AHT200 10A Surrealism

Paris Dada (1919-1924)

André Breton Louis Aragon

Max Ernst Paul Eluard

Philippe Soupault Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes

Like the dadaists before them, the surrealists were critical of the Enlightenment “reign of logic” and bourgeois materialism

Max Ernst, Au rendez-vous des amis, Rendezvous with Friends, 1922 oil on canvas, 130 x 95 cm, Musee Ludwig (Cologne)

Post-War Paris L: The Council of Four (the Big Four) from left to right: David Lloyd George, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, Georges

Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson in Versailles for the Paris Peace Conference in January 1919. R: French post-war pro-natalist posters

The Post-War Call to Order Pablo Picasso Three Women at the Spring 1921 oil on canvas 203.9 x 174 cm MoMA, NY

Max Ernst The Blessed Virgin chastises the infant Jesus before three witnesses - A.B, P.E and the artist, 1926

Marcel Duhamel, Our collaborator Benjamin Peret

insulting a priest, December 1926

‘We are still living under the reign of logic: this, of course, is what I have been driving at… Under the pretence of civilization and progress, we have managed to banish from the mind everything that may rightly or wrongly be termed superstition, or fancy; forbidden is any kind of search for truth which is not in conformance with accepted practices. It was, apparently, by pure chance that a part of our mental world which we pretended not to be concerned with any longer and, and in my opinion by far the most important part – has been brought back to light. For this we must give thanks to Sigmund Freud.’ (9-10)

Surrealism, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express – verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner – the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.

Surrealism

REVOLUTION! •  Of the mind: Sigmund Freud, dream and the unconscious •  Of society: Karl Marx and the PCF

RESISTANCE! •  To capitalism, nationalism and Catholicism in post-War Paris

Sigmund Freud Austrian founder of psychoanalysis

René Magritte The Interpretation of Dreams 1930

Giorgio de Chirico, The song of love, 1914 oil on canvas, 79 cm x 59 cm, MoMA, NY

Dorothea Tanning, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, (A Little Night Music),1943 Oil paint on canvas, 407 x 610 mm, Tate London

L: Max Ernst, Masson, Morise Cadavre Exquis, (Exquisite Corpse),

1927

R: Yves Tanguy, Joan Miró, Max Morise, Man Ray, Cadavre Exquis,

1927

Composite drawings of ink, pencil, and colored pencil on

paper, 35.9 x 22.9 cm

André Masson Automatic Drawing, 1924

Max Ernst More living than alive, 1925 frottage (rubbing) Frottage is a surrealist and ‘automatic’ method of creative production that involves creating a rubbing of a textured surface using a pencil or other drawing material

Max Ernst Forest and Dove, 1927 oil on canvas, 1003 x 813 mm, Tate, London grattage (scraping) In grattage the canvas is prepared with a layer or more of paint then laid over the textured object which is then scraped over.

Salvador Dali, The Metamorphoses of Narcissus, 1937 Oil paint on canvas, 511 × 781mm, Tate, London

Salvador Dalí Mountain Lake, 1938 Oil paint on canvas, 730 × 921 mm, Tate Paranoiac-critical method: “a spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the associations and interpretations of delirious phenomena.”

Dream and Dialectics

•  Dialectics: the synthesis of a thesis and its antithesis (two opposing concepts juxtaposed to make a third meaning)

•  The strange poetic juxtapositions of Comte de Lautréamont, Marxist dialectics and Freudian dreamwork (latent and manifest content of dream) provided the inspiration for Surrealist art and film.

•  Breton writes: “I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality.”

Man Ray The enigma of Isidore Ducasse,

1920 reconstructed 1971, object wrapped in felt

and string no. 8 of an edition of 10 (h) x 57.5 (w) x 21.5 (d) cm

The inspiration and the title of this object derive from a famous line in

the book Les Chants de Maldoror (1869) by Comte de Lautréamont, the

pseudonym adopted by the French poet Isidore Ducasse (1846-70):

‘He is fair … as the chance encounter

on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella!’

Meret Oppenheim, Le Déjeuner en fourrure (Breakfast in fur), 1936 Fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon, Cup (10.9 cm); saucer (23.7 cm); spoon (20.2 cm), MoMA

Surrealist Publications Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution (Surrealism in the service of the revolution) was a periodical issued by the Surrealist Group in Paris between 1930 and 1933. It was the successor of La Révolution surréaliste (published 1924–29). After the fallout with the PCF, the surrealists started Minotaure (1933 to 1939).

“Surrealism, which as we have seen deliberately opted for the Marxist doctrine in the realm of social problems, has no intention of minimising Freudian doctrine as it applies to the evaluation of ideas… Liberty has need of a moral basis, and has no meaning except in relation to a disciplined attitude.” Breton, Surrealist Manifesto (1930)

Trotsky, Rivera and Breton in Mexico, 1938

Surrealism from the mid 1930s: International and Institutionalised

Gathering of artists for The International Surrealist Exhibition, London, 1936. Back row, from left, are Rupert Lee, Ruthven Todd, Salvador Dalí , Paul Eluard, Roland Penrose, Herbert Read, E LT Mesens, George Reavey and Hugh Sykes-Davies. Front row, from left, Diana Lee, Nusch Eluard, Eileen Agar, Sheila Legge and unknown.

The Surrealists New York, 1942