Surrealism USA

SURREALISM USA NOVEMBER 2012 | VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1

THE RISE OF SURREALISM A quick look

SURREALISM USA

The Exhibition

The RISE of

SURREALISM

By James Voorhies

* A quick look at Surrealism as it appears in literature & art.

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urrealism originated in the late 1910s and early ‘20s as a literary movement that experimented with a new mode of expression called automatic writing, or automatism, which sought to release the unbridled imagination of the subconscious. Officially consecrated in Paris in 1924 with the publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism by the poet and critic André Breton (1896-1966), Surrealism became an internation intellectual and political movement.

Breton, a trained psychiatrist, along with French poets Louis Aragon (1897-1982), Paul Eluard (1895-1952), and Philippe Soupault (1897-1990), were influenced by the psychological theories and dream studies of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and the political ideas of Karl Marx (1818-1883).

Using Freudian methods of free association, their poetry and prose drew upon the private world of the mind, traditionally restricted by reason and societal limitations, to produce surprising, unexpected imagery. The cerebral and irrational tenets of Surrealism find their ancestry in the clever and whimsical disregard for tradition fostered by Dadaism a decade earlier.

Surrealist poets were at first reluctant to align themselves with visual artists because they believed that the laborious processes of painting, drawing, and sculpting were at odds with the spontaneity of uninhibited expression. However Breton and his followers did not altogether ignore visual art.

They held high regard for artists such as Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Francis Picabia (1879-1953), and Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) because of the analytic, provocative, and erotic qualities of their work. For example, Duchamp’s conceptually complex Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (1915-23; Philadelphia Museum of Art) was admired by Surrealists and is considered a precursor to the movement because of its bizarrely juxtaposed and erotically charged objects. In 1925, Breton substantiated his support for visual expression by reproduction of the works of artists such as Picasso in the journal La Révolution Surréaliste and organizing exhibitions that prominently featured painting and drawing.

The visual artists who first worked with Surrealist techniques and imagery were the German Max Ernst (1891-1976), The Frenchman Andre(accent) Masson (1896-1987), the Spaniard Joan Miró (1893-1983), and the American Man Ray (1890-1976). Masson’s free-association Barbarians Marching to the West Max Ernst

Ernst, Max. Barbarians marching to the west. 1937 Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany. Accessed 19 Oct. 2012 <http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/max-ernst/barbarians-marching-to-the-west-1937>

drawings of 1924 are curving, continuous lines out of which emerge strange and symbolic figures that are products of an uninhibited mind. Breton considered Masson’s drawings akin to his automatism in poetry. The Potato of 1928 by Miró uses comparable organic forms and twisted lines to create an imaginative world of fantastic figures.

About 1937, Ernst, a former Dadaist, began to experiment with two unpredictable processes called decalcomania and grattage. Decalcomania is the technique of pressing a sheet of paper onto a painted surface and peeling it off again, while grattage is the process of scraping pigment across a canvas that is laid on top of a textured surface. He used a combination of these techniques in The Barbarians of 1937. This composition of sparring anthropomorphic figures in a deserted postapocalyptic landscape exemplifies the recurrent themes of violence and annihilation found in Surrealist art.

In 1927, the Belgian artist René Magritte (1898-1967) moved from Brussels to Paris and became a leading figure in the visual Surrealist movement. Influenced by de Chirico’s paintings between 1910 and 1920, Magritte painted erotically explicit objects juxtaposed in dreamlike surroundings. His work defined a split between the visual automatism fostered by Masson amd Miró (and originally with words by Breton) and a new form of illusionistic Surrealism practiced by the Spaniard Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), the Belgian Paul Delvaux (1897-1994), and the French-American Yves Tanguy (1900-1955). In The Eternally Obvious, Magritte’s artistic display of a dismembered female nude is emotionally shocking. In The Satin Tuning Fork, Tanguy fills an illusionistic space with unidentifiable, yet sexually suggestive, objects rendered with great precision. The painting’s mysterious lighting, long shadows, deep receding space, and sense of loneliness also recall the ominous settings of de Chirico.

Swans Reflecting Elephants Salvador Dali

Dali, Salvador. Swans Reflecting Elephants. 1937. Private Collection. Accessed 20 Oct. 2012 <http://www.edali.org/swans-reflecting-elephants.jsp>

In 1929, Dalí moved from Spain to Paris and made his first Surrealist paintings. He expanded on Magritte’s dream imagery with his own erotically charged, hallucinatory visions.

In The Accommodations of Desire of 1929, Dalí employs Freudian symbols, such as ants, to symbolize his overwhelming sexual desire. In 1930, Breton praised Dalí’s representations of the unconscious in the Second Manifesto of Surrealism. They became the main collaborators on the review Minotaure (1933-39), a primarily Surrealist-oriented publication founded in Paris.

The organized Surrealist movement in Europe dissolved with the onset of World War II. Breton, Dalí, Ernst, Masson and other, including the Chilean artist Matta (1911-2002), who first joined the Surrealists in 1937, left Europe for New York. The movement found renewal in the United States at Peggy Guggenheim’s (1898-1979) gallery, Art of This Century, and the Julien Levy Gallery.

In 1940, Breton organized the fourth International Surrealist Exhibition in Mexico City, which included the Mexicans Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) and Diego Rivera (1886-1957) (although neither artist officially joined the movement). Surrealism’s surprising imagery, deep symbolism, refined painting techniques, and disdain for convention influenced later generations of artists, including Joseph Corenell (1903-1972) and Arshile Gorky (1904-1948), the latter whose work formed a continuum between Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism.

SURREALISM

USA Exhibition: February 17 - May 8, 2005

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urrealism USA is comprised of approximately 120 paintings, sculptures and works on paper and examines the history of Surrealism in the United States between 1930 and 1950.

Included are key figures of the European movement such as Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, and Yves Tanguy, who are represented in the exhibition with works they made while in exile in the United States. Also included are their stateside counterparts David Smith, Kay Sage, Dorothea Tanning, Alexander Calder, Joseph Cornell and others. This is the first exhibition since 1977 specifically devoted to Surrealism in America.

One of the most revolutionary artistic and intellectual movements of the twentieth century, Surrealism still exerts a strong appeal today, more than fifty years after its heyday. The profound influence that this world of fantasy and dream had on art and culture continues through today, particularly its exploration of the irrational as a creative source.

Launched in France in the 1920s, Surrealism gained wide popularity in the U.S. in the following decade. Several galleries -- notably Pierre Matisse and Julien Levy -- began showing the work of European Surrealists on a regular basis, while major group exhibitions such as the Museum of Modern Art’s Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism of 1936 brought it to the attention of a larger public. As a result, dream imagery and a dose of the irrational began invading American art, infiltrating even such traditional movements as American scene painting and social realism. In the 1940s, the presence in New York of European Surrealists in exile, including the group’s leader, André Breton, gave the movement a new vitality. Even though American artists avoided the rigid group organization that characterized the movement in Paris (Peter Blume politely turned down Breton’s offer to become a member of the group), they experimented with new themes and techniques promoted by the Surrealists, which, in turn, led to original developments, such as Abstract Expressionism.

The works in the exhibition are borrowed from public and private collections in the United States and abroad, and all aspects of the Surrealist movement in America will be represented: The figurative depictions of a fantasy world by Peter Blume, Dorothea Tanning, and Helen Lundeberg; the so-called social surrealism of O. Louis Guglielmi, James Guy, and Walter Quirt; the imaginary landscapes of Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy; Joseph Cornell’s poetic and enigmatic constructions; the lyrical abstractions of Arshile Gorky and William Baziotes; the automatic experiments of Gerome Kamrowski, Jackson Pollock, and Knud Merrild.

Sculpture will be represented by Alexander Calder, Isamu Noguchi, and David Smith among others. Works by non-American artists who worked in the U.S. at the time, such as Roberto Matta Echaurren, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, and André Masson will also be featured.

A fully illustrated catalogue edited by Isabelle Dervaux, Curator of modern and contemporary art at the National Academy, and curator of the exhibition, will accompany the exhibition, with essays exploring the specificity of American Surrealism from various perspectives.

Other contributors include Gerrit Lansing, Michael Duncan, Robert Lubar, Robert Hobbs, and Scott Rothkopf.

Surrealism U.S.A.will travel to the Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona, where it will be shown from June 5 to September 25, 2005.

Information provided by: The National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts

Kadish, Reuben. Untitled (Dr. Entozoan). 1935. LA County Museum of Art. Accessed 19 Oct. 2012 < http://arthistory.about.com/library/weekly/bl_surrusarev.htm>

Vast information is available on European Surrealism, but during the past two decades much research has been done on American Surrealism as well, and many unknown works have surfaced, bearing witness to the importance of the movement in this country. This exhibition, organized by the National Academy Museum, proposes to examine the manifestations of Surrealism in the United States from about 1930 to 1950, in New York as well as other cities such as Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago.