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.
SALVADOR1904-DALI 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 Mir贸, 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?
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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"
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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