Spanish Surrealism

SpanishSurrealism

Surrealism

• Literary and art movement influenced by Freudianism

• The expression of the imagination as revealed in dreams

• Free of conscious control of reason and convention

• Juxtaposition of the conscious and unconscious realms, the world of dreams and everyday reality, to create a surreal reality

Surrealism

• Outgrowth of Dadaism

• “To shock and disturb bourgeoisietaste and conventions”

• Iconoclastic

• A protest against the rationalism of Western society

Manifesto (Anton Breton, 1924)

Dictionary: Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.

Encyclopedia: Surrealism. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life.

Surrealism

Verists

• Juxtaposition of real objects, depicted in painstaking details, in an incongruous context

• Dali, Magritte, Ernst

Surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism in Film

• Salvador Dali & Luis Bunuel

• Un Chein Andalou (1929)

• Discrete Charm of Bourgeoisie (1972)

Luis Bunuel (1900-83)

• Born In Spain, lived in US, Mexico and France

• Expelled from Jesuit university

• Became friends of Dali and Lorca at the University of Madrid

• Worked in Hollywood and at MOMA

• Dali split with him because he was a Communist and atheist

Luis Bunuel

• “God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed.”

• “Thank God I'm an atheist.”

• “If you were to ask me if I'd ever had the bad luck to miss my daily cocktail, I'd have to say that I doubt it; where certain things are concerned, I plan ahead.”

Luis Bunuel

• “Salvador Dali seduced many ladies, particularly American ladies, but these seductions usually consisted of stripping them naked in his apartment, frying a couple of eggs, putting them on the woman's shoulders and, without a word, showing them the door.”

• “Give me two hours a day of activity, and I'll take the other twenty-two in dreams.”

Surrealism in Film Today

• Being John Malkovich

• Brazil

• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

• El Topo

• Saddest Music in the World