We explain what surrealism is and its origins. Also, characteristics of the movement, representatives and authors.
What is surrealism?
Surrealism was an important artistic movement that emerged in France in the late 1910s, which It aimed to artistically explore the human mind and the dynamics of dreams. It arose from the inheritance of Dada and the impulse of the writer André Bretón (1896-1966), considered its founder and main exponent. It had a wide expansion and presence in all the arts.
Surrealism was nourished by very diverse aesthetic and philosophical sources: from the transformative and daring poetry of Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), Alfred Jarry (1873-1907) and Lautréamont (Isidore Ducasse, 1846-1869), to the painting of The Bosco (Jheronimus van Aken or Hieronymus Bosch, 1450-1516), passing through the explorations of Dada and the influence of the recent psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud.
Far from being a static and uniform movement, surrealism established itself in the constant search for new techniques objects and artistic perspectives. In the literary field it represented an enormous revolution in language. Methods such as automatic writing (from the free flow of the unconscious) and dreamlike poetic visions (typical of dreams) were used to challenge the limits of logic.
Surrealism had great significance in Europe and America and was adopted as an artistic mechanism of liberation, capable of giving voice to the silenced and saying what social and political norms forced them to remain silent.
It had its heyday before World War II. After the war, most European surrealists moved to the United States and Latin America, and introduced these ideas into their new contexts.
The term surrealism comes from French surrealism and it is attributed to the writer Guillaume Apollinaire, who in 1917 assigned the subtitle “surrealist drama” to his dramatic work. Tiresias's tits.
Surrealism literally means “above” (south-) of realism (realism). The surrealists attempted to create art that went beyond the limiting perspectives of realism. It was first defined in Surrealist manifesto (1924) as:
“Pure psychic automatism, by means of which an attempt is made to express, whether verbally, in writing or in any other way, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, alien to any aesthetic or moral concern.”
(André Bretón. First manifesto of surrealism, 1924).
- See also: Avant-garde
Characteristics of surrealism
He Surrealist manifesto of 1924 by André Bretón was the founding text of surrealism and its first declaration of principles, which can be summarized as follows:
Explored the unconscious
Surrealism aspired to break the barriers of the conscious mind and was inclined towards what Sigmund Freud called unconscious. For this, artists practiced automatic writing and painting (without thinking), or reproduced the environment of dreams through relationships, proportions and inventions that were difficult to express with common language.
I aspired to total freedom
Surrealism sought to abandon the rules of conventional logic to access a state of absolute imagination and creative freedom. Exploring dreams, repressed desires, and innermost fears, the surrealists sought to transcend the norms of art and society, and create new ways of expressing themselves.
He understood creation as a collective expression
Among the creations of the surrealists are creative games in which several authors combine to compose a work, without previously agreeing on its meaning.
This form of expression somehow summarizes the spirit of surrealism, which inherited from Dada, especially Tristan Tzara (1896-1963), the idea that creation is group, spontaneous, intuitive, playful and preferably automatic.
He incorporated and created new techniques to free himself from conscious control
With the purpose of freeing art from the control of the conscious mind, reason and logic, the surrealists dedicated themselves to experimenting and expanding their forms of expression. Thus, they developed a series of innovative techniques in painting, literature, sculpture, photography and other disciplines.
Some of the most famous techniques developed by the Surrealists were the surrealist box, automatic writing and painting, the exquisite corpse, and decalcomania.
Representatives and authors of surrealism
Surrealism included many of the most famous European artists of the first half of the 20th century and had numerous representatives. Some of the most significant were:
literary surrealism
- Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918). He was a French poet, novelist, essayist and art critic, famous for his calligrams. Along with André Bretón, he is considered one of the founders of surrealism.
- André Breton (1896-1966). He was a French writer and poet, founder of the movement and creator of the magazine surrealism and of the Surrealist manifestos from 1924 and 1929.
- Antonin Artaud (1896-1948). He was a French poet, playwright and actor, creator of the Theater of Cruelty.
- Federico García Lorca (1898-1936). He was a Spanish poet and playwright, central to the generation of '27. He was murdered and disappeared by the ranks of Franco's regime.
- Jacques Prévert (1900-1977). He was a French poet, playwright and film scriptwriter, famous for his humorous poetry.
- René Char (1907-1988). He was a French poet, he distanced himself from surrealism in 1938.
- Octavio Paz (1914-1998). He was a Mexican poet and essayist, Nobel Prize winner in literature in 1990. He turned to surrealism after his stay in France in 1946 and participated in the movement's activities.
Surrealism in plastic arts
- Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968). He was a French painter and chess player, famous for his work Fountain (given to an exhibition under the pseudonym R. MUTT), which consisted of a urinal.
- Joan Miró (1893-1983). He was a Spanish painter, sculptor and engraver. His work explored the children's universe and local Catalan traditions.
- René Magritte (1898-1967). He was a Belgian painter who nourished surrealism with his conceptual paintings. He is famous for his painting The betrayal of imagesbetter known as “This is not a pipe” (Ceci n'est pas une pipe).
- Salvador Dalí (1904-1989). He was a Spanish painter, sculptor, writer and filmmaker. He was one of the greatest and most famous exponents of surrealism in the world.
- Frida Kahlo (1907-1954). She was a Mexican painter famous for her self-referential work, in which she explored themes such as femininity, her personal pain, and Mexican culture.
- Remedios Varo (1908-1963). She was a Mexican painter, considered one of the most important surrealists of the 20th century.
Surrealism in cinema
- Jean Cocteau (1889-1963). He was a French poet, novelist, playwright, painter and filmmaker. He had a very close relationship with surrealism and a great influence on the movement.
- Luis Buñuel (1900-1983). He was a Spanish-Mexican film director, known for his short film An Andalusian dog (1929) and his numerous collaborations with Salvador Dalí.
Surrealism techniques
Surrealist techniques, many of them developed from play and experimentation without pre-established rules, became fundamental tools for the artistic exploration of the unconscious. Some of them are:
The surreal box
The Surrealist Box (in French: surrealist boîte) was a container of very diverse, incongruous and even disturbing objects, which represented the unconscious. These objects, superimposed in unexpected ways, invited us to question and challenge conventional perceptions.
Surrealist boxes were pieces of art, but also tools for experimentation and inspiration for other works.
Automatic writing and painting
Automatic writing and painting are based on the idea that the unconscious houses great creative wealth and that, when freed from the censorship of the rational mind, it allows access to new forms of expression and knowledge.
In automatic writing, the artist writes without thinking, editing or correcting what he writes. Just capture the flow of ideas and emotions that arise spontaneously and let the words spring freely from your mind. In automatic painting, the artist works without a prior plan. The idea is to avoid the intervention of the conscious mind and transfer the images and sensations that arise spontaneously to the medium.
The exquisite corpse
The exquisite corpse (in French: exquisite corpse) is a technique of collective creation, invented by the surrealists, in which several participants collaborate without seeing the contributions of others. It comes from a board game called “consequences,” which members of the movement used to play.
By not having control over the final result, unexpected ideas and unusual associations arose, which was precisely what the surrealists were looking for. The name “exquisite corpse” is due to the first sentence they made with this technique: “The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine.”
The decalcomania
Decalcomania involves spreading thick paint on a support and covering it while it is still wet with another material (such as paper), which is removed before it dries, to create a stain. The surrealists used decalcomania to create unexpected abstract images, which they interpreted as manifestations of the unconscious.
Decalcomania also inspired the creation of objects and other surrealist techniques such as frottage (rub the materials on the support) and the grattage (scrape wet paint off canvas). It also became a collaborative exercise, in which several artists intervened on the same surface to create unexpected visual dialogues and aesthetic findings.
References
- Breton, A. (2007). surrealism dictionary. Losada.
- Breton, A. (1985). Manifestos of surrealism. Work.
- Voorhies, J. (2004, October). Surrealism. Metmuseum.org; The Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://www.metmuseum.org/
- Reina Sofía Museum https://www.museoreinasofia.es/
- Dali, S. The persistence of memory. https://www.wikiart.org/
- Dali, S. Item Tray. https://www.salvador-dali.org/