SURREAL- [SUH-REE-UHL]ADJECTIVE1. BIZARRE, SILLY OR ABSURD2. HAVING THE DISORIENTING, HALLUCINATORY QUALITY OF A DREAM; UNREAL; FANTASTIC

What is Surrealism?

surrealists were a group of artists and writers who got together in Paris in the early 1920’s

Started with group automatic writing exercises

Opened Bureau of Surrealistic Research and published the Surrealist Manifesto

Andre Breton

Leader of the Surrealist Movement Worked during WWII as

a neurologist Fascinated by the work

of Sigmund Freud. Wrote the Surrealist

Manifesto: “The marvelous is

always beautiful. Anything marvelous is always beautiful, in fact, only the marvelous is beautiful.”

Not just art

Surrealism was not just an art movement It went beyond

paintings and sculpture.

Used writings, film, photos and exhibitions as artifact to convey their way of thought.

Dreams and the Imagination Surrealists showed

the type of things that might be seen in dreams Very interested in

imagination and the subconscious

subconscious thoughts and feelings were hidden behind rational (reasonable) thought

Champ de Mars, Marc Chagall

The surrealist idea:

Surrealists wanted to break free of every day expectations, routines, and conventions

surrealist art should bring random, everyday objects together outside of normal settings to make people look at them differently Aphrodisiac Telephone

Salvidor Dalí 1936

Renee Magritte

Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see, but it is impossible. Humans hide their secrets too well....

Le Fils De L'Homme (Son of Man)Rene Magritte 1973

Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition: The extra emphasis given to a comparison when the contrasted objects are close together.

“The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture "This is a pipe," I'd have been lying” "La Trahison des Images“ The Treachery of

ImagesRene Magritte 1928-29 Oil on Canvas

The Surrealist Object:

  Surrealists created objects which juxtaposed wildly dissimilar things in order to create a third reality, a surreality

They wanted to defamiliarize objects from their every day use.

ObjectMeret Oppenheim 1936

The GiftMan RayAlberto Giacometti, "Boule

suspendue",1930

Also called “found art”

Focused on the context the artist created for the artist

The point was not to be beautiful

Art should shock the viewer into looking at things differently

'Fountain' Marcel Duchamp 1917

The Ready-made

"Even standing in the corner it wouldn't do, for then it suddenly became a shovel again... When our little went on tour, a janitor at a Museum in Minnesota the next winter mistook it for a shovel, as well he might, and went to work on a snowdrift, doing Duchamp's inscription no good" (30).

In Advance of the Broken Arm Marcel Duchamp 1913

Marcel Duchamp Fresh Widow1920, replica 1964

The Bottle RackMarcel Duchamp 1914

Salvador Dali

SALVADOR DALI

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.

"There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.“ –Salvador Dali

Personification

giving human traits (qualities, feelings, action, or characteristics) to non-living objects (things, colors, qualities, or ideas).

Anthropomorphism n.

Attribution of human motivation, characteristics, or behavior to inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena.

"spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the associations and interpretations of delirious phenomena."

THE ‘PARANOIC-CRITICAL METHOD’

"In the Surrealist period I wanted to create the iconography of the interior world and the world of the marvelous, of my father Freud. Today the exterior world and that of physics, has transcended the one of psychology. My father today is Dr. Heisenberg."