Surrealism is a
cultural movement
A cultural movement is a change in the way a number of different disciplines approach their work. This embodies all art forms, the sciences, and philosophies. Historically, different nations or regions of the world have gone through their own ind ...
that developed in Europe in the aftermath of
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the
unconscious mind
The unconscious mind (or the unconscious) consists of the processes in the mind which occur automatically and are not available to introspection and include thought processes, memories, interests, and motivations.
Even though these processes exis ...
to express itself. Its aim was, according to leader
André Breton
André Robert Breton (; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') o ...
, to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality", or ''surreality.''
It produced works of painting, writing, theatre, filmmaking, photography, and other media.
Works of Surrealism feature the
element of surprise
Surprise () is a brief mental and physiological state, a startle response experienced by animals and humans as the result of an unexpected event. Surprise can have any valence; that is, it can be neutral/moderate, pleasant, unpleasant, positive, ...
, unexpected
juxtaposition
Juxtaposition is an act or instance of placing two elements close together or side by side. This is often done in order to compare/contrast the two, to show similarities or differences, etc.
Speech
Juxtaposition in literary terms is the showing ...
s and ''
non sequitur''. However, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost (for instance, of the "pure psychic automatism" Breton speaks of in the first Surrealist Manifesto), with the works themselves being secondary, i.e. artifacts of surrealist experimentation. Leader Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a revolutionary movement. At the time, the movement was associated with political causes such as
communism
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
and
anarchism
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessa ...
. It was influenced by the
Dada
Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 192 ...
movement of the 1910s.
The term "Surrealism" originated with
Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire) of the Wąż coat of arms. (; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic of Polish descent.
Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of the ...
in 1917. However, the Surrealist movement was not officially established until after October 1924, when the
Surrealist Manifesto
Four Surrealist Manifestos are known to exist. The first two manifesto
A manifesto is a published declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party or government. A manifesto usually ...
published by French poet and critic
André Breton
André Robert Breton (; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') o ...
succeeded in claiming the term for his group over a rival faction led by
Yvan Goll
Yvan Goll (also: Iwan Goll, Ivan Goll; born Isaac Lang; 29 March 1891 – 27 February 1950) was a French-German poet who was bilingual and wrote in both French and German. He had close ties to both German expressionism and to French surrealism ...
, who had published his own surrealist manifesto two weeks prior. The most important center of the movement was
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
, France. From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe, impacting the visual arts, literature, film, and
music
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...
of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy, and social theory.
Founding of the movement
The word 'surrealism' was first coined in March 1917 by
Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire) of the Wąż coat of arms. (; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic of Polish descent.
Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of the ...
. He wrote in a letter to
Paul Dermée
Paul Dermée (1886–1951) was a Belgian writer, poet, literary critique. Born Camille Janssen in Liège, Belgium in 1886, he died in Paris in 1951.
He knew the painters Picasso, Juan Gris, Sonia and Robert Delaunay and the poets Valéry Larbaud ...
: "All things considered, I think in fact it is better to adopt surrealism than supernaturalism, which I first used"
'Tout bien examiné, je crois en effet qu'il vaut mieux adopter surréalisme que surnaturalisme que j'avais d'abord employé''
Apollinaire used the term in his program notes for
Sergei Diaghilev
Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev ( ; rus, Серге́й Па́влович Дя́гилев, , sʲɪˈrɡʲej ˈpavləvʲɪdʑ ˈdʲæɡʲɪlʲɪf; 19 August 1929), usually referred to outside Russia as Serge Diaghilev, was a Russian art critic, pat ...
's
Ballets Russes
The Ballets Russes () was an itinerant ballet company begun in Paris that performed between 1909 and 1929 throughout Europe and on tours to North and South America. The company never performed in Russia, where the Revolution disrupted society. A ...
, ''
Parade
A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, float (parade), floats, or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually ce ...
'', which premiered 18 May 1917. ''Parade'' had a one-act scenario by
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the su ...
and was performed with music by
Erik Satie
Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (, ; ; 17 May 18661 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, but was an und ...
. Cocteau described the ballet as "realistic". Apollinaire went further, describing ''Parade'' as "surrealistic":
This new alliance—I say new, because until now scenery and costumes were linked only by factitious bonds—has given rise, in ''Parade'', to a kind of surrealism, which I consider to be the point of departure for a whole series of manifestations of the New Spirit that is making itself felt today and that will certainly appeal to our best minds. We may expect it to bring about profound changes in our arts and manners through universal joyfulness, for it is only natural, after all, that they keep pace with scientific and industrial progress. (Apollinaire, 1917)
The term was taken up again by Apollinaire, both as subtitle and in the preface to his play ''
Les Mamelles de Tirésias: Drame surréaliste'', which was written in 1903 and first performed in 1917.
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
scattered the writers and artists who had been based in Paris, and in the interim many became involved with Dada, believing that excessive rational thought and
bourgeois
The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. They ...
values had brought the conflict of the war upon the world. The Dadaists protested with
anti-art
Anti-art is a loosely used term applied to an array of concepts and attitudes that reject prior definitions of art and question art in general. Somewhat paradoxically, anti-art tends to conduct this questioning and rejection from the vantage poi ...
gatherings, performances, writings and art works. After the war, when they returned to Paris, the Dada activities continued.
During the war,
André Breton
André Robert Breton (; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') o ...
, who had trained in medicine and psychiatry, served in a
neurological
Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal ...
hospital where he used
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
's psychoanalytic methods with soldiers suffering from
shell-shock
Shell shock is a term coined in World War I by the British psychologist Charles Samuel Myers to describe the type of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) many soldiers were afflicted with during the war (before PTSD was termed). It is a react ...
. Meeting the young writer
Jacques Vaché Jacques Vaché
Jacques Vaché (7 September 1895 – 6 January 1919) was a friend of André Breton, the founder of surrealism. Vaché was one of the chief inspirations behind the Surrealist movement. As Breton said:
:"''En littérature, je me suis ...
, Breton felt that Vaché was the spiritual son of writer and
pataphysics
Pataphysics (french: 'pataphysique) is a " philosophy" of science invented by French writer Alfred Jarry (1873–1907) intended to be a parody of science. Difficult to be simply defined or pinned down, it has been described as the "science of im ...
founder
Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry (; 8 September 1873 – 1 November 1907) was a French symbolist writer who is best known for his play ''Ubu Roi'' (1896). He also coined the term and philosophical concept of 'pataphysics.
Jarry was born in Laval, Mayenne, France, ...
. He admired the young writer's anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition. Later Breton wrote, "In literature, I was successively taken with
Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (, ; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes and for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he start ...
, with Jarry, with Apollinaire, with
Nouveau
A ''nouveau'' ( ), or ''vin (de) primeur'', is a wine which may be sold in the same year in which it was harvested.
The most widely exported ''nouveau'' wine is French wine Beaujolais ''nouveau'' which is released on the third Thursday of N ...
, with
Lautréamont, but it is Jacques Vaché to whom I owe the most."
Back in Paris, Breton joined in Dada activities and started the literary journal ''
Littérature ''Littérature'' was a literary and surrealistic magazine edited by André Breton, Philippe Soupault, and Louis Aragon. Its first issue was published on March 19, 1919. Dwindling circulation would prompt Breton to terminate publication after the Aug ...
'' along with
Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon (, , 3 October 1897 – 24 December 1982) was a French poet who was one of the leading voices of the surrealist movement in France. He co-founded with André Breton and Philippe Soupault the surrealist review ''Littérature''. He wa ...
and
Philippe Soupault
Philippe Soupault (2 August 1897 – 12 March 1990) was a French writer and poet, novelist, critic, and political activist. He was active in Dadaism and later was instrumental in founding the Surrealist movement with André Breton. Soupault ini ...
. They began experimenting with
automatic writing
Automatic writing, also called psychography, is a claimed psychic ability allowing a person to produce written words without consciously writing. Practitioners engage in automatic writing by holding a writing instrument and allowing alleged spiri ...
—spontaneously writing without censoring their thoughts—and published the writings, as well as accounts of dreams, in the magazine. Breton and Soupault continued writing evolving their techniques of automatism and published ''
The Magnetic Fields
The Magnetic Fields (named after the André Breton/Philippe Soupault novel ''Les Champs Magnétiques'') are an American Band (rock and pop), band founded and led by Stephin Merritt. Merritt is the group's primary songwriter, producer, and vocali ...
'' (1920).
By October 1924 two rival Surrealist groups had formed to publish a
Surrealist Manifesto
Four Surrealist Manifestos are known to exist. The first two manifesto
A manifesto is a published declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party or government. A manifesto usually ...
. Each claimed to be successors of a revolution launched by Appolinaire. One group, led by
Yvan Goll
Yvan Goll (also: Iwan Goll, Ivan Goll; born Isaac Lang; 29 March 1891 – 27 February 1950) was a French-German poet who was bilingual and wrote in both French and German. He had close ties to both German expressionism and to French surrealism ...
consisted of
Pierre Albert-Birot
Pierre Albert-Birot (22 April 1876 – 25 July 1967) was a French avant-garde poet, dramatist, and theater manager. He was a steadfast avant-garde during World War I, through the magazine ''Sic'' he created and published from 1916 to 1919. He wa ...
,
Paul Dermée
Paul Dermée (1886–1951) was a Belgian writer, poet, literary critique. Born Camille Janssen in Liège, Belgium in 1886, he died in Paris in 1951.
He knew the painters Picasso, Juan Gris, Sonia and Robert Delaunay and the poets Valéry Larbaud ...
,
Céline Arnauld
Céline Arnauld (born Carolina Goldstein on 20 September 1885, Călăraşi (Romania), died on 23 December 1952 by suicide in Paris) was a writer associated with Dadaism.
Arnauld’s poetry appears earliest in her first published volume of 1914, ...
,
Francis Picabia
Francis Picabia (: born Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia; 22January 1879 – 30November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist. After experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism ...
,
Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara (; ; born Samuel or Samy Rosenstock, also known as S. Samyro; – 25 December 1963) was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, comp ...
,
Giuseppe Ungaretti
Giuseppe Ungaretti (; 8 February 1888 – 2 June 1970) was an Italian modernist poet, journalist, essayist, critic, academic, and recipient of the inaugural 1970 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. A leading representative of the experim ...
,
Pierre Reverdy
Pierre Reverdy (; 13 September 1889 – 17 June 1960) was a French poet whose works were inspired by and subsequently proceeded to influence the provocative art movements of the day, Surrealism, Dadaism and Cubism. The loneliness and spiritual a ...
,
Marcel Arland
Marcel Arland (5 July 1899, Terre-Natale, Varennes-sur-Amance, Haute-Marne – 12 January 1986, Haute-Marne) was a French novelist, literary critic, and journalist.
Biography
With René Crevel and Roger Vitrac he founded the dadaist newspa ...
,
Joseph Delteil
Joseph Delteil (20 April 1894 – 16 April 1978) was a 20th-century French writer and poet.
Biography
Joseph Delteil was born in the farm of La Pradeille, from a woodcutter-charcoal father and a "buissonnière" mother. Joseph Delteil spent ...
,
Jean Painlevé
Jean Painlevé (20 November 1902 – 2 July 1989) was a photographer and filmmaker who specialized in underwater fauna. He was the son of mathematician and twice prime minister of France Paul Painlevé.
Upbringing
A few days after Painlevé ...
and
Robert Delaunay
Robert Delaunay (12 April 1885 – 25 October 1941) was a French artist who, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others, co-founded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. His later works were more abstra ...
, among others. The group led by André Breton claimed that
automatism was a better tactic for societal change than those of Dada, as led by Tzara, who was now among their rivals. Breton's group grew to include writers and artists from various
media
Media may refer to:
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data
** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising
** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass el ...
such as
Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard (), born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel (; 14 December 1895 – 18 November 1952), was a French poet and one of the founders of the Surrealist movement.
In 1916, he chose the name Paul Éluard, a matronymic borrowed from his maternal ...
,
Benjamin Péret
Benjamin Péret (4 July 1899 – 18 September 1959) was a French poet, Parisian Dadaist and a founder and central member of the French Surrealist movement with his avid use of Surrealist automatism.
Biography
Benjamin Péret was born in Rezé, ...
,
René Crevel
René Crevel (; 10 August 1900 – 18 June 1935) was a French writer involved with the surrealist movement.
Life
Crevel was born in Paris to a family of Parisian bourgeoisie. He had a traumatic religious upbringing. At the age of fourteen, hi ...
,
Robert Desnos
Robert Desnos (; 4 July 1900 – 8 June 1945) was a French poet who played a key role in the Surrealist movement of his day.
Biography
Robert Desnos was born in Paris on 4 July 1900, the son of a licensed dealer in game and poultry at the '' H ...
,
Jacques Baron
Jacques Baron (1905–1986) was a French surrealist poet whose first collection of poems was published in ''Aventure'' in 1921. Although he was initially involved with the Dada movement, he became a founding member of the Surrealist movement follow ...
,
Max Morise Max Morise (5 April 1900 – 29 October 1973) was a French artist, writer and actor, associated with the Surrealist movement in Paris from 1924 to 1929. He was friends with Robert Desnos and Roger Vitrac before they joined the Surrealist movement. ...
,
[ Dalí, Salvador, ]
Diary of a Genius
' quoted in ''The Columbia World of Quotations'' (1996) Pierre Naville
Pierre Naville (1 February 1903 – 24 April 1993) was a French Surrealist writer and sociologist.Stubb, JeremyObituary: Pierre Naville ''The Independent'', 3 June 1993. He was a prominent member of the "Investigating Sex" group of Surrealist ...
,
Roger Vitrac Roger Vitrac (; 17 November 1899 – 22 January 1952) was a French surrealist playwright and poet.
Early life
Roger Vitrac was born in Pinsac on 17 November 1899, before his family moved to Paris in 1910.:527 As a young man, he was influenced by ...
,
Gala Éluard,
Max Ernst
Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German (naturalised American in 1948 and French in 1958) painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealism ...
,
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarr ...
,
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the greatest and m ...
,
Man Ray
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, although his t ...
,
Hans Arp
Hans Peter Wilhelm Arp (16 September 1886 – 7 June 1966), better known as Jean Arp in English, was a German-French sculptor, painter, and poet. He was known as a Dadaist and an abstract artist.
Early life
Arp was born in Straßburg (now Stras ...
,
Georges Malkine
Georges Alexandre Malkine (10 October 1898 – 22 March 1970) was the only visual artist named in André Breton’s 1924 Surrealist Manifesto among those who, at the time of its publication, had “performed acts of absolute surrealism." The ...
,
Michel Leiris
Julien Michel Leiris (; 20 April 1901 in Paris – 30 September 1990 in Saint-Hilaire, Essonne) was a French surrealist writer and ethnographer. Part of the Surrealist group in Paris, Leiris became a key member of the College of Sociology with G ...
,
Georges Limbour
Georges Limbour (Courbevoie, 11 August 1900 — Chiclana de la Frontera, near Cadiz, 17 May 1970)Colin-Pichon, M., Georges Limbour: le songe autobiographique, Lachenal & Ritter, Paris, 1994, pp. 209–219 was a French writer, poet and art critic, ...
,
Antonin Artaud
Antoine Marie Joseph Paul Artaud, better known as Antonin Artaud (; 4 September 1896 – 4 March 1948), was a French writer, poet, dramatist, visual artist, essayist, actor and theatre director. He is widely recognized as a major figure of the E ...
,
Raymond Queneau
Raymond Queneau (; 21 February 1903 – 25 October 1976) was a French novelist, poet, critic, editor and co-founder and president of Oulipo ('' Ouvroir de littérature potentielle''), notable for his wit and cynical humour.
Biography
Queneau wa ...
,
André Masson
André-Aimé-René Masson (4 January 1896 – 28 October 1987) was a French artist.
Biography
Masson was born in Balagny-sur-Thérain, Oise, but when he was eight his father's work took the family first briefly to Lille and then to Brussel ...
,
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà ( , , ; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist born in Barcelona. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona i ...
,
Marcel Duchamp
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...
,
Jacques Prévert
Jacques Prévert (; 4 February 1900 – 11 April 1977) was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. His best-regarded films formed part of the poetic realist moveme ...
, and
Yves Tanguy
Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy (January 5, 1900 – January 15, 1955), known as just Yves Tanguy (, ), was a French surrealist painter.
Biography
Tanguy, the son of a retired navy captain, was born January 5, 1900, at the Ministry of Naval Affa ...
.
[Dawn Ades, with Matthew Gale: "Surrealism", ''The Oxford Companion to Western Art''. Ed. Hugh Brigstocke. Oxford University Press, 2001. Grove Art Online. ]Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, 2007. Accessed March 15, 2007
GroveArt.com
/ref>
As they developed their philosophy, they believed that Surrealism would advocate 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
Dialectic ( grc-gre, διαλεκτική, ''dialektikḗ''; related to dialogue; german: Dialektik), also known as the dialectical method, is a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing ...
. They also looked to the Marxist dialectic
Dialectic ( grc-gre, διαλεκτική, ''dialektikḗ''; related to dialogue; german: Dialektik), also known as the dialectical method, is a discourse between two or more people holding different Opinion, points of view about a subject but wi ...
and the work of such theorists as Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist.
An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish mys ...
and Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse (; ; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German-American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the Humboldt University ...
.
Freud's work with free association, dream analysis, and the unconscious was of utmost importance to the Surrealists in developing methods to liberate imagination. They embraced idiosyncrasy
An idiosyncrasy is an unusual feature of a person (though there are also other uses, see below). It can also mean an odd habit. The term is often used to express eccentricity or peculiarity. A synonym may be "quirk".
Etymology
The term "idiosyncra ...
, while rejecting the idea of an underlying madness. As Dalí later proclaimed, "There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad."
Beside the use of dream analysis, they emphasized that "one could combine inside the same frame, elements not normally found together to produce illogical and startling effects." Breton included the idea of the startling juxtapositions in his 1924 manifesto, taking it in turn from a 1918 essay by poet Pierre Reverdy
Pierre Reverdy (; 13 September 1889 – 17 June 1960) was a French poet whose works were inspired by and subsequently proceeded to influence the provocative art movements of the day, Surrealism, Dadaism and Cubism. The loneliness and spiritual a ...
, which said: "a juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be−the greater its emotional power and poetic reality."[Breton (1924) ]
Manifesto of Surrealism
.'' Pierre Reverdy
Pierre Reverdy (; 13 September 1889 – 17 June 1960) was a French poet whose works were inspired by and subsequently proceeded to influence the provocative art movements of the day, Surrealism, Dadaism and Cubism. The loneliness and spiritual a ...
's comment was published in his journal ''Nord-Sud'', March 1918
The group aimed to revolutionize human experience, in its personal, cultural, social, and political aspects. They wanted to free people from false rationality, and restrictive customs and structures. Breton proclaimed that the true aim of Surrealism was "long live the social revolution, and it alone!" To this goal, at various times Surrealists aligned with communism
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
and anarchism
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessa ...
.
In 1924 two Surrealist factions declared their philosophy in two separate Surrealist Manifestos. That same year the Bureau of Surrealist Research
The Bureau of Surrealist Research, also known as the Centrale Surréaliste or Bureau of Surrealist Enquiries, was a Paris-based office in which a loosely affiliated group of Surrealist writers and artists gathered to meet, hold discussions, and con ...
was established, and began publishing the journal ''La Révolution surréaliste
''La Révolution surréaliste'' (English: ''The Surrealist Revolution'') was a publication by the Surrealists in Paris. Twelve issues were published between 1924 and 1929.
Shortly after releasing the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'', André Breton ...
''.
Surrealist Manifestos
Leading up to 1924, two rival surrealist groups had formed. Each group claimed to be successors of a revolution launched by Apollinaire. One group, led by Yvan Goll
Yvan Goll (also: Iwan Goll, Ivan Goll; born Isaac Lang; 29 March 1891 – 27 February 1950) was a French-German poet who was bilingual and wrote in both French and German. He had close ties to both German expressionism and to French surrealism ...
, consisted of Pierre Albert-Birot
Pierre Albert-Birot (22 April 1876 – 25 July 1967) was a French avant-garde poet, dramatist, and theater manager. He was a steadfast avant-garde during World War I, through the magazine ''Sic'' he created and published from 1916 to 1919. He wa ...
, Paul Dermée
Paul Dermée (1886–1951) was a Belgian writer, poet, literary critique. Born Camille Janssen in Liège, Belgium in 1886, he died in Paris in 1951.
He knew the painters Picasso, Juan Gris, Sonia and Robert Delaunay and the poets Valéry Larbaud ...
, Céline Arnauld
Céline Arnauld (born Carolina Goldstein on 20 September 1885, Călăraşi (Romania), died on 23 December 1952 by suicide in Paris) was a writer associated with Dadaism.
Arnauld’s poetry appears earliest in her first published volume of 1914, ...
, Francis Picabia
Francis Picabia (: born Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia; 22January 1879 – 30November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist. After experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism ...
, Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara (; ; born Samuel or Samy Rosenstock, also known as S. Samyro; – 25 December 1963) was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, comp ...
, Giuseppe Ungaretti
Giuseppe Ungaretti (; 8 February 1888 – 2 June 1970) was an Italian modernist poet, journalist, essayist, critic, academic, and recipient of the inaugural 1970 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. A leading representative of the experim ...
, Pierre Reverdy
Pierre Reverdy (; 13 September 1889 – 17 June 1960) was a French poet whose works were inspired by and subsequently proceeded to influence the provocative art movements of the day, Surrealism, Dadaism and Cubism. The loneliness and spiritual a ...
, Marcel Arland
Marcel Arland (5 July 1899, Terre-Natale, Varennes-sur-Amance, Haute-Marne – 12 January 1986, Haute-Marne) was a French novelist, literary critic, and journalist.
Biography
With René Crevel and Roger Vitrac he founded the dadaist newspa ...
, Joseph Delteil
Joseph Delteil (20 April 1894 – 16 April 1978) was a 20th-century French writer and poet.
Biography
Joseph Delteil was born in the farm of La Pradeille, from a woodcutter-charcoal father and a "buissonnière" mother. Joseph Delteil spent ...
, Jean Painlevé
Jean Painlevé (20 November 1902 – 2 July 1989) was a photographer and filmmaker who specialized in underwater fauna. He was the son of mathematician and twice prime minister of France Paul Painlevé.
Upbringing
A few days after Painlevé ...
and Robert Delaunay
Robert Delaunay (12 April 1885 – 25 October 1941) was a French artist who, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others, co-founded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. His later works were more abstra ...
, among others.
The other group, led by Breton, included Aragon, Desnos, Éluard, Baron, Crevel, Malkine, Jacques-André Boiffard
Jacques-André Boiffard (29 July 1902 – 22 July 1961) was a French photographer, born in Épernon in Eure-et-Loir. He was a medical student in Paris until 1924 when he met André Breton through Pierre Naville, a Surrealist writer, and childh ...
and Jean Carrive, among others.
Yvan Goll published the ''Manifeste du surréalisme'', 1 October 1924, in his first and only issue of ''Surréalisme'' two weeks prior to the release of Breton's ''Manifeste du surréalisme'', published by Éditions du Sagittaire, 15 October 1924.
Goll and Breton clashed openly, at one point literally fighting, at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées, over the rights to the term Surrealism. In the end, Breton won the battle through tactical and numerical superiority. Though the quarrel over the anteriority of Surrealism concluded with the victory of Breton, the history of surrealism from that moment would remain marked by fractures, resignations, and resounding excommunications, with each surrealist having their own view of the issue and goals, and accepting more or less the definitions laid out by André Breton.
Breton's 1924 ''Surrealist Manifesto'' defines the purposes of Surrealism. He included citations of the influences on Surrealism, examples of Surrealist works, and discussion of Surrealist automatism. He provided the following definitions:
Expansion
The movement in the mid-1920s was characterized by meetings in cafes where the Surrealists played collaborative drawing games, discussed the theories of Surrealism, and developed a variety of techniques
Technique or techniques may refer to:
Music
* The Techniques, a Jamaican rocksteady vocal group of the 1960s
*Technique (band), a British female synth pop band in the 1990s
* ''Technique'' (album), by New Order, 1989
* ''Techniques'' (album), by M ...
such as automatic drawing. Breton initially doubted that visual arts could even be useful in the Surrealist movement since they appeared to be less malleable and open to chance and automatism. This caution was overcome by the discovery of such techniques as frottage, grattage
Grattage (literally "scratching", "scraping") is a technique in surrealist painting which consists of "scratching" fresh paint with a sharp blade.
In this technique, one typically attempts to scratch and remove the chromatic pigment spread on ...
and decalcomania
Decalcomania (from french: décalcomanie) is a decorative technique by which engravings and prints may be transferred to pottery or other materials.
A shortened version of the term is used for a mass-produced commodity art transfer or product l ...
.
Soon more visual artists became involved, including Giorgio de Chirico
Giuseppe Maria Alberto Giorgio de Chirico ( , ; 10 July 1888 – 20 November 1978) was an Italian
artist and writer born in Greece. In the years before World War I, he founded the '' scuola metafisica'' art movement, which profoundly influ ...
, Max Ernst
Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German (naturalised American in 1948 and French in 1958) painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealism ...
, Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà ( , , ; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist born in Barcelona. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona i ...
, Francis Picabia
Francis Picabia (: born Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia; 22January 1879 – 30November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist. After experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism ...
, Yves Tanguy
Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy (January 5, 1900 – January 15, 1955), known as just Yves Tanguy (, ), was a French surrealist painter.
Biography
Tanguy, the son of a retired navy captain, was born January 5, 1900, at the Ministry of Naval Affa ...
, Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarr ...
, Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the greatest and m ...
, Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti (, , ; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo to see his family and ...
, Valentine Hugo
Valentine Hugo (1887–1968) was a French artist and writer. She was born Valentine Marie Augustine Gross, only daughter to Auguste Gross and Zélie Démelin, in Boulogne-sur-Mer. She is best known for her work with the Russian ballet and with th ...
, Méret Oppenheim
Meret (or Méret) Elisabeth Oppenheim (6 October 1913 – 15 November 1985) was a German-born Swiss Surrealist artist and photographer.
Early life
Meret Oppenheim was born on 6 October 1913 in Berlin. She was named after Meretlein, a wild c ...
, Toyen
Toyen (born Marie Čermínová; 21 September 1902 – 9 November 1980), was a Czech painter, drafter, and illustrator and a member of the surrealist movement.
In 1923, the artist adopted the professional pseudonym Toyen. The name Toyen has b ...
, Kansuke Yamamoto and later after the second war: Enrico Donati
Enrico Donati (February 19, 1909 – April 25, 2008) was an Italian-American Surrealist painter and sculptor.
Life and work
Enrico Donati studied economics at the Università degli Studi, Pavia, and in 1934 moved to the USA, where he attended th ...
. Though Breton admired Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
and Marcel Duchamp
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...
and courted them to join the movement, they remained peripheral.[ Tomkins, Calvin, ''Duchamp: A Biography''. Henry Holt and Company, Inc, 1996. ] More writers also joined, including former Dadaist Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara (; ; born Samuel or Samy Rosenstock, also known as S. Samyro; – 25 December 1963) was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, comp ...
, René Char
René Émile Char (; 14 June 1907 – 19 February 1988) was a French poet and member of the French Resistance.
Biography
Char was born in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse department of France, the youngest of the four children of Emile ...
, and Georges Sadoul
Georges Sadoul (4 February 1904 – 13 October 1967) was a French film critic, journalist and cinema writer. He is known for writing encyclopedias of film and filmmakers, many of which have been translated into English.
Biography
Sadoul was ...
.
In 1925 an autonomous Surrealist group formed in Brussels. The group included the musician, poet, and artist E. L. T. Mesens
Édouard Léon Théodore Mesens (27 November 1903 – 13 May 1971) was a Belgian artist and writer associated with the Belgian Surrealist movement.
Biography
Mesens was born in Brussels, Belgium. He started his artistic career as a musician inf ...
, painter and writer René Magritte
René François Ghislain Magritte (; 21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist known for his depictions of familiar objects in unfamiliar, unexpected contexts, which often provoked questions about the nature and bounda ...
, Paul Nougé
Paul Nougé (12 February 1895 – 6 November 1967) was a Belgian poet, founder and theoretician of surrealism in Belgium, sometimes known as the "Belgian Breton".
Biography
Born of a French father who originated from the Charent region in Fra ...
, Marcel Lecomte, and André Souris
André Souris (; 10 July 1899 – 12 February 1970) was a Belgian composer, conductor, musicologist, and writer associated with the surrealist movement.
Biography
Souris was born in Marchienne-au-Pont, Belgium, and studied at the Conservatory ...
. In 1927 they were joined by the writer Louis Scutenaire
Louis Scutenaire (29 June 1905 – 15 August 1987) was a poet, anarchist, surrealist and civil servant. Born Jean Émile Louis Scutenaire in Ollignies, Belgium, he died in Brussels.
Life
Louis Scutenaire is chiefly remembered as a central figu ...
. They corresponded regularly with the Paris group, and in 1927 both Goemans and Magritte moved to Paris and frequented Breton's circle. The artists, with their roots in Dada
Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 192 ...
and Cubism
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
, the abstraction of Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (; rus, Василий Васильевич Кандинский, Vasiliy Vasilyevich Kandinskiy, vɐˈsʲilʲɪj vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ kɐnʲˈdʲinskʲɪj; – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter a ...
, Expressionism
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
, and Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction ag ...
, also reached to older "bloodlines" or proto-surrealists such as Hieronymus Bosch
Hieronymus Bosch (, ; born Jheronimus van Aken ; – 9 August 1516) was a Dutch/Netherlandish painter from Brabant. He is one of the most notable representatives of the Early Netherlandish painting school. His work, generally oil on oa ...
, and the so-called primitive and naive arts.
André Masson
André-Aimé-René Masson (4 January 1896 – 28 October 1987) was a French artist.
Biography
Masson was born in Balagny-sur-Thérain, Oise, but when he was eight his father's work took the family first briefly to Lille and then to Brussel ...
's automatic drawings of 1923 are often used as the point of the acceptance of visual arts and the break from Dada, since they reflect the influence of the idea of the unconscious mind
The unconscious mind (or the unconscious) consists of the processes in the mind which occur automatically and are not available to introspection and include thought processes, memories, interests, and motivations.
Even though these processes exis ...
. Another example is Giacometti's 1925 ''Torso'', which marked his movement to simplified forms and inspiration from preclassical sculpture.
In the second the influence of Miró and the drawing style of Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
is visible with the use of fluid curving and intersecting lines and colour, whereas the first takes a directness that would later be influential in movements such as Pop art.
Giorgio de Chirico, and his previous development of metaphysical art
Metaphysical painting ( it, pittura metafisica) or metaphysical art was a style of painting developed by the Italian artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. The movement began in 1910 with de Chirico, whose dreamlike works with sharp contra ...
, was one of the important joining figures between the philosophical and visual aspects of Surrealism. Between 1911 and 1917, he adopted an unornamented depictional style whose surface would be adopted by others later. ''The Red Tower (La tour rouge)'' from 1913 shows the stark colour contrasts and illustrative style later adopted by Surrealist painters. His 1914 ''The Nostalgia of the Poet (La Nostalgie du poète)'' has the figure turned away from the viewer, and the juxtaposition of a bust with glasses and a fish as a relief defies conventional explanation. He was also a writer whose novel '' Hebdomeros'' presents a series of dreamscapes with an unusual use of punctuation, syntax, and grammar designed to create an atmosphere and frame its images. His images, including set designs for the Ballets Russes
The Ballets Russes () was an itinerant ballet company begun in Paris that performed between 1909 and 1929 throughout Europe and on tours to North and South America. The company never performed in Russia, where the Revolution disrupted society. A ...
, would create a decorative form of Surrealism, and he would be an influence on the two artists who would be even more closely associated with Surrealism in the public mind: Dalí and Magritte. He would, however, leave the Surrealist group in 1928.
In 1924, Miró and Masson applied Surrealism to painting. The first Surrealist exhibition, ''La Peinture Surrealiste'', was held at Galerie Pierre in Paris in 1925. It displayed works by Masson, Man Ray
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, although his t ...
, Paul Klee
Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented wi ...
, Miró, and others. The show confirmed that Surrealism had a component in the visual arts (though it had been initially debated whether this was possible), and techniques from Dada, such as photomontage
Photomontage is the process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs into a new image. Sometimes the resulting composite image is photographed so that the final image ...
, were used. The following year, on March 26, 1926 Galerie Surréaliste opened 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.
Surrealist literature
The first Surrealist work, according to leader Brêton, was Les Chants de Maldoror
''Les Chants de Maldoror'' (''The Songs of Maldoror'') is a French poetic novel, or a long prose poem. It was written and published between 1868 and 1869 by the Comte de Lautréamont, the ''nom de plume'' of the Uruguayan-born French writer Isid ...
; and the first work written and published by his group of ''Surréalistes'' was '' Les Champs Magnétiques'' (May–June 1919). ''Littérature'' contained automatist works and accounts of dreams. The magazine and the portfolio both showed their disdain for literal meanings given to objects and focused rather on the undertones, the poetic undercurrents present. Not only did they give emphasis to the poetic undercurrents, but also to the connotations and the overtones which "exist in ambiguous relationships to the visual images"
Because Surrealist writers seldom, if ever, appear to organize their thoughts and the images they present, some people find much of their work difficult to parse. This notion however is a superficial comprehension, prompted no doubt by Breton's initial emphasis on automatic writing as the main route toward a higher reality. But—as in Breton's case—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
Pierre Reverdy (; 13 September 1889 – 17 June 1960) was a French poet whose works were inspired by and subsequently proceeded to influence the provocative art movements of the day, Surrealism, Dadaism and Cubism. The loneliness and spiritual a ...
'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. Artists such as Max Ernst and his surrealist collages demonstrate this shift to a more modern art form that also comments on society.
Surrealists revived interest in Isidore Ducasse, known by his pseudonym Comte de Lautréamont
Comte de Lautréamont () was the ''nom de plume'' of Isidore Lucien Ducasse (4 April 1846 – 24 November 1870), a French poet born in Uruguay. His only works, ''Les Chants de Maldoror'' and ''Poésies'', had a major influence on modern arts ...
, and for the line "beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella", and Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (, ; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes and for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he starte ...
, two late 19th-century writers believed to be the precursors of Surrealism.
Examples of Surrealist literature are Artaud's ''Le Pèse-Nerfs'' (1926), Aragon's ''Irene's Cunt
''Irene's Cunt'' (French: ''Le Con d'Irène'') is a short erotic novel written by the French poet and novelist Louis Aragon under the pseudonym Albert de Routisie, first published in 1928. Its title is rendered in English variously as ''Irene'' or ...
'' (1927), Péret's ''Death to the Pigs'' (1929), Crevel's ''Mr. Knife Miss Fork'' (1931), Sadegh Hedayat
Sadegh Hedayat ( fa, صادق هدایت ; 17 February 1903 – 9 April 1951) was an Iranian writer and translator. Best known for his novel '' The Blind Owl'', he was one of the earliest Iranian writers to adopt literary modernism in their care ...
's ''the Blind Owl
''The Blind Owl'' (1936; fa, بوف کور, ''Boof-e koor'', ) is Sadegh Hedayat's magnum opus and a major literary work of 20th century Iran. Written in Persian, it is narrated by an unnamed pen case painter, who addresses his murderous conf ...
'' (1937), and Breton's ''Sur la route de San Romano'' (1948).
''La Révolution surréaliste
''La Révolution surréaliste'' (English: ''The Surrealist Revolution'') was a publication by the Surrealists in Paris. Twelve issues were published between 1924 and 1929.
Shortly after releasing the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'', André Breton ...
'' continued publication into 1929 with most pages densely packed with columns of text, but which also included reproductions of art, among them works by de Chirico, Ernst, Masson, and Man Ray. Other works included books, poems, pamphlets, automatic texts and theoretical tracts.
Surrealist films
Early films by Surrealists include:
* ''Entr'acte
(or ', ;Since 1932–35 the French Academy recommends this spelling, with no apostrophe, so historical, ceremonial and traditional uses (such as the 1924 René Clair film title) are still spelled ''Entr'acte''. German: ' and ', Italian: ''inte ...
'' by René Clair
René Clair (11 November 1898 – 15 March 1981), born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker and writer. He first established his reputation in the 1920s as a director of silent films in which comedy was often mingled with fantasy. He wen ...
(1924)
* ''The Seashell and the Clergyman'' (''french: La Coquille et le clergyman'') by Germaine Dulac, scenario by Antonin Artaud (1928)
* ''L'Étoile de mer'' by Man Ray (1928)
* ''Un Chien Andalou'' by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí (1929)
* ''L'Âge d'Or'' by Buñuel and Dalí (1930)
* ''The Blood of a Poet'' (''french: Le sang d'un poète'') by Jean Cocteau (1930)
Surrealist photography
Famous Surrealist photographers are the American Man Ray
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, although his t ...
, the French/Hungarian Brassaï, French Claude Cahun and the Dutch Emiel van Moerkerken.
Surrealist theatre
The word ''surrealist'' was first used by Apollinaire to describe his 1917 play ''The Breasts of Tiresias, Les Mamelles de Tirésias'' ("The Breasts of Tiresias"), which was later Les mamelles de Tirésias, adapted into an opera by Francis Poulenc.
Roger Vitrac Roger Vitrac (; 17 November 1899 – 22 January 1952) was a French surrealist playwright and poet.
Early life
Roger Vitrac was born in Pinsac on 17 November 1899, before his family moved to Paris in 1910.:527 As a young man, he was influenced by ...
's ''The Mysteries of Love'' (1927) and ''Victor, or The Children Take Over'' (1928) are often considered the best examples of Surrealist theatre, despite his expulsion from the movement in 1926. The plays were staged at the Theatre Alfred Jarry, the theatre Vitrac co-founded with Antonin Artaud, another early Surrealist who was expelled from the movement.
Following his collaboration with Vitrac, Artaud would extend Surrealist thought through his theory of the Theatre of Cruelty. Artaud rejected the majority of Western theatre as a perversion of its original intent, which he felt should be a mystical, metaphysical experience. Instead, he envisioned a theatre that would be immediate and direct, linking the unconscious minds of performers and spectators in a sort of ritual event, Artaud created in which emotions, feelings, and the metaphysical were expressed not through language but physically, creating a mythological, archetypal, allegorical vision, closely related to the world of dreams.
The Spanish playwright and director Federico García Lorca, also experimented with surrealism, particularly in his plays ''The Public (play), The Public'' (1930), ''When Five Years Pass'' (1931), and ''Play Without a Title'' (1935). Other surrealist plays include Aragon's ''Backs to the Wall'' (1925). Gertrude Stein's opera ''Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights'' (1938) has also been described as "American Surrealism", though it is also related to a theatrical form of cubism.
Surrealist music
In the 1920s several composers were influenced by Surrealism, or by individuals in the Surrealist movement. Among them were Bohuslav Martinů, André Souris
André Souris (; 10 July 1899 – 12 February 1970) was a Belgian composer, conductor, musicologist, and writer associated with the surrealist movement.
Biography
Souris was born in Marchienne-au-Pont, Belgium, and studied at the Conservatory ...
, Erik Satie
Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (, ; ; 17 May 18661 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, but was an und ...
, Francis Poulenc, 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 relationship with Magritte, and worked on Paul Nougé
Paul Nougé (12 February 1895 – 6 November 1967) was a Belgian poet, founder and theoretician of surrealism in Belgium, sometimes known as the "Belgian Breton".
Biography
Born of a French father who originated from the Charent region in Fra ...
's publication ''Adieu Marie''. Music by composers from across the twentieth century have been associated with surrealist principles, including Pierre Boulez, György Ligeti, Mauricio Kagel, Olivier Messiaen, and Thomas Adès.
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), the operas ''La Petite Sirène'' (book by Philippe Soupault) and ''Le Maître'' (book by Eugène Ionesco). Tailleferre also wrote popular songs to texts by Claude Marci, the wife of Henri Jeanson, whose portrait had been painted by Magritte in the 1930s.
Even though Breton by 1946 responded rather negatively to the subject of music with his essay ''Silence is Golden'', later Surrealists, such as Paul Garon, have been interested in—and found parallels to—Surrealism in the improvisation of jazz and the blues. Jazz and blues musicians have occasionally reciprocated this interest. For example, the 1976 World Surrealist Exhibition included performances by David "Honeyboy" Edwards.
Surrealism and international politics
Surrealism as a political force developed unevenly around the world: in some places more emphasis was on artistic practices, in other places on political practices, and in other places still, Surrealist praxis looked to supersede both the arts and politics. During the 1930s, the Surrealist idea spread from Europe to North America, South America (founding of the ''Mandrágora'' group in Chile in 1938), Central America, the Caribbean, and throughout Asia, as both an artistic idea and as an ideology of political change.[Tessel M. Bauduin, Victoria Ferentinou, Daniel Zamani, ''Surrealism, Occultism and Politics: In Search of the Marvellous''](_blank)
Routledge, 2017, [Raymond Spiteri, Donald LaCoss, ''Surrealism, Politics and Culture''](_blank)
Volume 16 of ''Studies in European cultural transition'', Ashgate, 2003,
Politically, Surrealism was Trotskyism, Trotskyist, communist, or anarchist. The split from Dada has been characterised as a split between anarchists and communists, with the Surrealists as communist. Breton and his comrades supported Leon Trotsky and his International Left Opposition for a while, though there was an openness to anarchism that manifested more fully after World War II. Some Surrealists, such as Benjamin Péret
Benjamin Péret (4 July 1899 – 18 September 1959) was a French poet, Parisian Dadaist and a founder and central member of the French Surrealist movement with his avid use of Surrealist automatism.
Biography
Benjamin Péret was born in Rezé, ...
, Mary Low, and Juan Breá, aligned with forms of left communism. When the Dutch surrealist photographer w:nl:Emiel van Moerkerken, Emiel van Moerkerken came to Breton, he did not want to sign the manifesto because he was not a Trotskyist. For Breton being a communist was not enough. Breton denied Van Moerkerken's pictures for a publication afterwards. This caused a split in surrealism. Others fought for complete liberty from political ideologies, like Wolfgang Paalen, who, after Trotsky's assassination in Mexico, prepared a schism between art and politics through his counter-surrealist art-magazine ''DYN (magazine), DYN'' and so prepared the ground for the abstract expressionists. Dalí supported capitalism and the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco but cannot be said to represent a trend in Surrealism in this respect; in fact he was considered, by Breton and his associates, to have betrayed and left Surrealism. Benjamin Péret, Mary Low, Juan Breá, and Spanish-native Eugenio Granell, Eugenio Fernández Granell joined the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification, POUM during the Spanish Civil War.
Breton's followers, along with the French Communist Party, Communist Party, were working for the "liberation of man". However, Breton's group refused to prioritize the proletarian struggle over radical creation such that their struggles with the Party made the late 1920s a turbulent time for both. Many individuals closely associated with Breton, notably Aragon, left his group to work more closely with the Communists.
Surrealists have often sought to link their efforts with political ideals and activities. In the ''Declaration of January 27, 1925'', for example, members of the Paris-based Bureau of Surrealist Research
The Bureau of Surrealist Research, also known as the Centrale Surréaliste or Bureau of Surrealist Enquiries, was a Paris-based office in which a loosely affiliated group of Surrealist writers and artists gathered to meet, hold discussions, and con ...
(including Breton, Aragon and Artaud, as well as some two dozen others) declared their affinity for revolutionary politics. While this was initially a somewhat vague formulation, by the 1930s many Surrealists had strongly identified themselves with communism. The foremost document of this tendency within Surrealism is the ''Manifesto for a Free Revolutionary Art'', published under the names of Breton and Diego Rivera, but actually co-authored by Breton and Leon Trotsky.
However, in 1933 the Surrealists’ assertion that a "proletarian literature" within a capitalist society was impossible led to their break with the Association des Ecrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires, and the expulsion of Breton, Éluard and Crevel from the Communist Party.
In 1925, the Paris Surrealist group and the extreme left of the French Communist Party came together to support Muhammad Ibn 'Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi, Abd-el-Krim, leader of the Rif uprising against French colonialism in Morocco. In an open letter to writer and French ambassador to Japan, Paul Claudel, the Paris group announced:
The anticolonial revolutionary and proletarian politics of "Murderous Humanitarianism" (1932) which was drafted mainly by Crevel, signed by Breton, Éluard, Péret, Tanguy, and the Martiniquan Surrealists Pierre Yoyotte and J.M. Monnerot perhaps makes it the original document of what is later called "black Surrealism", although it is the contact between Aimé Césaire and Breton in the 1940s in Martinique that really lead to the communication of what is known as "black Surrealism".
Anticolonial revolutionary writers in the Négritude movement of Martinique, a French colony at the time, took up Surrealism as a revolutionary method – a critique of European culture and a radical subjective. This linked with other Surrealists and was very important for the subsequent development of Surrealism as a revolutionary praxis. The journal ''Tropiques'', featuring the work of Césaire along with Suzanne Césaire, René Ménil, Lucie Thésée, Aristide Maugée and others, was first published in 1941.
In 1938 André Breton traveled with his wife, the painter Jacqueline Lamba, to Mexico to meet Trotsky (staying as the guest of Diego Rivera's former wife Guadalupe Marin), and there he met Frida Kahlo and saw her paintings for the first time. Breton declared Kahlo to be an "innate" Surrealist painter.
Internal politics
In 1929 the satellite group associated with the journal ''Le Grand Jeu'', including Roger Gilbert-Lecomte, Maurice Henry and the Czech painter Josef Sima, was ostracized. Also in February, Breton asked Surrealists to assess their "degree of moral competence", and theoretical refinements included in the second ''Surrealist Manifesto, manifeste du surréalisme'' excluded anyone reluctant to commit to collective action, a list which included Leiris, Limbour, Morise, Baron, Queneau, Prévert, Desnos, Masson and Boiffard. Excluded members launched a counterattack, sharply criticizing Breton in the pamphlet ''Un Cadavre'', which featured a picture of Breton wearing a crown of thorns. The pamphlet drew upon an earlier act of subversion by likening Breton to Anatole France, whose unquestioned value Breton had challenged in 1924.
The disunion of 1929–30 and the effects of ''Un Cadavre'' had very little negative impact upon Surrealism as Breton saw it, since core figures such as Aragon, Crevel, Dalí and Buñuel remained true to the idea of group action, at least for the time being. The success (or the controversy) of Dalí and Buñuel's film L'Age d'Or in December 1930 had a regenerative effect, drawing a number of new recruits, and encouraging countless new artistic works the following year and throughout the 1930s.
Disgruntled surrealists moved to the periodical ''Documents (magazine), Documents'', edited by Georges Bataille, whose anti-idealist materialism formed a hybrid Surrealism intending to expose the base instincts of humans.[Surrealist Art](_blank)
from Centre Pompidou. Retrieved March 20, 2007. To the dismay of many, ''Documents'' fizzled out in 1931, just as Surrealism seemed to be gathering more steam.
There were a number of reconciliations after this period of disunion, such as between Breton and Bataille, while Aragon left the group after committing himself to the French Communist Party in 1932. More members were ousted over the years for a variety of infractions, both political and personal, while others left in pursuit of their own style.
By the end of World War II the surrealist group led by André Breton decided to explicitly embrace anarchism. In 1952 Breton wrote "It was in the black mirror of anarchism that surrealism first recognised itself." Breton was consistent in his support for the Fédération Anarchiste, francophone Anarchist Federation and he continued to offer his solidarity after the Platformism, Platformists supporting Fontenis transformed the FA into the Fédération Communiste Libertaire. He was one of the few intellectuals who continued to offer his support to the FCL during the Algerian war when the FCL suffered severe repression and was forced underground. He sheltered Fontenis whilst he was in hiding. He refused to take sides on the splits in the French anarchist movement and both he and Peret expressed solidarity as well with the new Fédération anarchiste set up by the synthesist anarchists and worked in the Antifascist Committees of the 60s alongside the FA.
Golden age
Throughout the 1930s, Surrealism continued to become more visible to the public at large. A British Surrealist Group, Surrealist group developed in London and, according to Breton, their 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition was a high-water mark of the period and became the model for international exhibitions. Another English Surrealist group developed Birmingham Surrealists, in Birmingham, meanwhile, and was distinguished by its opposition to the London surrealists and preferences for surrealism's French heartland. The two groups would reconcile later in the decade.
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; stripping ordinary objects of their normal significance, to create a compelling image that was beyond ordinary formal organization, in order to evoke empathy from the viewer.
1931 was a year when several Surrealist painters produced works which marked turning points in their stylistic evolution: Magritte's ''Voice of Space (La Voix des airs)'' is an example of this process, where three large spheres representing bells hang above a landscape. Another Surrealist landscape from this same year is Yves Tanguy's '':File:Premontory Palace.jpg, Promontory Palace (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 watches that sag as if they were melting.
The characteristics of this style—a combination of the depictive, the abstract, and the psychological—came to stand for the alienation which many people felt in the modernism, modern period, combined with the sense of reaching more deeply into the psyche, to be "made whole with one's individuality".
Between 1930 and 1933, the Surrealist Group in Paris issued the periodical ''Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution'' as the successor of ''La Révolution surréaliste''.
From 1936 through 1938 Wolfgang Paalen, Gordon Onslow Ford, and Roberto Matta joined the group. Paalen contributed Fumage and Onslow Ford Coulage as new pictorial automatic techniques.
Long after personal, political and professional tensions fragmented 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.
During the 1930s Peggy Guggenheim, an important American art collector, married Max Ernst and began promoting work by other Surrealists such as Yves Tanguy and the British artist John Tunnard.
Major exhibitions in the 1930s
* 1936 – ''London International Surrealist Exhibition'' is organised in London by the art historian Herbert Read, with an introduction by André Breton.
* 1936 – Museum of Modern Art in New York shows the exhibition ''Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism''.
* 1938 – A new ''Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme'' was held at the Beaux-arts Gallery, Paris, with more than 60 artists from different countries, and showed around 300 paintings, objects, collages, photographs and installations. The Surrealists wanted to create an exhibition which in itself would be a creative act and called on Marcel Duchamp, Wolfgang Paalen, Man Ray and others to do so. At the exhibition's entrance Salvador Dalí placed his Rainy Taxi (an old taxi rigged to produce a steady drizzle of water down the inside of the windows, and a shark-headed creature in the driver's seat and a blond mannequin crawling with live snails in the back) greeted the patrons who were in full evening dress. ''Surrealist Street'' filled one side of the lobby with mannequins dressed by various Surrealists. Paalen and Duchamp designed the main hall to seem like cave with 1,200 coal bags suspended from the ceiling over a coal brazier with a single light bulb which provided the only lighting, as well as the floor covered with humid leaves and mud. The patrons were given flashlights with which to view the art. On the floor Wolfgang Paalen created a small lake with grasses and the aroma of roasting coffee filled the air. Much to the Surrealists' satisfaction the exhibition scandalized the viewers.
World War II and the Post War period
World War II created havoc not only for the general population of Europe but especially for the European artists and writers that opposed Fascism and Nazism. Many important artists fled to North America and relative safety in the United States. The art community in Culture of New York City, New York City in particular was already grappling with Surrealist ideas and several artists like Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, and Robert Motherwell converged closely with the surrealist artists themselves, albeit with some suspicion and reservations. Ideas concerning the unconscious and dream imagery were quickly embraced. By the Second World War, the taste of the American avant-garde in New York swung decisively towards Abstract Expressionism with the support of key taste makers, including Peggy Guggenheim, Leo Steinberg and Clement Greenberg. 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 World War II. In particular, Gorky and Paalen 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.
The Second World War overshadowed, for a time, almost all intellectual and artistic production. In 1939 Wolfgang Paalen was the first to leave Paris for the New World as exile. After a long trip through the forests of British Columbia, he settled in Mexico and founded his influential art-magazine DYN (journal), Dyn. In 1940 Yves Tanguy married American Surrealist painter Kay Sage. In 1941, Breton went to the United States, where he co-founded the short-lived magazine ''VVV (magazine), VVV'' with Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, and the American artist David Hare (artist), David Hare. However, it was the American poet, Charles Henri Ford, and his magazine ''View (magazine), View'' which offered Breton a channel for promoting Surrealism in the United States. The ''View'' special issue on Duchamp was crucial for the public understanding of Surrealism in America. It stressed his connections to Surrealist methods, offered interpretations of his work by Breton, as well as Breton's view that Duchamp represented the bridge between early modern movements, such as Futurism (art), Futurism and Cubism
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
, to Surrealism. Wolfgang Paalen left the group in 1942 due to political/philosophical differences with Breton.
Though the war proved disruptive for Surrealism, the works continued. Many Surrealist artists continued to explore their vocabularies, including Magritte. Many members of the Surrealist movement continued to correspond and meet. 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 André Thirion, argued that there were works of his after this period that continued to have some relevance for the movement.
During the 1940s Surrealism's influence was also felt in England, America and the Netherlands where Gertrude Pape and her husband Theo van Baaren helped to popularize it in their publication The Clean Handkerchief. Mark Rothko took an interest in biomorphism, biomorphic figures, and in England Henry Moore, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon (artist), Francis Bacon and Paul Nash (artist), Paul Nash used or experimented with Surrealist techniques. However, Conroy Maddox, one of the first British Surrealists whose work in this genre dated from 1935, remained within the movement, and organized an exhibition of current Surrealist work in 1978 in response to an earlier show which infuriated him because it did not properly represent Surrealism. Maddox's exhibition, titled ''Surrealism Unlimited'', was held in Paris and attracted international attention. He held his last one-man show in 2002, and died three years later.
Magritte's work became more realistic in its depiction of actual objects, while maintaining the element of juxtaposition, such as in 1951's ''Personal Values (Les Valeurs Personnelles)'' and 1954's ''Empire of Light (L’Empire des lumières)''. Magritte continued to produce works which have entered artistic vocabulary, such as ''Castle in the Pyrenees (Le Château des Pyrénées)'', which refers back to ''Voix'' from 1931, in its suspension over a landscape.
Other figures from the Surrealist movement were expelled. Several of these artists, like Roberto Matta (by his own description) "remained close to Surrealism".
After the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Endre Rozsda returned to Paris to continue creating his own word that had been transcended the surrealism. The preface to his first exhibition in the Furstenberg Gallery (1957) was written by Breton yet.[Breton, André. ''Surrealism and Painting'', Icon, 1973]
Many new artists explicitly took up the Surrealist banner. Dorothea Tanning and Louise Bourgeois continued to work, for example, with Tanning's ''Rainy Day Canape'' from 1970. Duchamp continued to produce sculpture in secret including an installation with the realistic depiction of a woman viewable only through a peephole.
Breton continued to write and espouse the importance of liberating the human mind, as with the publication ''The Tower of Light'' in 1952. Breton's return to France after the War, began a new phase of Surrealist activity in Paris, and his critiques of rationalism and dualism found a new audience. Breton insisted that Surrealism was an ongoing revolt against the reduction of humanity to market relationships, religious gestures and misery and to espouse the importance of liberating the human mind.
Major exhibitions of the 1940s, '50s and '60s
* 1942 – ''First Papers of Surrealism'' – New York – The Surrealists again called on Duchamp to design an exhibition. This time he wove a 3-dimensional web of string throughout the rooms of the space, in some cases making it almost impossible to see the works. He made a secret arrangement with an associate's son to bring his friends to the opening of the show, so that when the finely dressed patrons arrived they found a dozen children in athletic clothes kicking and passing balls, and skipping rope. His design for the show's catalog included "found", rather than posed, photographs of the artists.
* 1947 – International Surrealist Exhibition – Galerie Maeght, Paris
* 1959 – International Surrealist Exhibition – Paris
* 1960 – ''Surrealist Intrusion in the Enchanters' Domain'' – New York
Post-Breton Surrealism
In the 1960s, the artists and writers associated with the Situationist International were closely associated with Surrealism. While Guy Debord was critical of and distanced himself from Surrealism, others, such as Asger Jorn, were explicitly using Surrealist techniques and methods. May 1968 events in France, The events of May 1968 in France 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
Joan Miró i Ferrà ( , , ; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist born in Barcelona. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona i ...
would commemorate this in a painting titled ''May 1968.'' There were also groups who associated with both currents and were more attached to Surrealism, such as the Revolutionary Surrealist Group.
During the 1980s, behind the Iron Curtain, Surrealism again entered into politics with an underground artistic opposition movement known as the Orange Alternative. The Orange Alternative was created in 1981 by Waldemar Fydrych (alias 'Major'), a graduate of history and art history at the University of Wrocław. They used Surrealist symbolism and terminology in their 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 a "Manifesto of Socialist Surrealism". In this manifesto, he stated that the socialist (communist) system had become so Surrealistic that it could be seen as an expression of art itself.
Surrealistic art also remains popular with museum patrons. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Guggenheim Museum in New York City held an exhibit, ''Two Private Eyes'', in 1999, and in 2001 Tate Modern held an exhibition of Surrealist art that attracted over 170,000 visitors. In 2002 the Metropolitan Museum, Met in New York City held a show, ''Desire Unbound'', and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris a show called ''La Révolution surréaliste''.
Surrealists groups and literary publications have continued to be active up to the present day, with groups such as the Chicago Surrealist Group, the Leeds Surrealist Group, and the Surrealist Group of Stockholm. Jan Švankmajer of the Czech-Slovak Surrealists continues to make films and experiment with objects.
Impact and influences
While Surrealism is typically associated with the arts, it has impacted many other fields. In this sense, Surrealism does not specifically refer only to self-identified "Surrealists", or those sanctioned by Breton, rather, it refers to a range of creative acts of revolt and efforts to liberate imagination. In addition to Surrealist theory being grounded in the ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel, Karl Marx, Marx and Sigmund Freud, Freud, to its advocates its inherent dynamic is dialectical thought. Surrealist artists have also cited the alchemy, alchemists, Dante Alighieri, Dante, Hieronymus Bosch
Hieronymus Bosch (, ; born Jheronimus van Aken ; – 9 August 1516) was a Dutch/Netherlandish painter from Brabant. He is one of the most notable representatives of the Early Netherlandish painting school. His work, generally oil on oa ...
,[''Surrealism:Two Private Eyes''](_blank)
Retrieved August 27, 2010. the Marquis de Sade, Charles Fourier, Comte de Lautréamont
Comte de Lautréamont () was the ''nom de plume'' of Isidore Lucien Ducasse (4 April 1846 – 24 November 1870), a French poet born in Uruguay. His only works, ''Les Chants de Maldoror'' and ''Poésies'', had a major influence on modern arts ...
and Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (, ; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes and for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he starte ...
as influences.
May 68
Surrealists believe that non-Western cultures also provide a continued source of inspiration for Surrealist activity because some may induce a better balance between instrumental reason and 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 emphasize the intimate link between freeing 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 May 1968 in France, French revolt of May 1968, whose slogan "All power to the imagination" quoted by The Situationists and Enragés#Other groups, Enragés from the originally Marxist “''Rêvé''-lutionary“ theory and praxis of Breton's French Surrealist group.
Postmodernism and popular culture
Many significant literary movements in the later half of the 20th century were directly or indirectly influenced by Surrealism. This period is known as the Postmodern era; though there is no widely agreed upon central definition of Postmodernism, many themes and techniques commonly identified as Postmodern are nearly identical to Surrealism.
First Papers of Surrealism presented the fathers of surrealism in an exhibition that represented the leading monumental step of the avant-gardes towards installation art. Many writers from and associated with the Beat Generation were influenced greatly by Surrealists. Philip Lamantia and Ted Joans are often categorized as both Beat and Surrealist writers. Many other Beat writers show significant evidence of Surrealist influence. A few examples include Bob Kaufman, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Artaud in particular was very influential to many of the Beats, but especially Ginsberg and Carl Solomon. Ginsberg cites Artaud's "Van Gogh – The Man Suicided by Society" as a direct influence on "Howl (poem), Howl", along with Apollinaire's "Zone", García Lorca's "Ode to Walt Whitman", and Schwitters' "Priimiititiii". The structure of Breton's "Free Union" had a significant influence on Ginsberg's "Kaddish". In Paris, Ginsberg and Corso met their heroes Tristan Tzara, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Benjamin Péret, and to show their admiration Ginsberg kissed Duchamp's feet and Corso cut off Duchamp's tie.
William S. Burroughs, a core member of the Beat Generation and a postmodern novelist, developed the cut-up technique with former surrealist Brion Gysin—in which chance is used to dictate the composition of a text from words cut out of other sources—referring to it as the "Surrealist Lark" and recognizing its debt to the techniques of Tristan Tzara.
Postmodern novelist Thomas Pynchon, who was also influenced by Beat fiction, experimented since the 1960s with the surrealist idea of startling juxtapositions; commenting on the "necessity of managing this procedure with some degree of care and skill", he added that "any old combination of details will not do. Spike Jones Jr., whose father's orchestral recordings had a deep and indelible effect on me as a child, said once in an interview, 'One of the things that people don't realize about Dad's kind of music is, when you replace a C-sharp with a gunshot, it has to be a C-sharp gunshot or it sounds awful.'"[Thomas Pynchon (1984) ''Slow Learner'', p.20]
Many other postmodern fiction writers have been directly influenced by Surrealism. Paul Auster, for example, has translated Surrealist poetry and said the Surrealists were "a real discovery" for him. Salman Rushdie, when called a Magical Realist, said he saw his work instead "allied to surrealism". David Lynch regarded as a surrealist filmmaker being quoted, "David Lynch has once again risen to the spotlight as a champion of surrealism," in regard to his show ''Twin Peaks''. For the work of other postmodernists, such as Donald Barthelme and Robert Coover, a broad comparison to Surrealism is common.
Magic realism, a popular technique among novelists of the latter half of the 20th century especially among Latin American writers, has some obvious similarities to Surrealism with its juxtaposition of the normal and the dream-like, as in the work of Gabriel García Márquez. Carlos Fuentes was inspired by the revolutionary voice in Surrealist poetry and points to inspiration Breton and Artaud found in Fuentes' homeland, Mexico. Though Surrealism was a direct influence on Magic Realism in its early stages, many Magic Realist writers and critics, such as Amaryll Chanady and S. P. Ganguly, while acknowledging the similarities, cite the many differences obscured by the direct comparison of Magic Realism and Surrealism such as an interest in psychology and the artefacts of European culture they claim is not present in Magic Realism. A prominent example of a Magic Realist writer who points to Surrealism as an early influence is Alejo Carpentier who also later criticized Surrealism's delineation between real and unreal as not representing the true South American experience.
Surrealist groups
Surrealist individuals and groups have carried on with Surrealism after the death of André Breton in 1966. The original Paris Surrealist Group was disbanded by member Jean Schuster in 1969, but another Parisian surrealist group was later formed. The current Surrealist Group of Paris has recently published the first issue of their new journal, ''Alcheringa''. The Group of Czech-Slovak Surrealists never disbanded, and continue to publish their journal ''Analogon'', which now spans 80 volumes.
Surrealism and the theatre
Surrealist theatre and Artaud's "Theatre of Cruelty" were inspirational to many within the group of playwrights that the critic Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd" (in his 1963 book of the same name). Though not an organized movement, Esslin grouped these playwrights together based on some similarities of theme and technique; Esslin argues that these similarities may be traced to an influence from the Surrealists. Eugène Ionesco in particular was fond of Surrealism, claiming at one point that Breton was one of the most important thinkers in history. Samuel Beckett was also fond of Surrealists, even translating much of the poetry into English. Other notable playwrights whom Esslin groups under the term, for example Arthur Adamov and Fernando Arrabal, were at some point members of the Surrealist group.
Alice Farley is an American-born artist who became active during the 1970s in San Francisco after training in dance at the California Institute of the Arts. Farley uses vivid and elaborate costuming that she describes as "the vehicles of transformation capable of making a character's thoughts visible". Often collaborating with musicians such as Henry Threadgill, Farley explores the role of improvisation in dance, bringing in an automatic aspect to the productions. Farley has performed in a number of surrealist collaborations including the World Surrealist Exhibition in Chicago in 1976.
Alleged precursors in older art
Various much older artists are sometimes claimed as precursors of Surrealism. Foremost among these are Hieronymus Bosch
Hieronymus Bosch (, ; born Jheronimus van Aken ; – 9 August 1516) was a Dutch/Netherlandish painter from Brabant. He is one of the most notable representatives of the Early Netherlandish painting school. His work, generally oil on oa ...
, and Giuseppe Arcimboldo, who Dalí called the "father of Surrealism." Apart from their followers, other artists who may be mentioned in this context include Joos de Momper, for some anthropomorphic landscapes. Many critics feel these works belong to fantastic art rather than having a significant connection with Surrealism.["...the tendency to interpret Bosch's imagery in terms of modern Surrealism or Freudian psychology is anachronistic. We forget too often that Bosch never read Freud and that modern psychoanalysis would have been incomprehensible to the medieval mind... Modern psychology may explain the appeal Bosch's pictures have for us, but it cannot explain the meaning they had for Bosch and his contemporaries. Bosch did not intend to evoke the subconscious of the viewer, but to teach him certain moral and spiritual truths, and thus his images generally had a precise and premeditated significance." ]
See also
*:Surrealist artists
*Avant-garde
*Wilfred Bion#Bizarre object, Bizarre Object
*Dada
Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 192 ...
*List of films influenced by the Surrealist movement
*Women surrealists
*Exquisite Corpse
*
*
*
*
* (Cuba)
References
Bibliography
André Breton
André Robert Breton (; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') o ...
* ''Manifestoes of Surrealism'' containing the first, second and introduction to a possible third manifesto, the novel ''The Soluble Fish'', and political aspects of the Surrealist movement. .
* ''What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings of André Breton''. .
* ''Conversations: The Autobiography of Surrealism'' (Gallimard 1952) (Paragon House English rev. ed. 1993). .
* ''The Abridged Dictionary of Surrealism'', reprinted in:
** Bonnet, Marguerite, ed. (1988). ''Oeuvres complètes'', 1:328. Paris: Éditions Gallimard.
Other sources
* Ades, Dawn. ''Surrealism in Latin America: Vivisimo Muerto'', Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2012.
* Alexandrian, Sarane. ''Surrealist Art'' London: Thames & Hudson, 1970.
* Guillaume Apollinaire, Apollinaire, Guillaume 1917, 1991. Program note for ''Parade'', printed in ''Oeuvres en prose complètes'', 2:865–866, Pierre Caizergues and Michel Décaudin, eds. Paris: Éditions Gallimard.
* Allmer, Patricia (ed.) ''Intersections – Women Artists/Surrealism/Modernism'', Rethinking Art's Histories series, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2016.
* Allmer, Patricia and Donna Roberts (eds) ‘“Wonderful Things” – Surrealism and Egypt’, ''Dada/Surrealism'', University of Iowa, 20:1, 2013.
* Allmer, Patricia (ed.) ''Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism'', London and Manchester: Prestel and Manchester Art Gallery, 2009.
* Allmer, Patricia and Hilde van Gelder (eds.) ''Collective Inventions: Surrealism in Belgium'', Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2007.
* Allmer, Patricia and Hilde Van Gelder (eds.) ‘The Forgotten Surrealists: Belgian Surrealism Since 1924’, ''Image [&] Narrative'', no. 13, 2005.
* Brotchie, Alastair and Gooding, Mel, eds. ''A Book of Surrealist Games'' Berkeley, California: Shambhala, 1995. .
* Mary Ann Caws, Caws, Mary Ann ''Surrealist Painters and Poets: An Anthology'' 2001, MIT Press.
* Chadwick, Whitney. ''Mirror Images: Women, Surrealism, and Self-Representation''. The MIT Press, 1998.
* Chadwick, Whitney. ''Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement''. 1985, Bulfinch Press.
* Durozoi, Gerard, ''History of the Surrealist Movement'' Translated by Alison Anderson University of Chicago Press. 2004. .
* Flahutez, Fabrice, ''Nouveau Monde et Nouveau Mythe. Mutations du surréalisme de l'exil américain à l'écart absolu (1941–1965)'', Les presses du réel, Dijon, 2007.
* Flahutez, Fabrice(ed.), Julia Drost (ed.), Anne Helmreich (ed.), Martin Schieder (ed.), ''Networking Surrealism in the United States. Artists, Agents and the Market'', T.1., Paris, DFK, 2019, 400p. () (PDF) https://doi.org/10.11588/arthistoricum.485
* Fort, Ilene Susan and Tere Arcq, editors. ''In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States'', Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2012.
* Galtsova, Elena. ''Surrealism and Theatre. On the Theatrical Aesthetics of the French Surrealism'', Moscow, Russian State University for the Humanities, 2012,
*
* Leddy, Annette and Conwell, Donna. ''Farewell to Surrealism: The Dyn Circle in Mexico'', Los Angeles: Getty Publications. 2012.
* Lewis, Helena. ''Dada Turns Red.'' Edinburgh, Scotland: University of Ednburgh Press, 1990.
* Low Mary, Breá Juan, ''Red Spanish Notebook'', City Light Books, Sans Francisco, 1979,
* Melly, George ''Paris and the Surrealists'' Thames & Hudson. 1991.
* Moebius, Stephan. ''Die Zauberlehrlinge. Soziologiegeschichte des Collège de Sociologie. Konstanz: UVK 2006. About the College of Sociology, its members and sociological impacts.
* Nadeau, Maurice. ''History of Surrealism''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 1989. .
* Richard Jean-Tristan. ''Les structures inconscientes du signe pictural/Psychanalyse et surréalisme'' (''Unconscious structures of pictural sign''), L'Harmattan ed., Paris (France), 1999
* Review "Mélusine" in French by Center of surrealism studies directed by Henri Behar since 1979, edited by Editions l'Age d'Homme, Lausanne, Suisse. Download platform www.artelittera.com 14.00
*
External links
André Breton writings
''Manifesto of Surrealism'' by André Breton. 1924.
Overview websites
from Centre Pompidou.
Le Surréalisme
"Surrealism"
BBC Radio 4 discussion with Dawn Adiss, Malcolm Bowie and Darien Leader (''In Our Time'', Nov. 15, 2001)
Surrealism and politics
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Surrealist poetry
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Holcombe, C. J.
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{{Authority control
Surrealism,
Art movements