Surrealism

Surrealism is an aesthetic-political movement that privileges the critical and imaginative powers of the unconscious. Often misinterpreted as an artistic movement, it transformed post-World War I visual art, writing, poetry and film.

Although surrealism is related to the earlier Dada movement, and many of its initial members came from Dada, it is significantly broader in scope than the Dada movement. While Dada is more nihilistic, surrealism is more positive in nature.

The publication of André Breton's [First] Surrealist Manifesto marked its beginning in 1924, where Breton defines surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"; "automatism" being spontaneous creative production without (conscious) moral or aesthetic self-censorship. By Breton's admission, however, as well as by the subsequent development of the movement, this was a definition capable of considerable expansion.

At first this automatism was only conceived in the realm or writing and language. Breton and Philippe Soupault wrote the first automatic book, Les Champs Magnetiques, in 1919.

It was only later that automatic drawing was developed by Andre Masson, and automatic drawing and painting, as well as other automatistic methods, such as decalcomania, frottage, fumage, grattage and parsemage became significant parts of surrealist practice. Surrealist films were made: Un Chien Andalou and L'Age D'Or.

Games such as exquisite corpse also assumed a great importance in surrealism. Surrealists continue to play old surrealist games and invent new ones, such as Time Travelers' Potlatch and What is Wrong With This Picture?.

The surrealist artists made up the "in crowd" of Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. They included Louis Aragon, Marcel Duchamp, Rene Magritte, Miro, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Giacometti, Valentine, Hugo, Oppenheim, Man Ray, Tanguy, Jacques Prévert, Raymond Queneau.

Often described as French, surrealism was in fact international from almost the earliest period (with a Czech group, for instance). Some of the most significant surrealist theorists and the most radical of surrealist methods have hailed from countries other than France (cubomania being invented by Romanian surrealist Gherasim Luca, for example).

Though surrealism is often identified in the popular mind, particularly in the United States of America, with the paintings of Salvador Dali, Dali was in fact expelled from the surrealist movement in the late 1930s for his far-right-wing tendencies, and in fact his painting after that time has little significance for surrealism and moved farther and farther away from it.

The movement successively drifted left, adherence to the Moscow communist party line became a requirement, and Breton (who would later denounce that same party line) purged those who disagreed with him as the movement gradually splintered and drifted apart, only to reunite in exile in New York in the early forties during World War II.

Upon Breton's return to Paris membership in the Paris Surrealist Group grew dramatically.

Although it is often falsely stated that surrealism ended either during or shortly after the Second World War, or with the death of Breton in 1966, the 1960s in fact saw a dramatic expansion of international surrealism, including the founding of the Surrealist Movement in the United States by Franklin and Penelope Rosemont. Other surrealist groups were later founded in the United States, such as the Portland Surrealist Group (of Oregon) and the "Surrealist Group of Palo Alto").

In 1986 the Surrealist Group in Stockholm was founded.

Surrealism continues today around much of the world.

What if you don't understand a movie like "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" ("le charm discrete de la bourgeoisie"): Please consider that Luis Bunuel was a (some say the) surreal film maker. Surrealism is according to "the Penguin all English dictionary": the school of art or literature that aims at producing irrational fantasies or hallucinatory and dream-like effects, so during the film long dinner all kinds of weird things happen and nobody gets a byte to eat. Another famous surreal artist was the painter Rene Magritte in Belgium who painted flying men with bowler hats and umbrella's and who drew a pipe and wrote under it: "Ceci n'est pas un pipe" ("this is not a pipe"). It isn't a pipe, it's a drawing of a pipe. A current example of surreal art is the series Twin Peaks by David Lynch. Most of his films are surreal. The series Northern Exposure that seems to be inspired by it is also quite surreal. Other examples are comedy-series like Green Acres and (a bit less) NewsRadio (which often refers to Green Acres by the way in the later episodes). What all these art forms have in common, is that whatever is depicted seems to be real, yet very unlikely dream-like things happen. Most of the sketches in "Monty Python's Flying Circus" are also very surreal.

By the way, the later films of Luis Bunuel aren't as surreal as his early work and that may be confusing to the unexperienced viewer. If possible try to see the 1930 movie "L'age d'or" ("the golden age") that he made together with the surreal painter Salvador Dali.

(The previous two paragraphs may need to be adapted more to the style of the rest of the article, Jaap van Ganswijk...)

Must read:

• André Breton, "Conversations: The Autobiography of Surrealism" (Gallimard 1952) (Paragon House English rev. ed. 1993).
• "What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings of André Breton" (edited and with an Introduction by Franklin Rosemont).

See also

• Cut-up technique (this technique need to be mentioned in the article above)
• Post-surrealism
• Fluxus
• Dada
• neo-surrealism
• Situationism

External links

• Czech and Slovak Surrealist Group
• GROUPE DE PARIS DU MOUVEMENT SURREALISTE
  • Zazie (member in exile of GPMS)
• Surrealism in the Netherlands
• Movimento Surrealista em Portugal
• Surrealistgruppen i Stockholm
• The Surrealist Movement in the United States
  • "Counterclockwise": Manifesto of the Surrealist Group in Wisconsin