Surrealism
Characteristics of Surrealism
 Elements of surprise
 Unexpected juxtapositions
 Distortions of reality
 Dream like subject matter
 Interest in the subconcious
 Magical and instictive
Surrealist Artists
Salvador Dali - Spanish
Rene Magritte - Belgian
Joan Miró - Spanish
Max Ernst - German
Giorgio de Chirico - Greek
Giorgio de Chirico.
Mystery and Melancholy of a Street.
1914.
Oil on canvas. 88 x 72 cm.
Private collection.
Surrealism
 Surrealism is a cultural movement that
began in the early 1920s, and is best
known for the visual artworks and
writings of the group members
 The surrealist movement of visual art
and literature, flourished in Europe
between World Wars I and II.
 Surrealism grew principally out of the
earlier Dada movement, which
before World War I produced works of
anti-art that deliberately defied
reason; but Surrealism emphasis was
not on denial but on positive
expression.
Surrealism
 Artists like René Magritte and Salvador Dali
ignored painting techniques of
contemporary painting but used traditional
forms of realistic painting.
 The details of the paintings were realistic, but
they were combined in such a way that the
painting as a whole was very far from
realistic.
 Just as in dreams the fleeting images of the
subconscious are mingled together to form
strange and fantastic pictures.
 The Surrealist painters applied these to
canvas and developed the possibilities of this
strange imagery in a conscious manner.
Surrealism
 Dream analysis and the hidden unconscious was of
the utmost importance to the Surrealists in developing
methods to liberate imagination.
 The group aimed to revolutionise human experience,
including its personal, cultural, social, and political
aspects, by freeing people from what they saw as
false rationality, and restrictive customs and structures.
 In 1924 The Surrealist Manifesto was published.
 The paper defined the purposes of the group and
includes citations of the influences on Surrealism, and
examples of Surrealist works
Max Ernst
Oedipus Rex, 1922
Oil on canvas
93 x 102 cm
Private collection,
Paris
Sigmund Freud
 Sigmund Freud was an Austrian
psychiatrist who founded the
psychoanalytic school of psychology.
 Freud is best known for his theories of
the unconscious mind.
 Freud called dreams the "royal road
to the unconscious".
 This meant that dreams illustrate the
"logic" of the unconscious mind.
 Influenced by the theories of
Sigmund Freud , the images found in
surrealist works are as confusing and
startling as those of dreams.
André Breton
André Breton became known as the Pope of
Surrealism, and was responsible for writing "The
Manifestos of Surrealism" (1924)
Drawing heavily on theories adapted from
Sigmund Freud, Breton saw the unconscious as
the wellspring of the imagination.
André Breton
According to Breton, Surrealism was a means of
reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of
experience so completely, that the world of
dream and fantasy would be joined to the
everyday rational world in "an absolute reality,
a surreality.”
Sigmund Freud
Automatic Writing
 Automatic writing is the process or
production of writing material that
does not come from the conscious
thoughts of the writer.
 Practitioners say that the writer's hand
forms the message, with the person
being unaware of what will be written.
 In automatic drawing, the hand is
allowed to move 'randomly' across the
paper.
 Automatic drawing was developed by
the surrealists, as a means of expressing
the subconscious.
André Masson.
Automatic Drawing.
(1924). Ink on paper,
Museum of Modern Art,
New York.
Joan Miró. Harlequin's Carnival. 1924-25.
Oil on canvas. 66 x 93 cm. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, USA.
René Magritte “The Treachery of Images (This is not a pipe),” 1929
Oil on canvas, 25 3/8 x 37”.
Salvador Dali Persistence of Memory, 1931
Oil on canvas, 24 cm × 33 cm
Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Surrealist Film – Un Chien Andalou, 1929