~SURREALISM~

My brief summary of surrealism: Surrealism movement began in the early 1920s, and is best known for its visual artworks. Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur; however, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, with the works being an artifact. Leader André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was above all a revolutionary movement.
Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities during World War I and the most important center of the movement was Paris. From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe, eventually affecting the visual arts, literature, film, and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy, and social theory.

Surrealism: Movement in art and literature flourishing in the 1920s and 1930s, characterized by a fascination with the bizarre, the incongruous, and the irrational. It was closely related to Dada, its principal source; several artists figured successively in both movements, each of which was conceived as a revolutionary mode of thought and action—a way of life rather than a set of stylistic attitudes. Both were strongly anti-rationalist and much concerned with creating effects that were disturbing or shocking, but whereas Dada was essentially nihilist, Surrealism was positive in spirit.

Surrealism originated in France. Its founder and chief spokesman was the writer André Breton, who officially launched the movement with his first Manifeste du surréalisme, published in 1924. In this long and difficult document he defined Surrealism as: ‘purely psychic automatism through which we undertake to express, in words, writing, or any other activity, the actual functioning of thought, thoughts dictated apart from any control by reason and any moral or aesthetic consideration. Surrealism rests upon belief in the higher reality of specific forms of associations, previously neglected, in the omnipotence of dreams, and in the disinterested play of thinking.’ He said its purpose was ‘to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality'. Within this general aim it embraced a large number of different and not altogether coherent doctrines and techniques, characteristically aimed at breaching the dominance of reason and conscious control by methods designed to release primitive urges and imagery. Breton and other members of the movement drew liberally on Freud's theories concerning the unconscious and its relation to dreams.

Breton's first manifesto dealt primarily with Surrealism in literature, but he soon extended his theoretical concerns to the visual arts. The way in which Surrealist artists set about exploration of submerged impulses and imagery varied greatly (in spite of Breton's demands there was little doctrinal unity, and defections, expulsions, and personal attacks are a feature of the history of the movement). Broadly speaking, however, there were three contrasting approaches. Some artists, for example Ernst and Masson, cultivated various types of automatism in an effort to eliminate conscious control. At the other extreme, Dalí, Magritte, and others painted in a scrupulously detailed manner to give an hallucinatory sense of reality to scenes that make no rational sense. Finally, in Surrealist objects, as well as in some paintings, the startling juxtaposition of unrelated items was used to create a sense not so much of unreality as of a fantastic but compelling reality outside the everyday world. The text quoted to justify this search for the unexpected combination of incompatibles was a sentence from the 19th-century poet Lautréamont, whom the Surrealists regarded as one of their precursors: ‘Beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table.’

Paris remained the centre of Surrealism until the Second World War, when the emigration of many European artists to the USA made New York the new hub of its activity. However, it became the most widely disseminated and controversial aesthetic movement of the 1920s and 1930s, spread partly by a number of prestigious journals (beginning with La Révolution surréaliste in 1924) and partly by a series of major international exhibitions. The first of these was held at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, in 1931, and two of the most famous were held in 1936: the ‘International Surrealist Exhibition’ at the New Burlington Galleries, London, and ‘Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism’ at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The movement did not take root in Germany ( Ernst, the major German Surrealist, lived mostly in France and the USA), but it flourished vigorously in Belgium—in the work particularly of Magritte, the most inspired of all Surrealist painters, and Delvaux, the most long-lived upholder of the tradition. Many artists who were not in sympathy with the political aims of Surrealism (for a time it was associated with the French Communist Party), and who were never formal members of the movement, nevertheless found its liberating effects on the imagination bracing and were influenced by its imagery. In Britain, Henry Moore and Paul Nash were among the major artists who went through a Surrealist phase, and Herbert Read was the most distinguished critic who gave the movement his support. The English Surrealist Group was founded in 1936, but it was social rather than revolutionary in its aims.

By the end of the Second World War, Surrealism had more or less broken up as a coherent movement (an exhibition at the Galerie Maeght, Paris, in 1947, organized by Breton and Marcel Duchamp, was the last major show staged by original members). However, although it had spent its main force, the spirit of Surrealism lived on. With its stress on the marvellous and the poetic, Surrealism offered an alternative approach to the formalism of Cubism and various types of abstract art, and its methods and techniques continued to influence artists in many countries. It was, for example, a fundamental source for Abstract Expressionism. A good many individual Surrealists, too, remained devoted to its ideals long after its heyday was past and new groups emerged, for example in Chicago and Prague. Among the artists who have most unwaveringly kept the spirit of Surrealism alive is Conroy Maddox, who in 1978 said ‘No other movement has had more to say about the human condition, or has so determinedly put liberty, both poetic and political, above all else'.

Surrealism. (2012, June 2). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:53, June 6, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Surrealism&oldid=495565549

Max Ernst
Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning in 1948
Born	April 2, 1891 Brühl, Germany
Died	April 1, 1976 (aged 84) Paris, France
Nationality	German
Field	painting, sculpture, poetry
Movement	Dada, Surrealism

Max Ernst: (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.