
visual arts than the original cultural and philosophical movement. As with some other movements that had both philosophical and artistic dimensions, such as
romanticism and
minimalism, the relationship between the two usages is complex and a matter of some debate outside the movement. Many Surrealist artists regarded their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, and
Breton was explicit in his belief that Surrealism was above all a revolutionary movement. In addition, many surrealists and surrealist documents have declared that surrealism is not an
artistic movement for a number of additional reasons, among which is the conception of the "artistic" manifestations of surrealism as just one form of manifestation among many, various conceptions of visual work being created which somehow "goes beyond" traditional conceptions of art or
aesthetics, or even the complete cessation of creative visual production. In addition, the art object/product â€" while an important part of the Surrealist process â€" is viewed as merely a "souvenir" of a vastly more critical journey, interesting only in so far as it is revelatory of that adventure.
Surrealism in visual arts
Early visual arts Surrealism
Since so many of the artists involved in Surrealism came from the
Dada movement, the demarcation between Surrealist and Dadaist art, as with the demarcation between Surrealism and
Dada in general, is a line drawn differently by different scholars.
The roots of Surrealism in the visual arts run to both
Dada and
Cubism, as well as the abstraction of
Wassily Kandinsky and
Expressionism, as well as
Post-Impressionism. However, it was not the particulars of technique which marked the Surrealist movement in the visual arts, but the creation of objects from the imagination, from automatism, or from a number of
Surrealist techniques.
Masson's
automatic drawings of
1923, are often used as a convenient point of difference, since these 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 pre-classical sculpture. However, a striking example of the line used to divide Dada and Surrealism among art experts is the pairing of
1925's
Von minimax dadamax selbst konstruiertes maschinchen with
Le Baiser from
1927 by Max Ernst. The first is generally held to have a distance, and erotic subtext, where as the second presents an erotic act openly and directly. In the second the influence of Miró and Picasso's drawing style 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 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.
La tour rouge from
1913 shows the stark colour contrasts and illustrative style later adopted by Surrealist painters. His
1914 La Nostalgie du poete 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. 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
Ballet Russe, would create a decorative form of visual Surrealism, and he would be an influence on the two that would be even more closely associated with Surrealism in the public mind:
Dalà and
Magritte.
In
1924,
Miro and
Masson applied Surrealism theory to painting explicitly leading to the
La Peinture Surrealiste Exposition at Gallerie Pierre in
1925, which included work by
Man Ray, Masson,
Klee and Miró among others. It 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.
Breton published
Surrealism and Painting in
1928 which summarized the movement to that point, though he continued to update the work until the
1960s.
1930s
Dalà and
Magritte created the most widely recognized images of the movement. Dalà 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
La Voix des airs is an example of this process, where three large spheres representing bells hanging above a landscape. Another Surrealist landscape from this same year is
Tanguy's
Palais promontoire, with its molten forms and liquid shapes. Liquid shapes became the trademark of DalÃ, particularly in his
The Persistence of Memory, which features the image of clocks 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 ones individuality".
Long after personal, political and professional tensions broke up the Surrealist group, Magritte and Dalà 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.
During the
1930s Peggy Guggenheim, an important art collector married
Max Ernst and began promoting work by other Surrealists such as
Yves Tanguy and the British artist
John Tunnard. However, by the outbreak of the
Second World War, the taste of the
avant-garde swung decisively towards
Abstract Expressionism with the support of key taste makers, including Guggenheim. 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 â€" as Surrealism did â€" 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.
World War II and beyond
The coming of the Second World 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. (In
1960, Magritte, Duchamp, Ernst, and Man Ray met in Paris.) While Dalà 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, organizing 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, dying 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 and
1954's
Empire of Light. Magritte continued to produce works which have entered artistic vocabulary, such as
Castle in the Pyrenees, 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. Duchamp continued to produce sculpture and, at his death, was working on an installation with the realistic depiction of a woman viewable only through a peephole.
Dorothea Tanning and
Louise Bourgeois continued to work, for example, with Tanning's
Rainy Day Canape from
1970.
The
1960s saw a dramatic expansion of Surrealism including the founding of
The West Coast Surrealist Group as recognized by Breton's personal assistant
Jose Pierre and also the
Surrealist Movement in the United States. In
1976 the World Surrealist Exhibition was mounted in Chicago.
Surrealistic art remains enormously popular with museum patrons. In
2001 Tate Modern held an exhibition of Surrealist art that attracted over 170,000 visitors in its run. Having been one of the most important of movements in the Modern period, Surrealism proceeded to inspire a new generation seeking to expand the vocabulary of art.
Surrealism in literature & as a School of Poetry
The first surrealist work, according to Breton, was
Les Champs Magnétiques (
1921 "Magnetic Fields"), which was actually a collaboration with the French poet and novelist
Philippe Soupault. But even before that, in
1919,
Breton,
Soupault and
Aragon had already published the magazine
Littérature, which 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
René Crevel's,
Mr. Knife Miss Fork,
Louis Aragon's,
Irene's Cunt,
André Breton's,
Sur la route de San Romano,
Benjamin Peret's,
Death to the Pigs,
Antonin Artaud's,
Le Pese-Nerfs.
Surrealism in music
Main article: Surrealism (music).
In the
1920s several composers were influenced by Surrealism, or by individuals in the Surrealist movement. Among these were
Bohuslav Martinů,
André Souris, and
Edgard Varèse, who stated that his work
Arcana was drawn from a dream sequence. Souris in particular was associated with the movement: he had a long, if sometimes spotty, relationship with
Magritte, and worked on
Paul Nouge's publication
Adieu Marie.
French composer
Pierre Boulez wrote a piece called
explosante-fixe (1972), inspired by Breton's
mad love.
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, who was closely linked to Breton), the Operas "La Petite Sirène" (book by Philippe Soupault) and "Le Maître" (book by Eugène 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 (as alluded to above), 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 such performances by
Honeyboy Edwards.
Surrealists have also been influenced by
reggae and, later,
Electronic/noise music with the likes of
Merzbow,
rap and some rock or pop bands such as
The Psychedelic Furs. In addition to musicians who have been influenced by Surrealism (including some influence in rock—the title of the
1967 psychedelic Jefferson Airplane album
Surrealistic Pillow was obviously inspired by the movement), such as the experimental group
Nurse With Wound (whose album title
Chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and umbrella is taken from a line in
Lautreamont's
Maldoror). Surrealist music has included such explorations as those of
Hal Rammel. More importantly, the ideas of chance have been used by such modern musical artists as
David Bowie,
Brian Eno, and
Rozz Williams who, in turn, have sometimes mentioned either
Dadaists or Surrealists in their work.
Surrealism in film
Surrealist
films include
Un chien andalou and
L'Âge d'Or by
Luis Buñuel and
DalÃ; Buñuel went on to direct many more. There is also strong surrealist influence present in
Alain Resnais's
Last Year at Marienbad and
James Kerwin's
Yesterday Was a Lie.
Surrealist and film theorist
Robert Benayoun has written books on
Tex Avery,
Woody Allen,
Buster Keaton and the
Marx Brothers.
Some have described
David Lynch as a Surrealist filmmaker. Some aspects of many of his films are of Surrealist interest, although his work is not submersed in surrealism. For an example of his work, see
Eraserhead or
Mulholland DriveCzech surrealist
Jan Svankmajer has also made a number of surrealist films.[
1]
The truest aspects of Surrealism in film are often found in passing frames of a larger film; the sudden emergence of the uncanny into the "normal" which may or may not be further explored in the rest of the film. The original group spent hours going from film to film, often not finishing one before seeking another, partly in hopes of catching just such
ephemeral moments, and partly with the idea of "stitching together" a film in their own minds out of the disparate parts.
Surrealism in television
Some have found the
television series
The Prisoner to be of Surrealist interest.
Tex Avery cartoons originated on film in the 1930s and 1940s, but millions more know his famous characters from Saturday morning cartoons replayed during the 1970s:
Bugs Bunny,
Daffy Duck, etc.
Another
Looney Tunes animator,
Robert Clampett, was renown for his surrealistic style in both story and visuals. Especially notable are
The Great Piggy Bank Robbery and
Porky in Wackyland.
Trey Parker and
Matt Stone's animated television series
South Park often seeks to make points by employing satire that is surreal in nature.
Surrealism in politics
The 1968 revolt in France was arguably based on or 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 Miró would commemorate this in a painting entitled
May 1968.During the 1980s, behind the Iron Curtain, Surrealism entered into politics, and this thanks to 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
Wrocław, who used surrealism symbolism and terminology in its 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 the so-called "Manifest of Socialist Surrealism". In this Manifest, he stated that the socialist (communist) system had become so surrealistic that it could be seen as an expression of art itself.
Surrealism in comedy
Main article: Surreal humour.
Some branches of comedy (mostly
British) are very surreal. Some examples include:
*
Monty Python*
The Young Ones (TV series)*
The Goon Show*
Reeves and Mortimer*
Ms Divine's Tee Hee Heure
*
The Goodies*
The Firesign Theatre*
FLCLWhile 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 the imagination in flight than Western culture. Surrealism has had an identifiable impact on radical and revolutionary politics, both directly and indirectly -- through the way in which surrealists' emphasis on the intimate link between freeing the 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" arose directly from French surrealist thought and practice.
Some
artists, such as
H.R. Giger in
Europe, who won an
Academy Award for his stage set, and who also designed the "creature," in the movie
Alien, have been popularly called "Surrealists," though Giger is a
visionary artist yet his work is promoted as surrealist biomechanical art.
The Society for the Art of Imagination, an art organization composed of artists working in Surrealism, Fantastic Realism and Visionary Art, has come in for particularly bitter criticism from a small number of individuals who claim to be surrealists (although this criticism has been characterized by at least one anonymous individual as coming from "the Marxists [sic] Surrealist groups, who maintain small contingents worldwide;" he has also pointed out what he considers the hypocrisy of any Surrealist criticism of the Society for the Art of Imagination given that
Kathleen Fox designed the cover of issue 4 of the bulletin of the
Groupe de Paris du Mouvement Surrealiste and also participated in the
2003 Brave Destiny[
2] show at the
Williamsburg Art & Historical Center. Though some presented
Brave Destiny as the largest-ever exhibit of Surrealist artists, the show was officially billed as exhibiting "Surrealism, Surreal/
Conceptual, Visionary,
Fantastic,
Symbolism,
Magic Realism,
the Vienna School,
Neuve Invention,
Outsider,
Na?ve,
the Macabre,
Grotesque and
Singulier Art.)" Nontheless, "
Art and Antiques Magazine," stated in March 2006 that surrealism will ultimately be vindicated as being "...the foundation for all modern and contemporary art forms." The essay says that in first part of the 21st century new forms of surrealist art have manifested themselves.
Surrealism has been critiqued from several perspectives:
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.
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 in stereotypical romantic but sexist ways (i.e. as representing higher values and truths), putting them on a pedestal, and making them into objects of desire and of mystery. However,
Penelope Rosemont's anthology
Surrealist Women argues against some of these views, and includes writings, drawings and paintings by many women who were active in surrealism, undermining the claim that only a few women were involved in it.
Techniques, games and humor*
Surrealist games*
Surreal humour*
Surrealist techniquesAndré Breton* André Breton,
Manifestoes of Surrealism containing the 1
st, 2
nd and introduction to a possible 3
rd Manifesto, and in addition the novel
The Soluble Fish and political aspects of the Surrealist movement. ISBN 0472179004.
*
What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings of André Breton. ISBN 0873488229.
* André Breton,
Conversations: The Autobiography of Surrealism (Gallimard
1952) (Paragon House English rev. ed.
1993). ISBN 1569249709.
* André Breton.
The Abridged Dictionary of Surrealism, reprinted in:
** Marguerite Bonnet, ed. (
1988).
Oeuvres complètes, 1:328. Paris: Éditions Gallimard.
Other sources* Guillaume Appollinaire (
1917,
1991). Program note for
Parade, printed in
Oeuvres en prose complètes, 2:865-866, Pierre Caizergues and Michel Décaudin, eds. Paris: Éditions Gallimard.
* Gerard Durozoi,
History of the Surrealist Movement (translated by Alison Anderson, University of Chicago Press).
2004. ISBN 0226174115.
* Brotchie, Alastair and Gooding, Mel, eds.
A Book of Surrealist Games Berkeley, CA: Shambhala (
1995). ISBN 1570620849.
* Moebius, Stephan.
Die Zauberlehrlinge. Soziologiegeschichte des Collège de Sociologie. Konstanz: UVK 2006. (About the College of Sociology, its members and sociological impacts).
*Maurice Nadeau, History of Surrealism (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1989). ISBN 0674403452.
* Alexandrian, Sarane. Surrealist Art
London: Thames & Hudson, 1970.
* Melly, George Paris and the Surrealists
Thames & Hudson. 1991.
* Lewis, Helena The Politics Of Surrealism
1988
* Caws, Mary Ann Surrealist Painters and Poets: An Anthology''
2001 MIT Press
Academic resources/'Classical' Surrealism:
*
Manifesto of Surrealism by André Breton. 1924. *
Surrealism *
What is Surrealism? Lecture by Breton, Brussels 1934 *
The Surrealism Server*
Happenings by the Orange Alternative *
The Surrealist Movement in Serbia +
*
The radical politics of Surrealism, 1919-1950 â€" an article looking at Surrealism and Surrealists' connections to anarchist, socialist and working class politics
*
Franz Kafka and Marcel Proust, the 2 Albums, "recomposed photographs", in a rather surrealist spirit.Surrealist Art Resources and Information:
*
Surrealism Now!*
Massive Surreal Art Links GallerySurrealist Humor/Comedy:
*
The Young Ones*
Ms Divine's sketch comedy films
