Surrealism

Joe Brusca

Persistence of Memory

Definitions

• Dreams (* Anyone remember theirs last night?)

• Surrealism Dada

• Fantasy Subconscious

• Automatism Enigmatic

• Nostalgic Juxtapositions

• Frottage Distortion

• Illusion Abstraction

• Line Value

• Portrait Composition

• Illusions Bourgeoisie

*Notes in journal and visual board

Dada to Surrealism• Dada or Dadaism is a art movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland.• During the end of World War I and peaked from post war around 1916 to

1922.• The art movement was based on its anti-war politics and anti-art cultural

works. They rejected was being handed down them from modern world culture. It was also anti-bourgeois and anarchist in nature.

• Dada activities included public gatherings, demonstrations, and publication of art/literary journals; art, politics, and culture were topics often discussed within the Dadaist.

• The Dada influenced later avant-garde art movements like surrealism, pop art and contemporary music like rock ’n’ roll, even punk rock.

• Included the visual arts, literature, including poetry, art manifestoes, art theory, theatre, cinema and graphic design.

Surrealism

• Surrealism is a cultural movement and artistic style that was founded in 1924 by André Breton.

• Influenced by the psychoanalytical work of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

• The movement was begun primarily in Europe, centered in Paris, and was helped founded by many of the members of the Dada community.

• Surrealism style uses visual imagery from the subconscious mind to create art without the intention of logical comprehensibility.

• The group aimed to revolutionize human experience, in its personal, cultural, social, and political aspects. They wanted to free people from false rationality, and restrictive customs and structures.

• At various times Surrealists aligned with communism and anarchism.

Surrealist Techniques• Automatism, for ex., like automatic drawing was developed by the

surrealists, as a means of expressing the subconscious. In automatic drawing, the hand is allowed to move 'randomly' across the paper. In applying chance and accident to mark-making, drawing is to a large extent freed of rational control. Hence the drawing produced may be attributed in part to the subconscious and may reveal something of the psyche, which would otherwise be repressed.

• Frottage, the artist takes a pencil or other drawing tool and makes a "rubbing" over a textured surface. The drawing can be left as is or used as the basis for further refinement.

• Examples of other influences of automatism would be cut-ups, jazz and abstract expressionism.

• “The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd.” -- André Breton, Second Manifesto of Surrealism

Links to Some ImportantPast Events

• Antiwar movements like Vietnam in the 1960’s .

• Feminist Movement• Civil Rights Movement• 1960’s Counter Culture Movement

• Can you think of any from the past or currently?

André Breton

"Life’s greatest gift is the freedom it leaves you to step out of it whenever you choose."

André Breton

• He studied medicine and psychiatry. And during World War I he worked in a neurological ward where he gained his anti-war views from the trauma it caused many of the soldiers.

• Surrealist Leader

• Poet / Writer

• His writings include the Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism".

• Influenced by the writers Rimbuad, Voltaire, Guillaume Apollinaire, along with fellow Dadaist Louis Aragon, Philippe Soupault and Tristan Tzara.

Dada to Surrealism

• Important figures of the Dadaism and eventually the founders of Surrealism.

Marcel Duchamp

Hans Arp

Francis Picabia

Max Ernst

Man Ray

Andre Breton

Marcel Duchamp

Marcel DuchampArtwork

Hans Arp

Crown of Buds

Francis Picabia

Max Ernst

Man Ray

"To create is divine, to reproduce is human."

Giorgio de Chirico

“To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are

broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams.”

André Masson

René Magritte

Roberto Matta

Yves Tanguy

Yves Tanguy Artwork

Salvador Dalí

“The only one difference between a madman and me. I not am mad.”