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| − | '''''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 state different from, "more than", and ultimately "truer" than everyday reality: the "sur-real", or "more than real". In his [[Surrealist Manifesto]] of 1924, [[André Breton]] defines Surrealism as: | + | Begun as an investigation of poetic images and language, their sources, their nature, and specific features, surrealism is a movement of ideas, of artistic creation and action based explicitly on Freudian discoveries, which were used to develop an original theory of language and creativity. In later years it adopted Hegelian dialectics and Marxist-Leninist historical materialism. The "social and martial cataclysm" (Breton, 1934) provoked a revolt by an entire generation. |
| | + | The movement was founded in Paris in 1924 by French poet André Breton, with the support of a group of poets and painters. The presence of Max Ernst, from Germany, Man Ray, from the United States, and Joan Miró, a Catalan, gave the group its international flavor. Surrealism's goal was to "change life" (Arthur Rimbaud) by freeing humanity from the constraints of mental or social censorship as well as economic oppression: "Poetry is made by everyone. Not by one" (Lautréamont). |
| | + | The project made little sense to Freud, who refused his patronage (Freud to Breton, 1933e [1932]; to Zweig, July 20, 1938 (1960a [1873-1939])). Breton visited Freud in Vienna in 1921 and corresponded with him in 1932 about <i>The Interpretation of Dreams</i>. In 1937 he asked him to contribute to a planned anthology (<i>Trajectoire du rêve</i>, 1938). Freud answered: "A collection of dreams without their associations, without understanding the circumstances in which someone dreamed, doesn't mean anything to me, and I have a hard time understanding what it might mean to others" (Breton, 1938, I). |
| | + | These associations were generally omitted by the surrealists when they narrated their dreams. They appear in André Breton's <i>The Communicating Vases</i> (1932), but there the author, denying the "dream navel" for the sake of Marxist-Leninist materialism, felt he could use them to bring into focus all his dream thoughts. He claimed, contrary to Freud, that the dream was a creator, an instigator to action, and capable of dialectically resolving the contradiction between desire and reality. Surrealism ignored therapy. |
| | + | There are several periods to the history of surrealism. Its "prehistory" dates from 1916 (Breton discovers Freud) to 1924. This was the period of the review <i>Littérature</i> (1919). Together with Breton, a group of young artists invented surrealist techniques intended to liberate the unconscious: automatic writing and drawing, hypnotic sleep, hypnagogic visions, dream narratives, group creation, oral and written games, collage, rubbings, decals, experimental photography and theater. The publication of the first <i>Surrealist Manifesto</i> (Breton, 1924) ushered in Surrealism's formative period. The group had a journal of its own, <i>La Révolution surréaliste</i>. "We must be thankful for Freud's discoveries," wrote Breton, "the imagination may be on the point of winning back its rights." |
| | + | In 1927 André Breton, Louis Aragon, PaulÉluard, and Benjamin Peret joined the Communist Party. Breton did not, however, abandon Freud: "The Surrealism that, as we have seen, has adopted Marxist beliefs does not intend to treat lightly the Freudian critique of ideas" (Breton, 1930). Breton soon quit the Communist Party, which reproached him for his Freudianism. Surrealism embraced cinema (Luis Buñuel), the construction of objects ("Situation surréaliste de l'objet," Breton, 1935), and produced important works of art in every field. |
| | + | But in 1930, in his <i>Second Manifesto of Surrealism</i>, Breton acknowledged the existence of a profound crisis. The third period of Surrealism was about to begin. A new review was introduced, <i>Le Surréalisme au service de la Révolution</i>. In 1930 the review published two articles by the French-American psychoanalyst Jean FroisWittmann, in 1933 the Breton-Freud correspondence of 1932, a favorable critique of Jacques Lacan's doctoral dissertation by René Crevel, and, also by Crevel, an attack on an article in the <i>Revue française de psychanalyse</i>. The review also published the first texts by Salvador Dali, where he developed the idea of "critical-paranoia," the use of the interpretative processes of paranoia for creative ends, and the exploration of the unconscious. |
| | + | In 1933 <i>Minotaure</i> appeared. Although it was not the official voice of the group, it was strongly influenced by it. The first issue included articles on the "contributions of psychoanalysis." Lacan and Dalí explained their conceptions of paranoia as an active psychic phenomenon, which Dalí compared with the passivity he associated with dreams and automatic writing. Several large-scale international exhibitions confirmed the growth of surrealism around the world, a phenomenon that accelerated during the Second World War following the exile of Breton, André Masson, and Max Ernst in the United States, and Benjamin Péret in Mexico, and continued after the war. |
| | + | Breton, the principal theorist of the group, maintained a close association with Freudian thought throughout his career. He was most interested in the logic of the unconscious, in conflicts between the ego, the id, and the superego, relating them to the process of artistic creation, to Freudian ideas of sexuality, fantasy, desire, repression, the death instinct, whose opposition to Eros he assumed to be dialectical (Breton, 1930), and especially to ideas about representation and perception (Breton, 1933). Beginning with his concept of "pure mental representation," situated "beyond true perception," he examined, in the context of the <i>Essais de psychanalyse</i> (1927), how the transition from the unconscious to the perception-consciousness system takes place in the creative individual. For Breton, as a reader of Freud, it was at the preconscious level that language and the traces of acoustic and visual perceptions were united and charged with affect. But Breton went further: he saw in these preconscious elements the raw material of creation, obtained by the removal of repression with the help of automatic writing and drawing. In creating a work of art, the artist would make the individual universal (Breton, 1935). |
| | + | In a letter to Stefan Zweig, Freud, who had met Salvador Dalí in London, also associated the fundamental elements of the work of the artist with the preconscious, but he added a principle of economy: "From the critical point of view it could still be maintained that the notion of art defies expansion as long as the quantitative proportion of unconscious material and preconscious treatment does not remain within definite limits" (July 20, 1938). The specific task of the creative individual, the result of his "initiative" (Breton) is to manipulate the relation between unconscious and preconscious elements, and objectify them in a work of art. Repression would have to be removed using "surrealist techniques" (Breton). Freud's meeting with Dalí seems to be the only time when Freud made an effort to understand the surrealist use of psychoanalysis and compare it with his own beliefs. |
| | + | There were other points of contact between surrealism and psychoanalysis: Adrien Borel discussed his surrealist experiences (1925); Salvador Dalí and René Crevel interviewed Jacques Lacan; Crevel, Antonin Artaud, and Robert Desnos were analyzed by René Allendy, which they later wrote about. André Embiricos, a surrealist poet and theoretician as well as a psychoanalyst, founded, together with Marie Bonaparte, the Greek Psychoanalytic Society. |
| | + | Lacanian thought developed throughout the nineteen-sixties, and, although it has a number of affinities with surrealism, it has always remained distinct. In 1971 the surrealist painter and philosopher René Passeron, with his research team at the C.N.R.S., founded<i>Études poïétiques</i>, which analyzed the creative process and made use of Freudian theory. A number of psychoanalysts (André Berge, Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, Guy Rosolato) were interested in the surrealists. As Breton found in 1934, the scope of surrealism, through the upheaval of sensibility it entails, "is socially incalculable." As a movement it has frequently helped the spread of psychoanalysis. |
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| − | :Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express -- verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner -- the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.
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| − | 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."
| + | ==See Also== |
| | + | * [[André Breton]] |
| | + | * [[Maryse Choisy]] |
| | + | * [[René Held]] |
| | + | * [[Jacques-Marie Émile Lacan]] |
| | + | * [[Literature and psychoanalysis]] |
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| − | 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 to the surreal.
| + | ==References== |
| | + | <references/> |
| | + | # Biro, Adam, Passeron, René. (1982). Dictionnaire général du surréalisme et de ses environs. Freiberg, Switzerland: Office du Livre. |
| | + | # Breton, André. (1988). Œuvres complètes. Édition établie par Marguerite Bonnet. Paris: Gallimard, La Pléiade. |
| | + | # Freud, Sigmund. (1927). Essais de psychanalys (Samuel Jankelevitch, Trans.). Paris: Payot. |
| | + | # ——. (1960a [1873-1939]). Letters of Sigmund Freud, 1873-1939 (Ernst L. Freud, Ed.]] |
| | + | * [[Tania and James Stern, Trans.). London, Hogarth Press, 1970. |
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| − | The word "[[surreal]]" is often used colloquially to describe unexpected juxtapositions or use of [[non-sequitur]]s in art or dialog, particularly where such juxtapositions are presented as self-consistent [http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Surrealism].
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| − | ==Philosophy==
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| − | Surrealist philosophy emerged around [[1920]], partly as an outgrowth of [[Dada]], with French writer [[André Breton]] as its initial principal theorist.
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| − | In Breton's [[Surrealist Manifesto]] of [[1924]] he defines Surrealism as:
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| − | :'' '''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.
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| − | '' '''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."
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| − | 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.
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| − | 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.
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| − | While [[Dada]] rejected categories and labels and was rooted in negative response to the [[World War I|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 [[Dialectic#Hegelian dialectic|Hegelian Dialectic]]. The Marxist dialectic and other theories, such as [[Freud]]ian 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.
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| − | The Surrealist diagnosis of the "problem" of the [[realism (arts)|realism]] and [[capitalism|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.
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| − | Surrealist philosophy connects with the theories of psychiatrist [[Sigmund Freud]]. Freud asserted that [[unconscious mind|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.
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| − | 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.
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| − | 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!"
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| − | Surrealists look to so-called "[[Primitivism (art)|primitive art]]" as an example of expression that is not self-censored.
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| − | 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 [[André Breton|Breton]] proclaimed, the true aim of Surrealism is "long live the social revolution, and it alone!".
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| − | To this goal, at various times Surrealists have aligned with [[Communism|communism]] and [[Anarchism|anarchism]].
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| − | 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.
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| − | 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.
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| − | == History of Surrealism==
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| − | [[Image:La Revolution Surrealiste cover.jpg|thumb|right|Cover of the first issue of ''[[La Révolution surréaliste]]'', December 1924.]] <!--this capitalization of the title seems to be the standard-->
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| − | In 1917, [[Guillaume Apollinaire]] coined the term "surrealism" in the program notes describing the ballet ''[[Parade (ballet)|Parade]]'' which was a collaborative work by [[Jean Cocteau]], [[Erik Satie]], [[Pablo Picasso]] and [[Léonide Massine]]:
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| − | :''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').'
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| − | 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 Dalí]], while others believe that Surrealism continues as an identifiable movement.
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| − | === Split from Dada ===
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| − | 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 "[[Surrealist automatism|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]].
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| − | 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]].
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| − | 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.
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| − | The Surrealists developed [[Surrealist techniques|techniques]] such as [[automatic drawing]] (developed by [[André Masson]]), [[automatic painting]], [[decalcomania]], [[Frottage (surrealist technique)|Frottage]], [[Surrealist techniques#Fumage|fumage]], [[Surrealist techniques#Grattage|grattage]] and [[Surrealist techniques#Parsemage|parsemage]] that became significant parts of Surrealist practice. ([[Automatism and the computer|Automatism]] was later adapted to the computer.) [[Surrealist games|Games]] such as the [[exquisite corpse]] also assumed a great importance in Surrealism.
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| − | Although sometimes considered exclusively French, Surrealism was international from the beginning, with both the Belgian and [[Czech and Slovak Surrealist Group|Czech groups]] developing early; the Czech group continues uninterrupted to this day. Some of what have been described as the most significant [[Surrealist theory|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 [[Surrealist techniques#Cubomania|cubomania]] was invented by Romanian Surrealist [[Gherasim Luca]].
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| − | === Interwar Surrealism: Centrality of Breton ===
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| − | [[Image:Breton eluard.gif|thumb|right|200px|[[Paul Éluard]] and [[André Breton]]. ([[Man Ray]]. Private collection.)]]
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| − | 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]]).
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| − | To further the revolutionary aim of Surrealism, in 1927 [[André Breton|Breton]] and others joined the [[Communist Party]]. Breton was ousted from the Party in 1933.
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| − | The late 1920s were turbulent for the group as several individuals closely associated with Breton left, and several prominent artists entered.
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| − | Surrealism continued to expand in public visibility. The high water mark, in Breton's own estimation, was the 1936 [[London International Surrealist Exhibition]].
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| − | In 1938, Breton (on visit to Mexico) and [[Leon Trotsky]] co-authored a ''[[Manifesto for an independent revolutionary art]]''[http://www.marxists.org/subject/art/lit_crit/works/rivera/manifesto.htm] on the need for a permanent revolution, and attacked [[Stalinism]] and [[Socialist realism]], as the "negation of freedom".
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| − | Surrealism also attracted writers from the United Kingdom to Paris including [[David Gascoyne]], who became friends with [[Paul Éluard]] and [[Max Ernst]], and translated [[André Breton|Breton]] and [[Salvador Dalí|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.
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| − | [[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 [[Georges Bataille|Bataille]], they published ''Da Costa Encyclopedia'' meant to coincide with the [[1947]] Surrealist exhibition in Paris.
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| − | === Surrealism during World War II ===
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| − | 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]]).
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| − | In [[1941]], Breton went to the United States, where he cofounded the short lived magazine ''[[VVV (journal)|VVV]]'' with [[Max Ernst]], [[Marcel Duchamp]], and American artist [[David Hare (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 (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 [[Yves Tanguy|Tanguy]] and [[Max Ernst|Ernst]] and in [[1945]], on Marcel Duchamp.
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| − | The ''[[View (magazine)|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.
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| − | 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.
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| − | 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.
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| − | === Post World War II Surrealism===
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| − | 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 Dalí]], [[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 Dalí]].) However, this is in direct contradiction to Breton's statement that surrealism would continue after him, and the many manifestations of surrealism after his death.
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| − | For example, the Czech Surrealist Group in Prague, though driven underground in [[1968]], re-emerged in the [[1990s]]. Still 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.
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| − | == Surrealism in the arts ==
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| − | 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|romanticism]] and [[Minimalism|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 [[André Breton|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 [[art movement|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 in so far as it is revelatory of that adventure.
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| − | === Surrealism in visual arts ===
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| − | ====Early visual arts Surrealism====
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| − | 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.
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| − | 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]].
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| − | [[Image:MagrittePipe.jpg|thumb|left|200px|[[René Magritte]]'s "The Betrayal of Images" (1928-9)]]
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| − | [[André Masson|Masson]]'s [[automatic drawing]]s of [[1923]], are often used as a convenient point of difference, since these reflect the influence of the idea of the [[unconscious mind]].
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| − | 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]].
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| − | [[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: [[Salvador Dalí|Dalí]] and [[Magritte]].
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| − | In [[1924]], [[Joan Miró|Miro]] and [[André Masson|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.
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| − | [[Galerie Surréaliste]] opened on [[March 26]], [[1926]] with an exhibition by [[Man Ray]].
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| − | Breton published ''Surrealism and Painting'' in [[1928]] which summarized the movement to that point, though he continued to update the work until the [[1960s]].
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| − | ====1930s====
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| − | [[Image:The Persistence of Memory.jpg|thumb|240px|[[Salvador Dalí]]. ''[[The Persistence of Memory]]''. 1931.]]
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| − | [[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]].
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| − | 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.
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| − | [[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 [[Yves Tanguy|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.
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| − | 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 [[Modernism|modern]] period, combined with the sense of reaching more deeply into the psyche, to be "made whole with ones individuality".
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| − | 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 a Man Ray self portrait, whose use of assemblage influenced [[Robert Rauschenberg]]'s collage boxes.
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| − | 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.
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| − | ====World War II and beyond====
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| − | [[Image:ElleLogeLaFolie_1970.jpg|thumb|400px|right|[[Roberto Matta]]. ''Elle Loge La Folie'', oil on canvas, 1970.]]
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| − | The coming of the Second World War proved disruptive for surrealism.
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| − | 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 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.
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| − | 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 (painter)|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 last one man show in [[2002]], just before his death in [[2005]].
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| − | 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.
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| − | Other figures from the Surrealist movement were expelled, [[Roberto Matta]] for example, but by their own description "remained close to Surrealism."
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| − | 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]].
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| − | The [[1960s]] saw an expansion of Surrealism with the founding of [[West Coast Surrealist Group|The West Coast Surrealist Group]] as recognized by Breton's personal assistant [[Jose Pierre]] and also the [[Surrealist Movement in the United States]].
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| − | 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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| − | ===Surrealism in literature===
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| − | 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]], [[André Breton|Breton]], [[Philippe Soupault|Soupault]] and [[Louis Aragon|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.”
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| − | 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 - as in Breton's case itself - 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 - 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 - to be more modern than modern - and so it was natural there should be a rapid shuffling of the philosophy as new challenges arose.
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| − | 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.
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| − | 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''.
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| − | ===Surrealism in music===
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| − | :''Main article: [[Surrealism (music)]].''
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| − | In the [[1920s]] several composers were influenced by Surrealism, or by individuals in the Surrealist movement. Among these were [[Bohuslav Martinu]], [[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''.
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| − | French composer [[Pierre Boulez]] wrote a piece called ''explosante-fixe'' (1972), inspired by Breton's ''mad love''.
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| − | [[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.
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| − | 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]].
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| − | Surrealists have also been influenced by [[reggae]] and, later, [[hip hop music|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 music|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]] who - in turn - have sometimes mentioned either [[Dada|Dadaists]] or Surrealists in their work.
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| − | ===Surrealism in film===
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| − | Surrealist [[film]]s include ''[[Un chien andalou]]'' and ''[[L'Âge d'Or]]'' by [[Luis Buñuel]] and [[Dalí]]; Buñuel went on to direct many more. There is also a strong surrealist influence present in [[Alain Resnais]]'s ''[[Last Year at Marienbad]]''
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| − | Surrealist and film theorist [[Robert Benayoun]] has written books on [[Tex Avery]], [[Woody Allen]], [[Buster Keaton]] and the [[Marx Brothers]].
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| − | 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.
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| − | Czech surrealist [[Jan Svankmajer]] has also made a number of surrealist films.[http://www.illumin.co.uk/svank/films/filmogac.html]
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| − | 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.
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| − | Surreal Films
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| − | [http://wayney.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/surreal.htm]
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| − | ===Surrealism in television===
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| − | Some have found the [[television]] series ''[[The Prisoner]]'' to be of Surrealist interest.
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| − | [[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.
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| − | ===Surrealism in politics===
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| − | 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.''
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| − | 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 [[Wroclaw]], 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.
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| − | ===Surrealism in comedy===
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| − | :''Main article: [[Surreal humour]].''
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| − | Some branches of comedy (mostly [[British]]) are very surreal. Some examples include:
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| − | * ''[[The Goon Show]]''
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| − | * ''[[Monty Python]]''
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| − | * [[Reeves and Mortimer]]
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| − | * ''[[Green Wing]]''
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| − | * ''[[The Goodies]]''
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| − | ==Surrealism in the Philosophy of Science==
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| − | This is an anti-commonsense realist view of science where [[scientific realism]] is false and the scientific phenomena is '''as if''' scientific realism were true. The first major (and trivial) demonstration of this interpretation of [[science]] is to [[Philip Henry Gosse]], a brilliant 19th Century [[natural history|naturalist]] and inventor for the first stable sea water [[aquarium]]. There was a serious problem reconciling biblical fundamentalism (e.g. the world was created in 4004 BC with the teachings of [[geology]] (the world is millions of years old). Gosse in his 1857 (2 years prior to [[Charles Darwin]]'s [[Origin of Species]]) book [[Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot]] tries to reconcile these two dichotomies with a surrealist transform summed up nicely as '''God created the world AS IF the teachings of geology were true.''' Gosse's book was rejected by both ends of the debate. Surrealism however is a viable philosophical position for the [[antirealist]] interpretation of science. Gosse's problem was his solution to Geology and Biblical Fundamentalism was far to trivial a surrealist transform.
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| − | == Impact of Surrealism ==
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| − | 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.
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| − | In addition to Surrealist ideas that are grounded in the ideas of [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel|Hegel]], [[Karl Marx|Marx]] and [[Sigmund Freud|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]], [[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 (jazz)|Don Cherry]], [[Sun Ra]], 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 [[alchemy|alchemists]], possibly [[Dante Alighieri|Dante]], [[Hieronymus Bosch]], [[Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade|Marquis de Sade]], [[Charles Fourier]], [[Comte de Lautreamont]] and [[Arthur Rimbaud]].
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| − | 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 -- as in some surrealists joining or allying themselves with radical political groups, movements and parties -- 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.
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| − | Some [[artist]]s, such as [[H.R. Giger]] in [[Europe]], who won an [[Academy Awards|Academy Award]] for his stage set, and who also designed the "creature," in the movie ''[[Alien (movie)|Alien]],'' have been popularly called "Surrealists," though Giger is a [[Visionary art|visionary artist]] and he does not claim to be surrealist.
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| − | [[The Society for the Art of Imagination]] has come in for particularly bitter criticism from a self-labeled surrealist movement (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[http://wahcenter.net/exhibits/2003/surreal/index.html] 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 art|Conceptual]], Visionary, [[Fantastic art|Fantastic]], [[Symbolism]], [[Magic Realism]], [[the Vienna School]], [[Neuve Invention]], [[Outsider art|Outsider]], [[Na?ve art|Na?ve]], [[the Macabre]], [[the Grotesque|Grotesque]] and [[Singulier Art]].)"
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| − | ==Critiques of Surrealism==
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| − | Surrealism has been critiqued from several perspectives:
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| − | [[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.
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| − | [[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, as representing higher values and truths, putting them on a pedestal, making them into objects of desire and of mystery.
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| − | ==See also==
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| − | '''Techniques, games and humor'''
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| − | *[[Surrealist games]]
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| − | *[[Surreal humour]]
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| − | *[[Surrealist techniques]]
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| − | | |
| − | '''Related art movements and genres'''
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| − | *[[Cacophony Society]]
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| − | *[[Dada]]
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| − | *[[Fluxus]]
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| − | *[[Hysterical realism]] and [[Maximalism]]
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| − | *[[Post-Surrealism]]
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| − | *[[Situationism]]
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| − | *[[Ultra-Realism]]
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| − | *[[Visionary]]
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| − | *[[Non-Joke]]
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| − | ==Sources==
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| − | '''[[André Breton]]'''
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| − | * André Breton, ''Manifestoes of Surrealism'' containing the 1<SUP>st</SUP>, 2<SUP>nd</SUP> and introduction to a possible 3<SUP>rd</SUP> Manifesto, and in addition the novel ''The Soluble Fish'' and political aspects of the Surrealist movement. ISBN 0472179004.
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| − | * ''What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings of André Breton''. ISBN 0873488229.
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| − | * André Breton, ''Conversations: The Autobiography of Surrealism'' (Gallimard [[1952]]) (Paragon House English rev. ed. [[1993]]). ISBN 1569249709.
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| − | * André Breton. ''The Abridged Dictionary of Surrealism'', reprinted in:
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| − | ** Marguerite Bonnet, ed. ([[1988]]). ''Oeuvres complètes'', 1:328. Paris: Éditions Gallimard.
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| − |
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| − | '''Other sources'''
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| − | * 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.
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| − | * Gerard Durozoi, ''History of the Surrealist Movement'' (translated by Alison Anderson, University of Chicago Press). [[2004]]. ISBN 0226174115.
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| − | * Brotchie, Alastair and Gooding, Mel, eds. ''A Book of Surrealist Games'' Berkeley, CA: Shambhala ([[1995]]). ISBN 1570620849.
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| − | | |
| − | * Moebius, Stephan. ''Die Zauberlehrlinge. Soziologiegeschichte des [[Collège de Sociologie]]. Konstanz: UVK [[2006]]. (About the [[College of Sociology]], its members and sociological impacts).
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| − | *Maurice Nadeau, History of Surrealism (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1989). ISBN 0674403452.
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| − | * Alexandrian, Sarane. ''Surrealist Art'' London: Thames & Hudson, [[1970]].
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| − | * Melly, George ''Paris and the Surrealists'' Thames & Hudson. [[1991]].
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| − | * Lewis, Helena ''The Politics Of Surrealism'' [[1988]]
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| − | * [[Mary Ann Caws|Caws, Mary Ann]] ''Surrealist Painters and Poets: An Anthology'' [[2001]] MIT Press
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| − | | |
| − | ==External links==
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| − | Academic resources/'Classical' Surrealism:
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| − | *[http://www.tcf.ua.edu/Classes/Jbutler/T340/SurManifesto/ManifestoOfSurrealism.htm ''Manifesto of Surrealism'' by André Breton. 1924.]
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| − | *{{fr icon}} [http://www.site-magister.com/surrealis.htm Surrealism]
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| − | *[http://pers-www.wlv.ac.uk/~fa1871/whatsurr.html ''What is Surrealism?'' Lecture by Breton, Brussels 1934]
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| − | *[http://www.madsci.org/~lynn/juju/surr/surrealism.html The Surrealism Server]
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| − | *[http://pomaranczowa-alternatywa.republika.pl Happenings by the Orange Alternative]
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| − | *[http://www.serbiansurrealism.com/ The Surrealist Movement in Serbia] +
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| − | *[http://www.libcom.org/history/articles/surrealism-politics/index.php The radical politics of Surrealism, 1919-1950] - an article looking at Surrealism and Surrealists' connections to anarchist, socialist and working class politics
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| − | * [http://www.gerard-bertrand.net/index.htm Franz Kafka and Marcel Proust, the 2 Albums], "recomposed photographs", in a rather surrealist spirit.
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| − | [[Category:Culture]]
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| − | [[Category:Jacques Lacan]]
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Begun as an investigation of poetic images and language, their sources, their nature, and specific features, surrealism is a movement of ideas, of artistic creation and action based explicitly on Freudian discoveries, which were used to develop an original theory of language and creativity. In later years it adopted Hegelian dialectics and Marxist-Leninist historical materialism. The "social and martial cataclysm" (Breton, 1934) provoked a revolt by an entire generation.
The movement was founded in Paris in 1924 by French poet André Breton, with the support of a group of poets and painters. The presence of Max Ernst, from Germany, Man Ray, from the United States, and Joan Miró, a Catalan, gave the group its international flavor. Surrealism's goal was to "change life" (Arthur Rimbaud) by freeing humanity from the constraints of mental or social censorship as well as economic oppression: "Poetry is made by everyone. Not by one" (Lautréamont).
The project made little sense to Freud, who refused his patronage (Freud to Breton, 1933e [1932]; to Zweig, July 20, 1938 (1960a [1873-1939])). Breton visited Freud in Vienna in 1921 and corresponded with him in 1932 about The Interpretation of Dreams. In 1937 he asked him to contribute to a planned anthology (Trajectoire du rêve, 1938). Freud answered: "A collection of dreams without their associations, without understanding the circumstances in which someone dreamed, doesn't mean anything to me, and I have a hard time understanding what it might mean to others" (Breton, 1938, I).
These associations were generally omitted by the surrealists when they narrated their dreams. They appear in André Breton's The Communicating Vases (1932), but there the author, denying the "dream navel" for the sake of Marxist-Leninist materialism, felt he could use them to bring into focus all his dream thoughts. He claimed, contrary to Freud, that the dream was a creator, an instigator to action, and capable of dialectically resolving the contradiction between desire and reality. Surrealism ignored therapy.
There are several periods to the history of surrealism. Its "prehistory" dates from 1916 (Breton discovers Freud) to 1924. This was the period of the review Littérature (1919). Together with Breton, a group of young artists invented surrealist techniques intended to liberate the unconscious: automatic writing and drawing, hypnotic sleep, hypnagogic visions, dream narratives, group creation, oral and written games, collage, rubbings, decals, experimental photography and theater. The publication of the first Surrealist Manifesto (Breton, 1924) ushered in Surrealism's formative period. The group had a journal of its own, La Révolution surréaliste. "We must be thankful for Freud's discoveries," wrote Breton, "the imagination may be on the point of winning back its rights."
In 1927 André Breton, Louis Aragon, PaulÉluard, and Benjamin Peret joined the Communist Party. Breton did not, however, abandon Freud: "The Surrealism that, as we have seen, has adopted Marxist beliefs does not intend to treat lightly the Freudian critique of ideas" (Breton, 1930). Breton soon quit the Communist Party, which reproached him for his Freudianism. Surrealism embraced cinema (Luis Buñuel), the construction of objects ("Situation surréaliste de l'objet," Breton, 1935), and produced important works of art in every field.
But in 1930, in his Second Manifesto of Surrealism, Breton acknowledged the existence of a profound crisis. The third period of Surrealism was about to begin. A new review was introduced, Le Surréalisme au service de la Révolution. In 1930 the review published two articles by the French-American psychoanalyst Jean FroisWittmann, in 1933 the Breton-Freud correspondence of 1932, a favorable critique of Jacques Lacan's doctoral dissertation by René Crevel, and, also by Crevel, an attack on an article in the Revue française de psychanalyse. The review also published the first texts by Salvador Dali, where he developed the idea of "critical-paranoia," the use of the interpretative processes of paranoia for creative ends, and the exploration of the unconscious.
In 1933 Minotaure appeared. Although it was not the official voice of the group, it was strongly influenced by it. The first issue included articles on the "contributions of psychoanalysis." Lacan and Dalí explained their conceptions of paranoia as an active psychic phenomenon, which Dalí compared with the passivity he associated with dreams and automatic writing. Several large-scale international exhibitions confirmed the growth of surrealism around the world, a phenomenon that accelerated during the Second World War following the exile of Breton, André Masson, and Max Ernst in the United States, and Benjamin Péret in Mexico, and continued after the war.
Breton, the principal theorist of the group, maintained a close association with Freudian thought throughout his career. He was most interested in the logic of the unconscious, in conflicts between the ego, the id, and the superego, relating them to the process of artistic creation, to Freudian ideas of sexuality, fantasy, desire, repression, the death instinct, whose opposition to Eros he assumed to be dialectical (Breton, 1930), and especially to ideas about representation and perception (Breton, 1933). Beginning with his concept of "pure mental representation," situated "beyond true perception," he examined, in the context of the Essais de psychanalyse (1927), how the transition from the unconscious to the perception-consciousness system takes place in the creative individual. For Breton, as a reader of Freud, it was at the preconscious level that language and the traces of acoustic and visual perceptions were united and charged with affect. But Breton went further: he saw in these preconscious elements the raw material of creation, obtained by the removal of repression with the help of automatic writing and drawing. In creating a work of art, the artist would make the individual universal (Breton, 1935).
In a letter to Stefan Zweig, Freud, who had met Salvador Dalí in London, also associated the fundamental elements of the work of the artist with the preconscious, but he added a principle of economy: "From the critical point of view it could still be maintained that the notion of art defies expansion as long as the quantitative proportion of unconscious material and preconscious treatment does not remain within definite limits" (July 20, 1938). The specific task of the creative individual, the result of his "initiative" (Breton) is to manipulate the relation between unconscious and preconscious elements, and objectify them in a work of art. Repression would have to be removed using "surrealist techniques" (Breton). Freud's meeting with Dalí seems to be the only time when Freud made an effort to understand the surrealist use of psychoanalysis and compare it with his own beliefs.
There were other points of contact between surrealism and psychoanalysis: Adrien Borel discussed his surrealist experiences (1925); Salvador Dalí and René Crevel interviewed Jacques Lacan; Crevel, Antonin Artaud, and Robert Desnos were analyzed by René Allendy, which they later wrote about. André Embiricos, a surrealist poet and theoretician as well as a psychoanalyst, founded, together with Marie Bonaparte, the Greek Psychoanalytic Society.
Lacanian thought developed throughout the nineteen-sixties, and, although it has a number of affinities with surrealism, it has always remained distinct. In 1971 the surrealist painter and philosopher René Passeron, with his research team at the C.N.R.S., foundedÉtudes poïétiques, which analyzed the creative process and made use of Freudian theory. A number of psychoanalysts (André Berge, Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, Guy Rosolato) were interested in the surrealists. As Breton found in 1934, the scope of surrealism, through the upheaval of sensibility it entails, "is socially incalculable." As a movement it has frequently helped the spread of psychoanalysis.
See Also
References
- Biro, Adam, Passeron, René. (1982). Dictionnaire général du surréalisme et de ses environs. Freiberg, Switzerland: Office du Livre.
- Breton, André. (1988). Œuvres complètes. Édition établie par Marguerite Bonnet. Paris: Gallimard, La Pléiade.
- Freud, Sigmund. (1927). Essais de psychanalys (Samuel Jankelevitch, Trans.). Paris: Payot.
- ——. (1960a [1873-1939]). Letters of Sigmund Freud, 1873-1939 (Ernst L. Freud, Ed.]]
- [[Tania and James Stern, Trans.). London, Hogarth Press, 1970.
