Surrealisma journey into the

subconscious

What is surrealism?

• Began in the early 1920s• Rejects logic• Features the element of surprise,

unexpected juxtapositions, and non-sequitur

• Interested in raising question rather than delivering answers

• Was a revolutionary art movement

A Joke

• Q: How many surrealist painters does it take to change a light bulb?

• A: A fish.

“The famous pipe…? I’ve been reproached enough about it! And yet…can you fill it? No, it’s only a depiction, isn’t it? If I had written ‘This is a pipe’ under my picture, I would have been lying!”

-Rene Magritte

Rene Magritte, The Treachery of Images, 1928/29

Rene Magritte, The False Mirror, 1928

Rene Magritte, The Human Condition, 1933

Rene Magritte, The Human Condition, 1935

“I think that the best title for a picture is a poetic title.”

-Rene Magritte

Rene Magritte, The Glass Key, 1959

"At least it hides the face partly. Well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It's something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present."

-Rene Magritte

Rene Magritte, The Son of Man, 1964

“Visible things can be invisible. If somebody rides a horse through a wood, at first one sees them, and then not, yet one knows that they are there. In Carte Blanche, the rider is hiding the trees, and the trees are hiding her. However, our powers of thought grasp both the visible and the invisible – and I make use of painting to render thoughts visible.”

-Rene Magritte

Rene Magritte, Carte Blanche, 1965

Salvador Dali, Girl Standing at the Window, 1925

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931

“I think I am, in what I create, a rather mediocre painter. What I regard as brilliant is my vision, not what I actually create.”

-Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali, Giraffe on Fire, 1937

This is an “anti-psychological self-portrait. Instead of painting the soul – the inside – I wanted to paint solely the outside: the envelope, ‘the glove of myself’.”

-Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali, Soft Self-Portrait with Fried Bacon, 1941

Salvador Dali, Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man, 1943

Salvador Dali, The Temptation of St. Anthony, 1946

Salvador Dali, The Hallucinogenic Toreador, 1968-70

“The difference between me and the surrealists is that I am a surrealist.”

-Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931

Rene Magritte, Personal Values, 1952

Rene Magritte, Personal Values, 1952

Salvador Dali, Face of Mae West Which May Be Used as an Apartment, 1934-35

Salvador Dali, Face of Mae West Which May Be Used as an Apartment, 1934-35