(aka Surrealism)

Often in art, a particular art movement arises as a reaction to a prevailing one. During World War I millions of artists were called to fight for their countries. They were split up jostled around and sometimes thrown into similar units sometimes fighting alongside allied artists. War always brings about spurts of new creativity in the art world and this War brought many artists of differing backgrounds together to philosophize and collaborate. Unfortunately, out of this came Surrealism! Much of Europe was still doing Dada at the time Surrealism came about and as mentioned above, was a reaction to Dada. ( here’s a refresher! http://www.slideshare.net/Blue_Shift/potd17-dada-514317) Andre Breton during the war met an anti-social, anti-art establishment writer named Jacques Vache who was also deeply intrested in Freuds writings about automatism. They collaborated and created the mess that is Surrealism!

Later on Breton went back to Paris and was hangin w/ some of his homies (Namely Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault) and they started doing what they called ‘automatic writing’ this is where you just start writing and you put down whatever crosses your mind eliminating all personal editing. Oh yeah, and dreams. They’d write extensively about their dreams (snore!). They published these rants and created a Surrealist manifesto. Soon automatic drawing came about and people were trying their best not to think everywhere!

Dada rejected labels and categories but Surrealism was going to hold these as valid elements that could be rearranged and experimented with.

Andre MassonUntitled (Fishermen) circa 1930Automatic Drawing -Ink on Paper

Love song/le Chant d/amour 1914Oil on CanvasMOMA NY

Mystery and Melancholy of a Street. 1914. Oil on canvas. 88 x 72 cm

Piazza d'Italia. 1913. Oil on canvas. Art Gallery of Ontario

Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe") 1928

Oil on Canvas

25x27”

Alright… so it’s no hiding that I think Surrealism is crap. I do like Magritte though, I don’t really understand how he gets roped in with these clowns because he actually has concepts behind his art and a loose reason for doing them (to make peeps more conscious of their surroundings [hypersensitive he sez]). This piece for instance… later he writes, “can you put tobacco in this? This is a painting, not a pipe. It’s a representation of a pipe.” (totally not word for word, but you get the picture).

Paul Klee

Twittering Machine(Die Zwitschermaschine) 1922Watercolor and pen and ink on transfer drawing on paper mounted on cardboard64.1 x 48.3 cm (25 1/4 x 19 in.)

The Goldfish1925Oil and watercolor on paper, mounted on cardboard19 1/8 x 27 in.

Red and White Domes1914

Watercolor and body color on Japanesevellum mounted on cardboard

14.6 x 13.7 cm

Insula Dulcamara1938Oil on newsprint, mounted on burlap31 1/2 x 69 in.

Soooo many people claim Dali as their favorite artist. Though his occasional use of symbolism could be intriguing and his draughtsmanship is undeniably strong, his artwork was kitchy and usually required nothing of the viewer. These are paintings that are simply weird. Dali’s exhausting attention whoring later on (He was on several TV game shows) flaunted his weird for weird sake posturing. Occasionally the paintings would have some interesting content, but he was famed for his stunts and desperately sought attention. Making very public artistic statements more about buffoonery and sensationalism than thought, insight and concepts.

“

Every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí, and I ask myself, wonderstruck, what prodigious thing will he do today, this Salvador Dalí….”

Salvador Dalí Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) 1936 Philadelphia Museum of Art

The thing is, Dali was so crazy that it was hard to tell when he was acting, and when he was near death. In one stunt, he entered a lecture flanked by white hounds while dressed in a full old-fashioned diver’s suit. Apparently deciding that oxygen was soooo blase, Dali neglected to make sure there was a way for air to get in to the air-tight suit. As the ambient oxygen in the helmet began to dwindle, Dali started frantically pulling at the helmet which was, at that time, affixed with metal bolts. No one helped him because no one wanted to be the square who fell for Dali’s latest stunt. Dali survived, and repaid the uncaring world by becoming an unapologetic fascist, though biographers are split on whether or not that was just another stunt.

- From the Best Article Every Day

Surrealism and Dada remain at the forefront of all art that wants to have a weird or “abstract” element to it, without having the artist actually think up a good idea or concept for the painting. When the artist is called on to explain the paintings, they typically bring up references to Dali and tell you that the viewer needs to come up with their own interpretation.

Sorry, but these are so awful that I had to bring Simon back in.