SURREALISMAVI 4M1

As of 1924, Dadaism was washed-up. A dead end. Some Dadaists went on to organize a new group of artists and poets interested in continuing some of the Dadaists’ experiments…

Man Ray, Cadeau, 1921

… interested in using found objects;

… exploring the power of juxtapositions;… employing chance in art-making;

Man Ray, Marquise Casati, 1922

… and exploring the unconscious through art.

Max Erst, At the Rendezvous of Friends, 1922

The leader of this new group was not an artist, but a poet: Andre Breton.Breton and his friends were fascinated by psychoanalysis and the ideas of Sigmund Freud.

The part of you the world sees, governed by the “Reality Principle”Your conscience (the angel and

devil on your shoulder)

Biological forces governed by the “Pleasure Principle”, driven by sexual and violent urges of which you are unaware.

Only glimpsed in dreams

The goal of the Surrealists was to tap into the ID and draw this inner world out into the physical world; a “transmutation of two seemingly contradictory states, dream and reality, into a sort of absolute reality, of surreality”

– Andre Breton

“I don’t see the hidden one in the forest”

The Domestic Stones (fragment) by Hans Arp

The feet of morning the feet of noon and the feet of evening walk ceaselessly round pickled buttocks on the other hand the feet of midnight remain motionless in their echo-woven baskets

consequently the lion is a diamond

on the sofas made of breadare seated the dressed and the undressedthe undressed hold leaden swallows between their toesthe dressed hold leaden nests between their fingersat all hours the undressed get dressed againand the dressed get undressedand exchange the leaden swallows for the leaden nests

consequently the tail is an umbrella

Hans Arp, Shirt Front and Fork

External restraints of logic, control and meaning were cast aside to arrive at the far recesses of the mind,

Joan Miro, Hand Catching a Bird

what Bresson called “pure psychic automatism”

Chance was employed by some Surrealists in order to tap into the ID;Max Ernst created chance textures by pressing wet paint between two surfaces. He called this decalcomania.

Max Ernst, Europe after the Rain, 1940

Chance was employed by some Surrealists in order to tap into the ID;Joan Miro practiced “automatic drawing”.

Joan Miro, Carnival of Harlequin, 1924

Illogical juxtapositions were used by some Surrealists;

Max Ernst, Oedipus Max, 1940

Illogical juxtapositions were used by some Surrealists;

Rene Magritte, The False Mirror, 1928

Illogical juxtapositions were used by some Surrealists;

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931

The empty plain of the unconscious where time decomposes and has no meaning:

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931

Salvador Dali, Autumnal Cannibalism, 1937

Surrealists question your perceptions and preconceptions.

Rene Magritte, Ceci n’est pas une

Pipe, 1926

Surrealists question your perceptions and preconceptions.

Salvador Dali, Visage of Mae West, 1935

Surrealism became the most influential and popular form of Modernism through the 1930s and 1940s.

Salvador Dali, “The Burning Giraffe” 1937

Rudolph Schlichter, “Blind Power” 1937

The rise of Fascism caused many Surrealists to flee Europe and move to New York City.

Fin.