THIS IS NOT A PRESENTATION

PHILOSOPHY BEHIND SURREALISM

• Offshoot of Dadaism

• Reign of the subconscious

• Marxist undertone

Automatism

•surrealist technique without conscious self-censorship

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

•Hence the drawing produced may be attributed in part to the subconscious and may reveal something of the psyche, which

would otherwise be repressed.

Rep-Tech

•The surrealist artists usually used a set of representation techniques for their artwork.

•Their techniques not only gave their final paintings a texture or a certain form, but like a Rorschach test also gave them a base to conceptualize the same.

COLLAGE

CUBOMANIA

DECALCOMANIA

GRATTAGE

FROTTAGE

ECLABOUSSURE

FUMAGE

LEADING ARTISTS OF

SURREALISM

GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE 1880- 1918

He coined the term surrealism, in his play Les Mamelles de Tiresias.

He wrote calligrammes, a collection of concrete poetry. Also wrote erotic novels like Eleven thousand rods.

ANDRE BRETON 1896- 1966

He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. In 1924 his MANISFESTO of surrealism appeared defining the movement in

philosophical and psychological terms.

SALVADOR DALI 1904- 1989

He was one of the MOST important artists of this movement. In 1931, Dali had collaborated on a short film with Buneul, he also illustrated

a book called The Witches of Leirs.

RENE MARGRITTE 1898- 1967

Great influence on pop culture. 1st surrealist painting was “The lost jockey”.

He wanted the observer to realize that on matter how closely he captured the image of anything, the painting could not BE that object.

YVES TANGUY 1900-1955

Unique, non-representational style of surrealism. Known for vast landscapes, limited colour palette and abstract shapes.

JOAN MIRO 1893- 1983

He was among the 1st artists who developed automatic drawing as a way to undo previous established techniques in painting.

RAYMOND QUENEAU 1903- 1976

He wrote around 20 books of poetry and prose.

MARCEL DUCHAMP 1887-1968

The fountain. Wrote Rrose Selany and The Green Box.

BENJAMIN PERET 1899-1959

One of the founders of surrealism. Best of the surrealist poets.

Wrote Death to the Pigs and to the Field of Glory.

THE SONG OF LOVE, Giorgio Di Chirico, 1914

THE DISQUIETING MUSES, Giorgio Di Chirico, 1916

THE ELEPHANT CELEBES,

oil on canvas, Max Ernst, 1921

TWO CHILDREN ARE THREATENED BY A NIGHTINGALE, MAX ERNST, oil on wood, 1924

FROTTAGE AND GRATTAGE FOREST AND DOVE, Max Ernst,1927

ENTIRE CITY, Max Ernst

THE HUNTER oil on canvas ,Joan Miro, 1923-24

THE NUDE(1926-27) Nude is an EXQUISITE CORPSE drawing made by the Surrealis artists

Yves Tanguy, Joan Miró, Max Morise, and Man Ray.

THE TREACHERY OF IMAGES, Renee Magritte, 1928-1929, oil on canvas

LANDSCAPE NEAR FIGURAS, Salvador Dali, 1910

THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY Salvador Dali, oil on canvas, 1931

SOFT CONSTRUCTION WITH BOILED BEANS

Salvador Dali, oil on canvas, 1936

SWANS REFLECTING ELEPHANTS, Salvador Dali, 1937

THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST

Salvador Dali, oil on canvas, 1958

GALA'S CHRIST,

Salvador Dali, oil on canvas, 1978

BULLETISM Biblia Sacra,

Unknown Artist, 1969

ECLABOUSSURE

Remedios Varo, a spanish-Mexican female surrealist

painter.

CUBOMANIA

UNKNOWN ARTIST

DECALCOMANIA

UNTITLED, James Gleeson, 1950s

SOME ROSES AND THEIR PHANTOMS, Dorothea Tanning, oil on canvas, 1952

ETCHED MURMURS, Dorothy Tanning, etchning, 1984

EXHIBITIONS

1936 London

1938 PARIS (DALI)

1942 INSTALLATION

Impact of surrealism.

Politics . Theatre & Music . Photography . Literature .

Fashion & Advertisement

Politics

• Directly - some Surrealists allied themselves with radical political groups, movements and parties .

• Indirectly – their thinking and philosophies on freeing imagination and the mind, and liberation from repressive and archaic social structures

influenced the masses. This was especially visible in the French revolt of May 1968, whose slogan "All power to the imagination" rose directly

from French Surrealist thought and practice.

The surrealists sought absolute freedom and their aim was a profound psychological or

spiritual revolution, not an attempt to change society on a merely political or

economic level.

Theatre and Music

• Antonin Artaud - ‘Theatre of cruelty.’

• Maximum influence on jazz and blues.

• Pink Floyd Look mummy, there's an airplane up in the sky"

Did you see the frightened ones? Did you hear the falling bombs? Did you ever wonder why we had to

run for shelter when the promise of a brave new world unfurled beneath a clear blue sky?Did you see the frightened ones? Did you hear the falling

bombs? The flames are all gone, but the pain lingers on.

Photography • Man ray, Lee Miller and Hans Bellmer.

• Photo montage and differential techniques of light and lenses.

• Today’s context - Photo manipulation.

Literature

In literature, surrealism was confined almost exclusively to France. Surrealist writers were interested in the associations and implications of words rather than their literal

meanings; their works are thus extraordinarily difficult to read. And bordering nonsensical.

A typical paragraph in (an English-language version of) Les Champs Magnetiques is:

It was the end of sorrow lies. The rail stations were dead, flowing like bees stung from honeysuckle. The people hung back and watched the ocean, animals flew in and out of focus. The time had come. Yet king dogs never grow old – they stay young and fit, and someday they might come to the beach and have a few drinks, a few laughs, and get on with it. But not now. The time

had come; we all knew it. But who would go first?

• Many writers from and associated with the Beat Generation were influenced greatly by Surrealists.

• 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 Garcia Marquez.

• Alice in wonderland – Lewis Carroll

• The Wind up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami

Fashion and Advertising

During that period, many fashion ads began to use elements of fantasy in order to make an emotional appeal to consumers. Prior

to that time, fashion advertisements were generally concerned with simply informing the consumer about the products. During

the 1920's, styles in fashion advertising began to undergo change. It saw a shift in "the focus of advertising from explaining how an article worked to describing the pleasure it could give the user"

• In 1937 Dali in collaboration with Elsa Schiaparelli, fashion designer created the lobster dress inspired

by Dali’s lobster phone. • The iconic fashion diva and singer Lady Gaga is

also an example of a modern surrealist.

ANTONIN ARTAUD

• Produced theoretical work on the potential of the medium

• Raw cinema

BRETON

•The pope of surrealism

•Influenced by Apollinaire and Dadaist

GENERAL THEMES AND TECHNIQUES

•Cliff-hanger effect •Other worldliness •Suspense in viewers

•Evoke sense of mystery

SURREALIST FILMS

•1928-Entr’acte by ren’e clair •1929-the seashell and the clergy

By Germain dulac •1929- Un Chien Andalou] Written by Salvador Dalí and Luis

Buñuel, •1946-Destino image from Disney and Dalí's

GERMAINE DUCLAC

• IDEA:PURE CINEMA • Experiments on characters

• Editing technique • Themes-feminist

THIS IS NOT THE END