Examine the painting. What do you
see? What do you think the painter is
trying to say? Be specific.
What is Surrealism?
 Cultural movement that began in the 1920s
 Aim is to “resolve the previously contradictory
conditions of dream and reality”
 Surrealist works feature:
 Element of surprise
 Unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur
 Expression of the philosophical movement
Surrealist Manifesto
 Andre Breton, leader of Surrealist movement, asserted that
Surrealism was a revolutionary movement
 Dictionary: Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one
proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other
manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the
absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic
and moral preoccupation.
 Encyclopedia: Surrealism. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on
the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously
neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the
disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all other
psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all
the principal problems of life.
What is Existentialism?
 Late 19th and 20th century philosophers believed that
philosophical thinking begins with the human subject – not
merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living
individual
 The Existential Attitude:
individual’s starting point
 A sense of disorientation
and confusion in the face of
an apparently meaningless
or absurd world
 Examples in art:
 Fight Club, The Matrix, Toy Story, Groundhog Day, The
Shawshank Redemption, Ordinary People
What is Expressionism?
 Originating in Germany in
the early 20th century, its
typical trait is to present
the world solely from a
subjective perspective,
distorting it radically for
emotional effect in order
to evoke moods or ideas
 Artists sought to express
meaning or emotional
experience rather than
physical reality
Franz Kafka
 Born in 1883 to a well-to-do middle class Jewish family
 Educated in German language schools of Prague and
at the German University
 Graduated with law degree, but
decided to focus on literature
 Only published a few short works
during his lifetime
 “The Metamorphosis” in 1915
Kafka’s Life
 Lived as a lonely outcast in many ways
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A German-speaker among Czech-speakers
A Jew among Christians
Had an overbearing, selfish, businessman father
Didn’t live alone until he was 33
Lived in poverty and cold weather, so his illness got worse and
worse
SAMSA = KAFKA
 Died in 1924 (at 41) of tuberculosis and ordered that his
manuscripts be burned
 His friend (and fellow writer) Max Brod instead published
Kafka’s works posthumously
“Kafkaesque”
 An unsettling, nightmarish world that is at once both
fearful and menacing in its ambiguity and complexity
 “Kafka’s haunting, disturbing, and sometimes
grotesque images, combined with his struggling but
ultimately defeated heroes, defined an age wherein
alienated man – the anti-hero – grappling with meaning
and justice in an inscrutable world, is denied answers
to both.”
The Metamorphosis
 “When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from
unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed
into a monstrous vermin.”
 Metamorphosis: A change of physical form, structure,
or substance. A fundamental change in form and often
habits of an animal accompanying the transformation of
a larva into an adult
What is The Metamorphosis really about??
Is it literal or figurative?
Themes of
The Metamorphosis
 Alienation at Work
 Father-Son Antagonism
 Betrayal
 Isolation and Self-Sacrifice
 Escaping
 Seizing Power