Surrealism

Sur - re - al - ism - a style of art and literature developed in the 20th century, stressing the subconscious or non-rational significance of imagery arrived at by automatism or the exploitation of chance effects.

Surrealism was developed by the 20th-century literary and artistic movement. The surrealist movement of visual art and literature, flourished in Europe between World Wars I and II.

Surrealism grew out of the earlier Dada movement, which before World War I produced works of anti-art that deliberately defied reason; but Surrealism emphasis was not on negation but on positive expression.

Max Ernst2 April 1891 1 April 1976A German painter, sculptor, graphic artist,

and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst is considered to be one of the primary pioneers of Surrealism.

Ernst developed a fascination with birds that was prevalent in his work. His alter ego in paintings, which he called Loplop, was a bird. He suggested this alter-ego was an extension of himself stemming from an early confusion of birds and humans. He said that one night when he was young he woke up and found that his beloved bird had died, and a few minutes later his father announced that his sister was born.

Loplop introduces Loplop

Ubu Imperator, (1923)

L'Ange du Foyer, (1937)

He also created another technique called 'grattage' in which paint is scraped across canvas to reveal the imprints of the objects placed beneath. He uses this technique in his famous painting 'Forest and Dove'

The Elephant Celebes

Exquisite Cadaver Among Surrealist techniques exploiting the

mystique of accident was a kind of collective collage of words or images called the cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse). 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 part of it, and pass it on to the next player for his contribution.

The technique got its name from results obtained in initial playing, "Le cadavre / exquis / boira / le vin / nouveau" (The exquisite corpse will drink the young wine).

Other examples are: "The dormitory of friable little girls puts the odious box

right" "The Senegal oyster will eat the tricolor bread."

These poetic fragments were felt to reveal what Nicolas Calas characterized as the "unconscious reality in the personality of the group" resulting from a process of what Ernst called "mental contagion.“

How To Play:1. Get in groups of 3 to 5 2. Decide who goes first, second, and so on…3. Player one writes a sentence (something

simple) covers part of his/her sentence and shows it to player two. Player two writes down what they are shown.

4. Player two adds to the phrase then covers part of the phrase and shows it to player three

5. Continue until all members have add to the phrase

Salvador DalíBorn :Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto

Dalí i Domènech May 11, 1904 January 23, 1989

Dalí was highly imaginative, and also had an affinity for partaking in unusual and grandiose behavior, in order to draw attention to himself. This sometimes irked those who loved his art as much as it annoyed his critics, since his eccentric manner sometimes drew more public attention than his artwork.

In 1931, Dalí painted one of his most famous works, The Persistence of Memory which introduced a surrealistic image of soft, melting pocket watches. The general interpretation of the work is that the soft watches are a rejection of the assumption that time is rigid. This idea is supported by other images in the work, such as the wide expanding landscape, and the other limp watches, shown being devoured by ants.

The Persistence of Memory

The Dali Atomicus