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ART HISTORY 4450 Surrealism

Surrealism (c. 1925-45)

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definition: Breton’s First Manifesto of Surrealism (1924) – “Surrealism rests in the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association neglected heretofore; in the omnipotence of the dream”

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definition: Breton’s Second Manifesto of Surrealism (1930) – “… a certain state of mind from which life and death, the real and the imaginary, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, height and depth, are no longer perceived as contradictory”

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André Breton (1896-1966) •

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biography: – son of a shopkeeper – knew poet Paul Valéry while still young – studied medicine and later psychiatry WWI: – served in neurological ward – attempted to use Freudian methods to psychoanalyze his patients – wartime meetings w/ Apollinaire – joined Paris Dada group (1916) met Freud in Vienna (1921) Surrealism: – co-founded w/ Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault review Littérature major periodicals: – La Révolution surréaliste (1924-30) – Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution (1930-33)

Breton •

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context: political – member of FR Communist Party (19271935) • broke in disgust over Stalinism • remained committed to Marxism • met Leon Trotsky in Mexico – anti-Fascist (re: Hitler & Mussolini) lecture (June 1934) • “role of fascism to re-establish for time being the tottering supremacy of finance-capital” • anti-bourgeois & critical of capitalist society • “hypocrisy & cynicism have now lost all sense of proportion & are becoming more outrageous…” aim: “to detach the intellectual creator from illusions with which bourgeois society has sought to surround him” WWI: Nazi occupation of FR – fled to USA w/ Duchamp and Ernst – arranged Surrealist expo at Yale (1942)

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Surrealism •

process: “pure psychic automatism” – definition: Breton • distinguished by high degree of immediate absurdity • “a monologue poured out as rapidly as possible, over which the subject's critical faculty has no control” • “… by which an attempt is made to express, either verbally, in writing or in any other manner, the true functioning of thought. The dictation of thought, in the absence of all control by reason, excluding any aesthetic or moral preoccupation.”

– definition: Ernst • “In striving more and more to restrain my own active participation in the unfolding of the picture and, finally, by widening in this way the active part of the mind's hallucinatory faculties, I came to exist as spectator at the birth of all my works."

• deepened his study of technique and its importance in the creative process • an attempt to expose myth of creative genius (just as the Surrealists attacked religious and political myths)

Surrealism •

context: Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) – –

Surrealists preoccupied w/ F’s methods of investigation dreams: • “wish fulfillment”  attempts by unconscious to resolve a conflict, whether something recent or something from the recesses of the past • unconscious must distort and warp meaning of its information to make it through censorship of preconscious • images in dreams are often not what appear to be and need deeper interpretation if they are to inform on structures of unconscious • “phenomenon of condensation”  one symbol or image may have multiple meanings

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Surrealism •

Freudian psychology (cont.)

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different levels of consciousness (i.e., id, ego, super ego) unconscious: repository for traumatic repressed memories • source of anxiety-provoking drives socially or ethically unacceptable to the individual • manifested in dreams terms: • “free association”  patients report thoughts w/out reservation • “transference”  patients displace feelings based on experience of earlier figures in their lives • “libido”  an energy w/ which mental process and structures are invested • “sublimation”  energy invested in sexual impulses shifts to pursuit of socially valuable achievements

Max Ernst (1891-1976) •

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biography: – born near Cologne – son of amateur painter & teacher of deaf training: self-taught while studying philosophy and psychiatry @ University of Bonn (1909-1914) – exhibited at first German Autumn Salon in 1913 – in 1914, became acquainted w/ Arp and they began lifelong friendship WWI: drafted into German military (1916 ) – after war, settled in Cologne – founded Cologne Dada group w/ Arp Dada: – exhibition of 1920 in Cologne closed by police on grounds of obscenity – Ernst exhibited w/ Paris Dada group and moved to Paris in 1922 • leaves behind wife and son • enters illegally • settles into ménage à trois w/ Paul Éluard and wife, Gala, who eventually married Salvador Dalí in 1929

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Surrealism

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definition: Max Ernst’s "Beyond Painting" (1936) – “One rainy day in 1919, happening to be in a town on the banks of the Rhine, I was struck by the way my excited gaze became obsessed with the pages of an illustrated catalogue showing objects designed for anthropological, microscopic, psychological, mineralogical and palaeontological demonstrations. There I found brought together such disparate elements of figuration that the sheer absurdity of this assemblage caused a sudden intensification of my visionary faculties and brought forth a hallucinating succession of contradictory images, double, triple and multiple images overlaying each other with the persistence and rapidity peculiar to love memories and the visions of half-sleep."

Ernst • Aquis Submersus (1919) – subject: Freudian • unconscious wish fulfillment • water  embryonic fluid – iconography: Symbolist influence – aesthetic: illusionistic – color: naturalistic – light/shadow: directed – perspective: linear & aerial – architecture: dislocated – forms: inverted & abstracted

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Ernst •

Elephant of Celebes (1921) –

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figure: monstrous • crafted from various inanimate objects • sexually explicit references theme: scatological • phallus/long hose  urinate • elephant in shape of metallic waste bin • holes for excrement landscape: bareness mixed w/ absurdity of flying fish forms iconography: metaphysical • headless mannequin

Ernst

• Oedipus Rex (1922) – subject: Freudian • loving & hostile wishes children experience towards parents at height of phallic phase – theme: masochistic – iconography: Symbolist inspired – aesthetic: illusionistic – perspective: linear & aerial – scale: disjointed – architecture: dislocated

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Ernst

• Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale (1924) – theme: Freudian – subject: childhood fears & anxiety produced by dreams – technique: tromp l’oeil – scale: intimate – aesthetic: illusionistic – perspective: linear & aerial

Ernst

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Virgin Spanking the Christ Child – –

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date: 1926 aim: iconoclastic • to destroy myths about art that for centuries have permitted economic exploitation of painting, sculpture, literature, etc. subject: voyeurism & masochism forms: derived from Parmigianino’s Mannerist Madonna w/a Long Neck (c. 1525) architecture: disjointed (see de Chirico)

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(Left) ERNST’s Surrealist Virgin Spanking the Christ Child (c. 1925) vs. (right) PARMIGIANINO’s Mannerist Madonna with the Long Neck (c. 1525)

Ernst •

technique: frottage – developed during early 1920s – pencil rubbings on paper or canvas – published in “Histoire Naturelle” • thirty-four (34) plates • Arp wrote intro – realizes Surrealistic principle of “psychological automatism” – aesthetic juxtapositions: • textured surfaces vs. linear precision • 3-d forms vs. flattened space • dramatic shadows

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Ernst •

Forest and Dove (1927) –

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technique: ‘grattage’ • adapted from ‘frottage’ technique • applied layers of paint, darkest last • paint is scraped across canvas to reveal imprint of objects placed beneath • scratched away paint revealing brilliant white of canvas beneath • Rembrandt used similar technique subject: forest • metaphor for imagination • potent symbol in German tradition • recalls feelings of ‘enchantment and terror’ of his childhood iconography: small dove • E used as symbol to represent himself • trapped among menacing trees

Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) •

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childhood: – lived in a variety of mansions – surrounded by woods, horses and freedom as imagined in a fairy tale – as a child wished to possess magical powers of a saint – however, from age 9 spent three years in convents where, in essence, an outcast training: – Penrose’s Academy of Art (Florence) – Chelsea School of Arts (London) – witnessed first Surrealist exhibition (London) in 1937, began relationship w/ Ernst – moved to Paris – lasted two years, until outbreak of WWII when Ernst interned as enemy alien German invasion forced her to flee to SP and eventually settle in Mexico – suffered nervous breakdown; entered asylum

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Carrington’s Self-Portrait (1937-38)

(Left) Carrington’s Portrait of Max Ernst (1939) vs. (right) Ernst’s The Robing of the Bride (1940)

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Ernst •

The Robing of the Bride (1940) –

motifs: • Bird Superior (“Loplop”) – Dantesque – after seeing love object of obsession in street, Dante saw “a lordly man, frightening to behold” who held in his hand “a fiery object, who seemed to say these words: 'Behold your heart” • bride – dons a mantle of red velvety feathers – understood to represent Ernst's lover, the British surrealist painter Leonora Carrington » arcing body & long leg walking » small breasts » prominent belly » owl/monster face • green demonic bird-man – serves his new bird-queen – holds broken spear  her sexual majesty daunts him as it also defeats four-breasted creature weeping on the right

(Left) Carrington’s The Encounter (c. 1937-40) vs. (right) Ernst’s The Robing of the Bride (1940)

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(Left) Carrington’s The Temptation of St. Anthony (c. 1940) vs. (right) Ernst’s The Temptation of St. Anthony (c. 1940)

Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012) • • •

biography: born in IL training: Art Institute of Chicago career: – 1936: discovered Dada and Surrealism at MoMA’s seminal exhibition, Fantastic Art – early 1940s: T working on her own surreal paintings while supporting herself as commercial artist – 1941: meets art dealer, Julien Levy, in NYC who introduces her to Surrealists who fled from Nazi occupied France – 1942: begins 34-yr relationship w/ Ernst • move to Sedona, AZ then to FR ini 1956 – 1944: one-person exhibition w/ Levy – 1946: married Ernst in double wedding w/ Man Ray and Juliet Browner – 1948: one-person exhibition w/ Levy

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Tanning

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Voltage (1942) – – –

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narrative: recurrent theme among Dada & Surrealists spatial order: ambiguous background motifs: visual double entendre • invisible face (pos/neg space) • opera glasses w/ eyes • hair braid  piercing aesthetic: academic • tight, controlled brushwork • illusionistic textures • traditional light/shadow creates volumetric forms

Tanning’s Self Portrait (1944)

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Tanning’s A Little Night Music (1946)

Tanning •

Maternity (1946-47) –

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figures: populate foreground • mother and child  outfitted nearly identical • Sphinx-like infant on blanket motifs: • repeated door frame • barren landscape w/ storm clouds spatial order: aerial perspective aesthetic: academic • naturalistic color scheme • tight, controlled brushwork • illusionistic textures • traditional light/shadow creates volumetric forms

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Man Ray (1890-1976) • • •

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biography: grew up in NYC training: Academy of Fine Arts (NYC) career: – met Stieglitz at 291 Gallery in 1910 – lifelong friendship w/ Marcel Duchamp • co-founded Soc. of Independent Artists (1916) • est. Société Anonyme (1920) • published single issue of NY Dada moved to Paris: 1921 – photographed entire intellectual elite (e.g., Breton, Joyce, Eliot, Schoenberg, Matisse, Ernst, Artaud, Stein, Brancusi, and Hemingway) – represented at first Surrealist exhibition @ Galerie Pierre (1925) – Lee Miller becomes studio ass’t. (1929) • muse, apprentice, lover – left FR shortly before German occupation (1940)

(Left) Man Ray’s Surrealist Violin d’Ingres (c. 1925) vs. (right) Ingres’ Bather of Valpincon (c. 1800)

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Man Ray •

Rayograph (1927) –

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medium: “Rayographs” • projects light onto 3-d objects of varying translucency (“solarization”) • arranged on light-sensitive paper process: • grain enlargement • cameraless prints (photograms) effect: records not only abstract shapes but also shadows & textures composition: dynamic light/shadow: Baroque effects Surrealist vocabulary: • disrupts viewer´s perceptions • stimulates associative flights of fantasy

Man Ray

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Electricity (1931) – – – –

medium: photomontage theme: wish fulfillment figure: female repeated Surrealist vocabulary: • dismemberment – headless – armless • idealized torso • muse

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Man Ray’s Meret Oppenheim (1933)

Lee Miller (1907-1977) •

biography: – rebellious and independent • left home at age 19 to enroll in Art Students League.

• pursued modeling career in NYC – model for several major magazines (e.g., Vogue) – became financially independent – persuaded family to allow her to study and model in Paris (1929-32) – returns to NYC to est. portrait and advertising studio – not long after, marries Egyptian businessman and moved to Cairo – during visit to Paris, become muse & collaborator to Surrealist artist Roland Penrose – WWII: US war correspondent • one of only female combat photographers in European war zones during World War II

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Miller

Portrait of Space (1937) – – –

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married Egyptian businessman and moved to Cairo continued to make photographs during visit to Paris, introduced to Surrealist artist Roland Penrose • soon became his muse and collaborator aesthetic: experimental effect: strange, provocative abstraction setting: barren landscape motif: crooked, askew frame embedded in torn screen  female genitalia

Miller

Self-Portrait w/ Picasso (1944) • •

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post-liberation of Paris P’s incredulity as seeing M in fatigues – spurred by memories of her as model who sat for portrait seven years earlier M’s war experience: war correspondent – devastation at concentration camps – left her w/ an emotional wound that never fully healed

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Miller

Leipzig, Germany (1945) •

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subject: collapse of Hitler's Third Reich – effect  many Nazis began to take their own lives narrative: city’s mayor, wife and daughter honored suicide pact together in city hall point of view: M one of first on scene – moved camera close to mayor's daughter – recorded in gentle, available light effect: as though between dream and sleep, life and death – psychological state Surrealists artists and poets greatly admired

Miller

Hitler’s Residence (1945) •

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self-portrait: posed on same day M photographed liberation of Dachau – M poised and self-aware – dirty Army boots at edge of tub w/ fatigues disrobed on chair setting: Hitler's personal bathroom – carefully constructed stage set • portrait of H perched on tub • raises her right arm in gesture that mirrors Classical sculpture to her left (see de Chirico)

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