Surrealism is a cultural, artistic, 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 state different from, "more than", and ultimately truer than everyday reality: the "sur-real", i.e. 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." At various times individual surrealists aligned themselves with communism and anarchism to advance radical political and social change, arguing that only transformed institutions of work, the family, and education could make possible a general participation in the surreal. More recently some surrealists have participated in feminist and radical environmentalist activities for similar reasons.
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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. It is also used in everyday language to describe experiences that are highly unusual, that breach the conventions of everday life, that are dreamlike, or that manifest the logic of the unconscious. These usages are often independent of any direct connection to Surrealism the movement and are used in both formal and informal contexts. This usage has frequently been criticised, often strongly, by Surrealists. |
Philosophy
Surrealist philosophy emerged around 1920, partly as an outgrowth of
Dada, with French writer 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 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, Surrealism adherents 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.
Surrealists 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 one is not aware of) 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 Dalí, 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 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 manifested 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.
History of Surrealism
Cover of the first issue of La Révolution surréaliste, December
1924.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 Surrealism movement originated in post-World War I European
avant-garde literary and art circles, and many early Surrealists
were associated with the earlier Dada movement. Movement
participants seek to revolutionize life with actions intended to
bring about change in accordance with the philosophy of surrealism,
though there have been some claims in surrealist theoretical writing
that surrealism is not a philosophy. 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 and 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 Dali, while others
believe that Surrealism continues as an identifiable movement.
Breton's Surrealist Manifesto of 1924 and the publication of the
magazine La Révolution surréaliste (The Surrealist Revolution)
marked the beginning of the Surrealism as a public agitation.
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 Perét 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 Dalí, 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 did
not join.
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.)
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 Aime Cesaire and
Rene 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 hailed from countries other
than France, for example, the technique of cubomania was invented by
Romanian Surrealist Gherasim Luca.
Interwar Surrealism: Centrality of Breton
Paul Éluard and André Breton. (Man Ray. Private collection.)Breton,
as the leader of the Surrealist movement, not only published its
most thorough explanations of its techniques, aims and ideas, but
was the individual who drew in, and expelled, writers, artists and
thinkers. Through the interwar period he formed the focus of
Surrealist activity in Paris, and his writings were enormously
influential in spreading Surrealism as a body of thought, in such
works Nadja (1928), the Second Surrealist Manifesto (1930),
Communicating Vessels (1932), and Mad Love (1937).
To further the revolutionary aim of Surrealism, in 1927 Breton and
others joined the Communist Party. (Breton was ousted in 1933.)
The late 1920s were turbulent for the group as several individuals
closely associated with Breton left, and several prominent artists
entered.
Surrealism continued to expand in public visibility, in Breton's own
estimation the high water mark was the 1936 London International
Surrealist Exhibition.
In 1937, Breton and Leon Trotsky co-authored a Manifesto for an
independent revolutionary art[1] on the need for a permanent
revolution, and attacked Stalinism and Socialist realism, as the
"negation of freedom".
Surrealism also attracted writers from the United Kingdom to Paris
including David Gascoyne, who became friends with Paul Éluard and
Max Ernst, and translated Breton and Dalí into English. In 1935 he
authored A Short Study of Surrealism, and then returned to England
during the World War II, where he roomed 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 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 founded the
short lived magazine VVV, which 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 again,
off again 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 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 with
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 to an 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 historians suggest that the movement was
effectively disbanded by WWII, others treat the movement as
extending through the 1950s; art historian Sarane Alexandrian (1970)
states that "the death of André Breton in 1966 marked the end of
Surrealism as an organized movement." However, some who knew Breton,
and were part of groups he founded or approved have continued to be
active well after his death. For example, Czech Surrealism Group in
Prague, though driven underground in 1968, re-emerged in the 1990s;
and in 1976 the largest-ever exhibition of international surrealism,
the World Surrealist Exhibition, went up in Chicago. Still other
groups and artists, not directly connected to Breton, have claimed
the Surrealist label.
In 2005, there has been new interest in the writings of the
surrealist movement in relation to the psychology of the internet.
This has produced a new movement: neosurrealism, which has dialogs
among philosophy, psychology, and art departments of Florida
universities
In addition, Surrealism, as a prominent critique of rationalism and
capitalism, and a theory of integrated aesthetics and ethics had
influence on later movements, including many aspects of
postmodernism.
People involved in the (first) Paris
Surrealist Group
Louis Aragon
Jean Arp
Georges Bataille
André Breton
Giorgio de Chirico
Jean Cocteau
René Crevel
Salvador Dalí
René Daumal
Robert Desnos
Paul Éluard
Max Ernst
David Gascoyne
Alberto Giacometti
Valentine Hugo
Michel Leiris
René Magritte
Roberto Matta
Joan Miró
André Masson
Pierre Naville
Méret Oppenheim
Benjamin Péret
Jacques Prévert
Man Ray
Philippe Soupault
Tristan Tzara
Yves Tanguy
Toyen
Remedios Varo
Nancy Cunard
André Thirion
Rene Char
Surrealism in the arts
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 - while an important part of the Surrealist process -
is viewed as merely a "souvenir" of a vastly more critical journey,
interesting only insofar as it is revelatory of that adventure.
Surrealism in visual arts
René Magritte's "The Betrayal of Images" (1928-9)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
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 an 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 a very primary colour palette, and unornamented
epictional 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
which defies conventional realistic 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: Dalí 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
The Persistence of Memory (1931) by Salvador Dalí.Dalí and Magritte
created the most widely recognized images of the movement. Dalí
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 Dalí, particularly in his The Persistence of
Memory, which features the image of clocks that sag as if they are
made out of cloth.
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 Dalí continued to define a visual
program in the arts. This program reached beyond painting, to
encompass photography as well, as can be seen from this 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 -
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.
World War II and beyond
As with many artistic movements in Europe, the coming of the Second
World War proved disruptive: both because of the rift between Breton
and Dalí over Dalí's support for Francisco Franco, and because of a
diaspora of the members of the Surrealist movement itself. Dalí said
to remain a Surrealist forever was like "painting only eyes and
noses", and declared he had embarked on a "classic" period; Max
Ernst in 1962 said "I feel more affinity for some German Romantics".
Magritte began painting what he called his "solar" or "Renoir"
style.
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 Dalí may
have been excommunicated by Breton, he neither abandoned the 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.
During the 1940s Surrealism's influence was also felt in England and
America. Mark Rothko took an interest in bimorphic 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, beginning in 1935, remained
within the movement, organizing an exhibition of current Surrealist
work in 1978, in response to an exhibition which infuriated him
because it did not properly represent Surrealism. The exhibition,
titled Surrealism Unlimited was in Paris, and attracted
international attention. He held his his last one man show in 2002,
just before his death in 2005.
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, Roberto
Matta for example, but by their own description "remained close to
Surrealism."
Many new artists explicitly took up the Surrealist banner for
themselves, some following what they saw as the path of Dalí, others
holding to views they derived from Breton. 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 an expansion of Surrealism with the founding of The
West Coast Surrealist Group as recognized by Breton's personal
assistant Jose Pierre and also Surrealist Movement in the United
States.
That Surrealism has remained commercially successful and popularly
recognized has lead many people associated with the Breton's
Surrealist group to criticise more general uses of the term. They
argue that many self-identified Surrealists are not grounded in
Breton's work and the techniques of the movement.
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.
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