Surrealism

Characteristics of Surrealism

Elements of surprise

Unexpected juxtapositions

Distortions of reality

Dream like subject matter

Interest in the subconcious

Magical and instictive

Surrealist Artists

Salvador Dali - Spanish

Rene Magritte - Belgian

Joan Miró - Spanish

Max Ernst - German

Giorgio de Chirico - Greek

Giorgio de Chirico. Mystery and Melancholy of a Street. 1914. Oil on canvas. 88 x 72 cm. Private collection.

Surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement

that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members

The surrealist movement of visual art and literature, flourished in Europe between World Wars I and II.

Surrealism grew principally out of the earlier Dada movement, which before World War I produced works of anti-art that deliberately defied reason; but Surrealism emphasis was not on denial but on positive expression.

Surrealism Artists like René Magritte and Salvador Dali

ignored painting techniques of contemporary painting but used traditional forms of realistic painting.

The details of the paintings were realistic, but they were combined in such a way that the painting as a whole was very far from realistic.

Just as in dreams the fleeting images of the subconscious are mingled together to form strange and fantastic pictures.

The Surrealist painters applied these to canvas and developed the possibilities of this strange imagery in a conscious manner.

Surrealism Dream analysis and the hidden unconscious was of

the utmost importance to the Surrealists in developing methods to liberate imagination.

The group aimed to revolutionise 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.

In 1924 The Surrealist Manifesto was published.

The paper defined the purposes of the group and includes citations of the influences on Surrealism, and examples of Surrealist works

Max ErnstOedipus Rex, 1922Oil on canvas93 x 102 cmPrivate collection, Paris

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian psychiatrist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology.

Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind.

Freud called dreams the "royal road to the unconscious".

This meant that dreams illustrate the "logic" of the unconscious mind.

Influenced by the theories of Sigmund Freud , the images found in surrealist works are as confusing and startling as those of dreams.

André Breton

André Breton became known as the Pope of Surrealism, and was responsible for writing "The Manifestos of Surrealism" (1924)

Drawing heavily on theories adapted from Sigmund Freud, Breton saw the unconscious as the wellspring of the imagination.

According to Breton, Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely, that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in "an absolute reality, a surreality.”

André Breton

Sigmund Freud

Automatic Writing Automatic writing is the process or

production of writing material that does not come from the conscious thoughts of the writer.

Practitioners say that the writer's hand forms the message, with the person being unaware of what will be written.

In automatic drawing, the hand is allowed to move 'randomly' across the paper.

Automatic drawing was developed by the surrealists, as a means of expressing the subconscious.

André Masson. Automatic Drawing.

(1924). Ink on paper, Museum of Modern Art,

New York.

Joan Miró. Harlequin's Carnival. 1924-25. Oil on canvas. 66 x 93 cm. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, USA.

René Magritte “The Treachery of Images (This is not a pipe),” 1929

Oil on canvas, 25 3/8 x 37”.

Salvador Dali Persistence of Memory, 1931Oil on canvas, 24 cm × 33 cm

Museum of Modern Art, New York City

Surrealist Film – Un Chien Andalou, 1929