paper







The History of Surreal Art and the Artists that Influenced It It all started when a man stared into the dull face that consumed a painting; her blank stare and beloved meaning captured him. Slowly, he added something black onto the painting. Several days later, people were shocked when they saw a mustache drawn onto a copy of the painting //Mona Lisa//; thus begins the movements dada and surrealism (Esaak, 2003). Surrealism began in Europe about 20 years after WWII and came to New York in 1941 (Surrealism, 2008). Surrealism was an interesting art movement because it changed the way people thought and viewed reality. Formed from dada, Surrealism, an art movement that deals with the subconscious mind, dreams, and imagination, has been strongly influenced by Sigmund Freud, André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Rene Magritte, and Max Ernst. Surrealism was created from dada, an art movement that started between the first and second world wars (Essak, 2003). Dadaists used art to metaphorically spit on nationalism, rationalism, materialism, and anything else they felt contributed to WWII. They were fed up with the war and didn’t want any part of society’s traditions, including artistic traditions (Essak, 2003). Dadaists combined obscene humor, puns, and normal objects to make “art” and pushed them into the face of the public (Essak, 2003). Dadaists had one simple rule; never follow any rules (Essak, 2003). Unlike dada’s artwork that was made to purposely challenge boundaries, surrealism had a more positive goal of creating something unbelievable with a realistic touch (Essak, 2003). Even though dada didn’t want to mean anything, it influenced many different types of arts and is responsible for surrealism (Essak, 2003). The surreal movement started in 1924 in Paris by André Breton, a French poet, when he wrote //Manifest of Surrealism// (Surrealism, n.d.). The first pages of //Manifest of Surrealism// were about dull book characters and how people have the same old predictable ideas (Breton, 1924). He questioned why it’s hardly acceptable to use imagination to think outside the box; he also stated that even though people say dreams are just a jumbled up mess that dreams actually show organization, people just fail to see it (Breton, 1924). When viewing any work of surreal art it is obvious how much the artist used their imagination and may have even based their creation off of a dream. The objective of surreal art was to astonish their viewer by showing an alternate view of reality. Surrealists wanted to make sure their audience was drawn into their work by making them question the importance, if any, of what they were looking at and the feelings and thoughts that had been produced by their work (Bradbury, 2002). Instead of consciously asking themselves where and what they wanted to paint or draw, surrealists would subconsciously draw or paint. Surrealists learned about the subconscious from using Sigmund Freud’s theories. Sigmund Freud was a psychologist who thought dreams showed the unconscious at work; his book, //The Interpretation of Dreams,// was vital to surrealism (Surrealism, N.D). Freud recognized a part of the brain where our most basic instincts and memories are kept (Surrealism, N.D.). He named this the unconscious because most of the time we don’t realize it’s there (Surrealism, N.D.). Our personality traits and how we act in certain situations all come from our subconscious mind (Shah 2000). Sometimes when you’re sleepy and your eyelids keep lifting up and down, you “think” you see something. Some nights you continuously wake up with a million thoughts and ideas running through your head as you go back and forth from being asleep to being conscious of what’s going on around you. During those times are some examples of when your subconscious is at work; you can’t force yourself to “see” something when you’re conscious nor can you have as many innovate ideas when you’re completely “awake”, according to surrealists. While a surreal artists’ subconscious was at work they would write down their feelings, what they saw, etc. and base their artwork off of what they wrote down. There are two kinds of surreal art; automatism and veristic surrealism (Surrealism n.d.). Out of those two types, automatism focused more on using the subconscious mind to create art. Automatism was a way of trying to remove the alert (conscious) controls of the brain from the process of painting and poetry (Welsh, 2008). Automatists felt that by doing this the subconscious could be reached while a person was conscious (Sanchez, N.D.). After images were subconsciously made, the artist would either leave what they created alone or would consciously elaborate on it (Automatism, 2009). Automatists would do things that were similar to free writing where they would continuously write down words, drawings, and ideas even if their mind was blank. Unlike some style of artists, automatists were less analytical and thought images shouldn’t have to have a meaning; they also focused more on feelings. Automatism dealt with not worrying about grammatically correct words and felt censorship was unnecessary when it dealt with their art (Automatism, 2009). Automatists were influenced by Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, which he used to reveal the unconscious mind of his patients (Surrealism, N.D.). They also thought that the images and symbols they produced from using his theory, even if strange to the conscious mind, were artistically important (Automatism, 2009). Surreal automatists also thought the training academic of art was unfit for the free expression of feeling, which had dominated the history of art (Sanchez, n.d.); this is one of the ways automatism and veristic surrealism are different. Veristic art in surrealism was used as a more educational and explainable way to create micro images, instead of macro images of things in the world (Welsh, 2008); it was a style of surreal art that showed the dream world in detail (Smith, 2009). Most of the time, veristic artists left their art free to interpretation. Unlike automatists, veristic surrealists thought academic discipline and form was a way to show how subconscious images are truthful; they also thought that by using academic forms they could freeze images that, if not recorded, would easily disappear again into the subconscious (Sanchez, n.d). The word veristic was defined as realistic which was slightly antonymous because veristic artists painted things of fantasy that sometimes had no connection with reality (Smith, 2009). They wanted their paintings and drawings to represent a link between abstract and realistic things (Smith, 2009). Veristic surrealists also felt that the world could be comprehended, not by looking at an object, but by looking into them (Sanchez, n.d.). Even though automatism and veristic surrealism are different, they have one thing in common; they wouldn’t have been created if not for André Breton. André Breton was a French poet, essayist, critic, editor, chief promoter, and was the main founder of the surrealist movement (Thomas, 1998). Before he founded surrealism, Breton spent part of WWI as an orderly at a front line hospital that dealt with the victims of psychiatric and psychological injury. He was amazed by a story he heard of a soldier that had cut himself off from reality while facing an enemy in the trenches (Surrealism, N.D. Welsh). Breton heard how the soldier stood up and invited the enemy to shoot at him (Surrealism, N.D. Welsh). The soldier refused to believe the horrors of the war were real. He refused to accept the reality of the death, blood, and serious injuries he saw around him everyday. He chose to shut them out. Breton was captivated by this possibility. The soldier had chosen to deny the reality of the normal world for the safer reality of his imagination (Surrealism, N.D. Welsh). Breton then started to believe a better world could exist through the imagination and dreams (Surrealism, N.D. Welsh). This is how the thought of surrealism was made. After learning more about Freud’s theories and with the help of Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault, Breton soon started creating manifestos that explained surrealism (Thomas, 2003). André Breton created his First Surrealist Manifesto in 1924 and his Second Surrealist Manifesto in 1929; he also made a third surreal manifesto with the help of other surreal writers and artists (Cusimano, 1997). From his manifestos, several writers and artists joined the surreal movement; one of which is named Salvador Dalí. Salvador Dalí is one of the most famous surreal artists; he would paint over brush marks for hours in order to have a smooth effect on his paintings and would often use the same surreal image in his works, such as a melting clock or crutch, to make sure the viewer knew the work was by him (Bradbury 2002). Dalí would sometimes use legends, old paintings, and pre-existing myths as a starting point to his paintings (Bradbury 2002). He would take those stories or paintings and reinterpret the characters and items involved in them through a process he created in 1930 called the “paranoia-critical method”. He used his paranoia-critical method to create and show double, delusional, and deceptive images that covered most of his artwork (Bradbury 2002). For a timeline of when his most famous paintings were made, see appendix A. Towards the end of the thirties, André Breton criticized Dalí for making what he called “puzzle” paintings; Breton thought their only meaning was to make the viewer differentiate images (Bradbury 2002). This wasn’t the only problem Breton had with Dalí. Influenced from his wife Gala, Dali would frequently rush off a sketch or painting which was sold quickly for profit. Breton gave Dalí the nickname of Avida Dollars, which meant “greed for money,” because of what other people and himself saw as Dalí’s favor of profit over art (Bradbury 2002). When Dalí painted //The Enigma of Hitler// in 1939, he was placed on “trial” by Breton and other surrealists. Hitler’s oddly shaped back amazed Dalí ever since the early thirties and while painting //The Enigma of Hitler//, he once had to be stopped from painting a swastika sign on a nurse in his painting (Bradbury 2002)//.// Surrealists looked at Dalí’s fascination with Hitler as proof of his political beliefs and bad morals. Dalí had said before that dictators are inevitably a part of human nature and that his painting was just his analysis of different dreams he had about Hitler (Bradbury 2002). The final straw of Dalí’s membership with the surreal group happened in 1944 when Dalí created an advertisement design for a hosiery company; he also painted portraits for money. Using artwork as a way to make money was looked down upon to surrealists and by then Breton and other surreal people talked about Dalí as if he were no longer alive (Bradbury 2002). After being disowned from the surrealist group, Dalí started painting more classically; this is shown in his painting //My Wife, Looking at Her Own Body.// He added a surreal touch to that painting by adding an asymmetrical gilt frame which could have been influenced by the painter Rene Magritte (Bradbury 2002). “My painting is visible images which conceal nothing.. they evoke mystery and indeed when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question 'What does that mean'? It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.” – Rene Magritte (Rene…). Rene Magritte was a veristic surrealist whose work didn’t normally include things of fantasy. Instead, his works were plain but included ideas or items that clearly clashed with each other (Smith 2009); he is most known for how he combined strange objects with normal, everyday things (Leslie, 1997). A man in a suit and doves appear frequently in his paintings. Whatever Magritte painted, he liked to make sure people knew it wasn’t actually the object (“Rene Magritte…”); he stressed this in his painting of an apple and another painting of a pipe in “The Treachery of Images”. Magritte wanted people to understand that even if his paintings looked exactly like an object, it never could be that tangible object. Another surreal artist that was able to evoke mystery like Magritte was Max Ernst. “A Dada exhibition. Another one! What’s the matter with everyone wanting to make a museum piece out of Dada? Dada was a bomb … can you imagine anyone, around half a century after a bomb explodes, wanting to collect the pieces, sticking it together and displaying it?” – Max Ernst (Quotations by…) Ernst was sometimes called the least bound and most innovative of the Surrealists in using new techniques (Richards, 1997). He was committed to creating identifiable images through ones made to question the nature of the imaging and image. While the surrealist group was trying to differentiate itself from Dada, Max Ernst was working with the issues that interested surrealists most. Ernst had studied the works of Freud and he also visited an asylum to see how powerful images were to those judged insane (Richards, 1997). Ernst also created a technique using rubbings in 1925, known as frottage, in which he acquired an image by laying paper over a textured surface, then rubbing it with a crayon or pencil (Richards, 1997). He sometimes elaborated on what was created from doing this or he left it how it was. Ernst also collaborated on an unwritten manifesto with André Breton which most of his paintings contributed (Richards, 1997). André Breton defined surrealism as a way of reuniting the conscious and subconscious in order to join dream and fantasy with the everyday world (Thomas, 1998). An interesting thing about surrealism is its use in our pop culture today. Look at avant-garde fashion, the game concentration, or at what certain music artists wear in music videos, such as Lady Gaga, and it screams surreal. Even artists today use the methods that André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Rene Magritte, and Max Ernst used many years ago. Surrealism has had a lasting effect and that’s why it’s an interesting movement. “The man that cannot visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot ” – André Breton (Breton, 1924).