Surrealism

1
Surrealism

• Surrealism is a cultural movement and artistic
  style that was founded in 1924 by André Breton.
  Surrealism style uses visual imagery from the
  subconscious mind to create art without the
  intention of logical comprehensibility.

2
Surrealism

• The movement was begun primarily in Europe,
  centered in Paris, and attracted many of the
  members of the Dada community. Influenced by the
  psychoanalytical work of Freud and Jung, there
  are similarities between the Surrealist movement
  and the Symbolist movement of the late 19th
  century.

3
Surrealism

• Some of the greatest artists of the 20th century
  became involved in the Surrealist movement, and
  the group included Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador
  Dali, René Magritte, and many others.
• The Surrealist movement eventually spread across
  the globe, and has influenced artistic endeavors
  from painting and sculpture to pop music and film
  directing.

4
Surrealism

• French writer André Breton (1896-1966). At first
  a Dadaist, he wrote three manifestos about
  Surrealism in 1924, 1930, and 1934, and opened
  a studio for "surrealist research."

5
manifesto

• manifesto - A public declaration of principles,
  policies, or intentions. Although usually of a
  political nature, there is a history in art,
  especially in modernism during the first half of
  the twentieth century, of the spokesmen of
  various avant-garde movements publishing
  manifestos which declare their theories,
  motivations and direction, stimulating support
  for them or reactions against them.

6
Surrealism

• Influenced by the theories of the pioneer of
  psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (German,
  1856-1939), the images found in surrealist works
  are as confusing and startling as those of
  dreams. Surrealist works can have a realistic,
  though irrational style, precisely describing
  dreamlike fantasies.

7
Surrealism/Psychology

• The artistic style of surrealism began as an
  official movement shortly after the end of the
  first world war. In its infancy, it was a
  literary movement, but soon found its greatest
  expression in the visual arts.

8
Surrealism/Psychology

• In general, the style focuses on psychological
  states which resemble dreams and fantasy.

9
Surrealism Influences

• The artists were influenced by psychological
  research of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, who
  sought to explain the workings of the mind
  through analysis of the symbols of dreams.
  Instead of using psychoanalysis to cure
  themselves of any disturbances, the surrealists
  saw the unconscious as a wellspring of untapped
  creative ideas.

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Surrealism Influences

• "A dream that is not interpreted is like a letter
  that is not opened" is a famous quote from Freud.
  The surrealists were less interested in
  interpretation of their dream symbols than they
  were in the expressive capacity of such

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Surrealism Influences

• The surrealists admired the artwork of the insane
  for its freedom of expression, as well as
  artworks created by children. They admired
  previous artists such as Henri Rousseau, whose
  naive and self-taught works always contained an
  element of surreal fantasy. In addition, they
  looked for inspiration from masters of the
  Renaissance such as Hieronymous Bosch and Pieter
  Brueghel, whose fantastic elements can easily be
  described as surreal.

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Hieronymous Bosch
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Pieter Brueghel
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Henri Rousseau
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Summary
The word "surreal", in fact, means "above
reality". In other words, the artists believed
that there was an element of truth which is
revealed by our subconscious minds which
supercedes the reality of our everyday
consciousness.
16
Summary

• Early Surrealist work began with such chance
  techniques as rubbing a pencil over a paper
  placed on boards to see what the grain would
  suggest. Ernst used this technique and also
  spread paint at random on canvas and squashed it
  with paper to see what the resulting shapes and
  textures would suggest.

17
Summary

• Such techniques were visual extensions of
  Bretons unconscious writing and like Dr.
  Rorschachs psychological ink blot tests of 1921,
  were exercises in responding to and interpreting
  visual data freely.

18
Summary

• Later extensions of this approach developed into
  sophisticated presentations of logical or
  recognizable subject matter in very illogical
  situations or weird associations. Much of the
  later Surrealism developed around personal
  symbols which were unexplained by the artists.

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Salvador Dali(1904-1989)
20
Salvador Dali(1904-1989)

• Born on May 11, 1904, Salvador Dali would become
  one of the worlds most recognized surrealist
  artists. Raised by his lawyer/notary father and a
  mother who encouraged her artistic son, Dali grew
  up in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, having been
  told by his parents that he was the reincarnation
  of his older brother, Salvador, who died just
  nine months before Dalis birth.

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Salvador Dali(1904-1989)

• Following the death of his mother to breast
  cancer in 1921, Dali moved to the student
  residences at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid.
  He spent several years studying there and then
  shortly before his graduation, he was expelled
  for declaring that no one on the faculty of the
  school was competent enough to examine him.

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Salvador Dali(1904-1989)

• By 1931, Dali had collaborated on a short film
  with surrealist director Luis Bunuel illustrated
  a book called The Witches of Liers, a poem
  written by his friend and classmate Carles Fages
  de Climent met his muse and future wife Gala
  and painted arguably his most famous work The
  Persistence of Memory. He had officially joined
  the surrealist group in Paris, and was hailed by
  the surrealist community of artists.

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Salvador Dali(1904-1989)

• When Salvador Dali openly supported the regime of
  Francisco Franco following the Spanish Civil war,
  and showed interest in what he referred to as the
  Hitler phenomenon, he became somewhat of an
  outcast among his fellow artists. Many of his
  fellow surrealists referred to Dali in past
  tense, indicating their feeling that he was dead
  to them. He wrote prolifically during this time,
  and continued producing his art.

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Salvador Dali(1904-1989)

• In 1940, Dali and Gala moved to the United
  States, and it was during this time that Dali
  reclaimed his Catholic faith. In 1942, Dali wrote
  his autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador
  Dali. He asked an Italian monk to perform an
  exorcism on him in the late

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Salvador Dali(1904-1989)

• 1940s, and in exchange for the exorcism, he
  presented the friar with a sculpture of Jesus
  Christ on the cross, which was not discovered
  until 2005. Although they had been married
  civilly in 1934, Dali and Gala were married in
  the Catholic Church in 1958.

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Salvador Dali(1904-1989)

• In the late 1940s, Dali and Gala returned to
  Spain. Dali continued a prolific career in art,
  being one of the first artists to use holography
  and taking great inspiration from his Catholic
  faith and the events of the day, including the
  bombing at Hiroshima. From this time period, two
  of Dalis most famous works, Hallucinogenic
  Toreador and La Gare de Perpignan were created.

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Dali

• Dalis work was used in advertising campaigns,
  most notably for Chupa Chups candy and Lanvin
  chocolates, and he became fascinated by DNA and
  the hypercube, which can be seen in some of his
  later work

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Salvador Dali(1904-1989)

• King Juan Carlos of Spain bestowed upon Dali the
  title Marquis of Pubol in 1982. By this time,
  Dali was seriously ill, having been given
  unprescribed medicine by his senile wife Gala.
  The medications damaged Dalis nervous system and
  gave him Parkinsons like tremors in his hands.

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• Gala died in 1982, leaving the stricken Dali
  devastated. He was brought back to Figueres in
  1984 by friends who felt a deliberate dehydration
  of the artist and a fire in his bedroom were
  suicide attempts.

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Salvador Dali(1904-1989)

• On January 23, 1989, Salvador Dali, known for his
  contributions not only to surrealism, but also to
  fashion, theatre, and photography, died from
  heart failure. He is buried in a crypt at his
  Teatro Museo de Figueres, just steps from his
  childhood home.

31
The Persistence of Memory 1931
32
The Persistence of Memory

• The Persistence of Memory almost stands alone as
  a symbol of the movement. The melted clocks
  represent the strange warping of time which
  occurs when we enter the dream state. The
  stretched image of a man's face which is at the
  center of the painting is believed to be that of
  Dali himself, and the landscape which stretches
  out behind the scene may perhaps represent his
  birthplace, Catalonia.

33
Metamorphis of Narcissus 1937
34
Metamorphosis of Narcissus

• The Metamorphosis of Narcissus plays on the
  classical theme about a beautiful young man who
  admires his own reflection in a pool of water.
  Transfixed by his own beauty, he turns to stone.
  Always the master of illusion, Dali creates a
  double-image, where the boy's form is repeated as
  an enlarged hand holding an egg which bursts
  forth with a narcissus flower.

35
The Hallucinogenic Torreador 1969
36
The Hallucinogenic Torreador

• The Hallucinogenic Torreador is perhaps Dali's
  most successful painting involving multiple
  hidden images. A complete analysis of the
  painting would be a complex undertaking. It
  primarily focuses on the torreador
  (bull-fighter), whose face is hidden within the
  repeated representation of the Venus de Milo.

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The Hallucinogenic Torreador

• The upper portion of the painting contains the
  bull-fighter's arena, again surrounded by
  multiple images of the goddess. There is also a
  hidden image of the bull in the lower left
  quadrant of the painting (drinking water from a
  pool), and an image of a boy (possibly a
  self-portrait as a child, as his clothing
  represents the approximate time period of his
  boyhood).

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Crucifixion 1954
39
The Crucifixion

• The Crucifixion is another powerful painting. The
  innovation of a floating cross which intersects
  Christ's body gives an illusion of another
  dimension. A shocking aspect of this painting is
  that the representation is believed to be a
  self-portrait. The single figure who stands in
  adoration is believed to be that of his wife,
  Gala (who often appeared in his paintings).