Surrealism

Still:Anemic Cinema

1926

Sur - re - al - ism (n.) - the principles, ideals, or practice of producing fantastic or dreamlike imagery or effects in art, literature, film, or theater by means of unnatural or irrational juxtapositions and combinations

Surrealism • FLOURISHED IN EUROPE BETWEEN WORLD WARS I AND II. •GREW OUT OF THE EARLIER DADA MOVEMENT, “ANTI ART”•ANDRÉ BRETON PUBLISHED "THE SURREALIST MANIFESTO" IN 1924.• REUNITING CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS• DREW HEAVILY ON THEORIES ADAPTED FROM SIGMUND FREUD.

Salvador Dali (1904-1989):

•Spanish Surrealist•Painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and designer

•Most famous representative of Surrealist movement •One of Dali’s most famous acts was appearing in a diving suit at the opening of the London Surrealist exhibition in 1936.•Dali’s paintings were based on dreams, included dream like imagery and fantasy objects

Salvador Dali, Mae West's Face which May be Used as

a Surrealist Apartment, 1934-35

Gouache, with graphite, on commercially printed magazine page

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931

Philippe Halsman, Salvador Dali (Dali Atomicus), 1948

1941: American photographer Philippe Halsman meets surrealist artist Salvador Dalí in New York City

Late 1940s:Dali and Halsman begin to collaborate

1948: Dali Atomicus: Explores the idea of suspension, depicting:•three cats flying•water thrown from a bucket •an easel •a footstool•Salvador Dalí•suspended in mid-air.

•28 attempts for Halsman to be satisfied with the result. •Unretouched photo: In this version the wires suspending the easel and the painting, the hand of the assistant holding the chair, and the prop holding up the footstool can still be seen, and the frame on the easel is empty.

Philippe Halsman, Salvador Dali (Dali Atomicus), 1948, unretouched version

René Magritte (1898 – 1967): •Belgian surrealist artist •Witty and thought-provoking images•Challenges your perceptions of reality

•His accessible and vivid Surrealism caught on in the 1960s and his works (or variations on them) were popularized as album covers for such artists as Jeff Beck, Jackson Browne and Styx.

Rene Magritte, The Son of Man, 1928

The Son of Man (French: Le fils de l'homme) is a 1964 painting by the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte.

Magritte painted it as a self-portrait. The painting consists of a man in an overcoat and a bowler hat standing in front of a short wall, beyond which is the sea and a cloudy sky. The man's face is largely obscured by a hovering green apple. However, the man's eyes can be seen peeking over the edge of the apple. Another subtle feature is that the man's left arm appears to bend backwards at the elbow.

About the painting Magritte said,

At least it hides the face partly. Well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It's something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.

René Magritte, Time Transfixed, 1938,

Oil on canvas

Rene Magritte, The Treachery of Images, 1928

Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978):•Italian pre-surrealist •Pittura Metafisica (Metaphysical Painting) also called Magic Realism•"To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken it will enter the regions of childhood vision and dream." 

The artist was influential on Rene Magritte and many of the Surrealists. It has been reported that Magritte first viewed Italian artist De Chirico's 1914 The Song of Love in 1922 (the exact date is unknown).

Giorgio de Chirico, The Song of Love, 1914

Giorgio de Chirico, Two Masks, 1926

Exquisite Corpse:• exquisite corpses were first created by the surrealists, André

Breton, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Joan Miró, Yves Tanguy and others in the 1920s. Based on an old parlor game, it was played by several people, each of whom would write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold the paper to conceal what she/he had just written, and pass it on to the next player for his or her contribution.

• The technique got its name from the first sentence created: “Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau” —”The exquisite corpse will drink the young wine”. The game was quickly adapted to drawing. In this collaboration, the first person draws the head, folds the paper over so that the second person can not see the head—only where the neck starts. The second person draws the torso and then folds that over, so that the third person drawing the legs can not see the torso or the head.

André Breton, Jacqueline Lamba,

Yves Tanguy,Cadavre exquis

[Exquisite Corpse], 1938

André Breton, Jacqueline Lamba,

Yves Tanguy,Untitled “Cadavre exquis”

(”Exquisite Corpse”), 1938,

Collage on graph paper