Surrealism originated in France, Paris in 1924 and it is known to be a development of another art movement, Dada. Surrealism shared some Dadaist ideas, but they set out to be better organized and more relevant to the real world. Surrealism flourished between the years 1924 and 1950 and it has influenced the world and has continued to inspire or be plagiarized in industries such as; literature, advertising, fashion, the press, film and in other art movements, such as Fluxus and Abstract Expressionism. Deeply influenced by psychoanalysis, writers and artists attempted to tap into the repressed realm of the unconscious mind in order to liberate culture from conscious logic and reason. The word surreal is now in common usage, but it did not exist until 1917 when Guillaume Apollinaire first invented the expression. Surrealism happened during a time after the Great War, Andre Breton, a French doctor who had fought in the trenches during the First World War, led it. I will be discussing about well-known Surrealist painters such as René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Alberto Giacometti and Max Ernst later on in this essay.

The term “Surrealists” is used to describe particular artists who stop thinking consciously and let their unconscious mind take over. This simply means allowing their pens, pencils or paintbrushes to make marks such as lines, words or shapes. This technique of using the unconscious mind was strongly influenced by the theories of Sigmund Freud who is a famous psychologist, best known for developing the theories and techniques of psychoanalysis. Freud’s idea of the unconscious mind having the creative potential in art is that the neuroses caused by memories and desires that had been repressed from the conscious mind to the unconscious. He believes that the unconscious mind was the source of imagination and it should be accessed to achieve maximum creativity.

Furthermore, there seem to have three main approaches regarding Surrealism and unlocking the unconscious mind. First, it was Automatism, the creation of imagery through mechanical techniques in order to stimulate imagination. Second technique was collage and ‘frottage’, which was created and discovered in 1925 by Max Ernst. It involved rubbing a pencil or almost-dry paintbrush on paper or textile placed over an object with an uneven surface, revealing the texture of the under-lying object. The second and third technique was said to be “more enduring”. ‘Grattage’, which involved scratching the painted surface on the canvas with pointed tools to make it more tactile and ‘Decalcomania, which involved pressing liquid paint between two canvases and then pulling the canvases apart to produce ridges and bubbles of pigment.

They were realistic or dream-like; a good example of this technique shown in artist’s works would be René Magritte. These artists continually tried to work towards an internal image, which was either improvised through automatism or represented an inner vision. However, what was common between automatism and dream-like works were their visionary, poetic and metaphorical treatment of their subjects. Viewers would often be challenged in their own perspectives because the dream-like visuals cause them to become more skeptical. The works of a Surrealist are often seen as illogical and abstract because a surreal painting looks more than real, in other words, beyond realistic.

Unit 5: Art Contextual Studies

Surrealism Essay

The surrealists did not paint non-representational pictures. All Miro’s, Masson’s and Arp’s works, however abstract they appear, the works always relate to or at least suggest a subject. Out of these three artists, I personally find Joan Miro’s style of work more eye-catching and engaging to the audience. Joan Miro who is a Catalan painter born in Barcelona, Spain combines abstract art with Surrealist fantasy to create his lithographs, murals, tapestries and sculptures for public spaces. He was known for his signature colourful, biomorphic forms, roughly geometric shapes, and recognizable objects are expressed in multiple media forms, from ceramics to engravings to large bronze installations.

‘The Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers’ by Joan Miro was created in 1941, when he set his mind to create new challenges in composition.

When you take a quick look at this mixed media piece using gouache, oil wash and charcoal on paper, visuals of a tiger, human eye may strike you from the crowd of geometric shapes. It has a solid colour background that emphasizes the simplified forms and lines that when put together, mimics the appearance of a complex constellation in the night sky. The entire sheet of paper is covered with hourglass shapes and different forms suggesting stars, eyes, triangles, and crescents that are linked by black thin lies to evoke fantastical thoughts. The overall impression of this piece is very overwhelming and busy as the whole piece if full of geometrics that are all linked together to form the constellation.

In the middle of producing the constellation series, he experienced a personal crisis, which was triggered by the Spanish Civil War and World War 2. Miró was forced to flee with his family from France to Mallorca to escape advancing German troops. As an audience, you can easily sense how Miró was feeling when he was able to complete this piece of work after having to flee. Miro often referred his constellation collection to himself; it is a contrast of the dark period of time. Their consistent strength, vivid colours, and poetry provided a striking contrast. The crowded, chaotic feeling of these compositions in some ways reflect Miró’s feelings regarding in the violence in Europe at the time. The colour palette is dull and toned down, which depicts sadness. Although the background is dull, the foreground is slightly more colourful with some geometric shapes filled in with brighter colours. This could imply that there is hope within the dullness, which could reflect back to the personal crisis he experienced.

Unit 5: Art Contextual Studies

Surrealism Essay

His artworks are often seen as it being illogical and abstract as he makes use of geometric shapes and vibrant colours. I think he has a tendency of drawing multiple small objects that all represent a certain thing or is relatable to his own life. Taking this piece of artwork as an example, it represents what Surrealist artists do because although the painting means something to Miro, to the audience, it looks as if he drew them randomly once inspirations strikes him. No one would be able to tell that he has actually planned out the composition that makes up to a constellation as the black thin lines looks really random.

Joan Miro took inspiration from the publication of Sigmund Freud’s ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ similar to other Surrealists. In the book published in 1899 ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’, he identified a part of the human mind where memories, intuition and our most fundamental instincts are stored. Freud called this the unconscious and he also believed that the unconscious could be accessed through certain methods. One of the methods to help unlock the unconscious was the technique ‘free association’, where a person does not think rationally. Other than this inspiration source, Miro also took inspiration from the night, from music, and from the stars to create the image of the constellations. Miro tested the limits of representation and relying on the imagination rather than the objective world, and also identified an aesthetic point of no return.

While Miro’s imagination is juxtaposed with simple, recognizable forms, Salvador Dali revisited the memories from his childhood and explored the theme of Paranoia in some of his works. Dali’s childhood memories was particularly memorable and depressing because his mother was not very well and he was usually left alone with his father who was a very violent figure. His father would not tolerate Dali’s outburst and would punish him severely, which led Dali to having an unforgettable childhood.

Dali was strongly influenced by the dream-like works of the Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico but his main influence in his personal life and in many of his paintings is his wife, Gala. His major contribution to the Surrealist movement was what he called the “paranoiac-critical method”, a mental exercise of accessing the subconscious to further enhance a person’s creative thinking. He believed that this method could avoid having to politically conquer the world. He felt that by using his own vision to colour reality to his liking, it would become unnecessary to actually change the world. Other than that, Dali’s paintings became associated with three general themes, man’s universe and sensations, sexual symbolism and ideographic imagery.

In 1929, he expanded his artistic exploration into the world of filmmaking when he collaborated with Luis Buñel on the film Un Chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog). This film was known for its opening scene- a stimulated slashing of a human eye by a razor.

I feel that one of Dali’s most significant Surrealism painting would be ‘La Main’ (1930) although he was known for his melting clocks, which could be seen in ‘The persistence of memory’. La Main basically means ‘The Hand’ and the

Unit 5: Art Contextual Studies

Surrealism Essay

painting depicts a woman’s face with medusa-like hair, which is thought to have been inspired by an Art Nouveau pin box owned by Dali. It also depicts a scroll-like base, which the man sits in, founded on a turn-of-the-century base of a statue in Barcelona.

In this painting, it seems unrealistic to have such a big figure in the middle of nowhere. As an audience, you can tell that the figure is actually big in size because of the tiny human beings drawn below and around the figure. They are scattered around and their faces are unclear, making it hard for the audience to depict their emotions. Although the emotions are not clear, from the way Dali painted the humans, it seems as if they are in their family groups and a few of them look horrified from the way they are positioned. This could be related to World War 1 to a certain extent because the theme death seems to be portrayed by the figure and the colour palette used. The man sitting on the base looks abnormal with bloodstains on his face and on his trousers. Another thing that is abnormal is his hand that has been stretched out to reach for something. The arm of his is small and it slowly grows to a bigger size once it reaches the mid part of the hand. This style of surrealism could be seen as dream-like images where things seem unreal from the audience’s point of view. The colour used in the background also seems dream-like and it emphasizes how close the sky is to the human beings and the figure that is dominating the whole area. The fact that Dali purposely made a contrast in the sizes of the subjects in the painting shows that he wanted to portray the power there is within the figure. Dali’s manner of revealing the gap between reality and illusion influenced all manner of modern artists. He is considered one of the major Surrealists who used shock to illustrate moments of pleasure.

Similar to Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte would also be thought of when people come across the word ‘Surreal’. Dali is perhaps the only other Surrealist whose work could be compared to Magritte’s because they both share a similar technique and working style.

Rene Magritte was born in Lessines, Belgium and he was the most celebrated Belgian artist of the twentieth century with his approach in Surrealism. Repetition was an important strategy for Magritte, informing not only his handling of motifs within individual pictures, but also encouraging him to produce multiple copies of some of his greatest works. His interest in the idea of repetition may have come from Freudian psychoanalysis, for which repetition is a sign of trauma. Magritte would leave objects incomplete and play with their

Unit 5: Art Contextual Studies

Surrealism Essay

placement in reality, playing with logic. His works often did not provide answers, but only confusion and questions as to why.

One of my favorite Surrealism paintings done by Magritte is ‘Le modèle rouge’ which was produced in 1937. It is a very good example of Surrealism because it demonstrates the illogicalness and randomness depicted by the pair of men’s leather boots on a sand and gravel ground, against a backdrop of grained wooden planks.

It is thought that Max Ernst suggested the idea to Magritte, having seen the motif on the sign of a cobbler’s shop in Touraine. The colour palette of this painting is restricted by the visual elements to only browns and ochre. The overall impression of it is very dull and vintage-like. Everything seems to match up together and nothing really stands out from the piece as everything has an equal significance. In Magritte’s ‘Le modèle rouge’, he often blocked a subject’s face with a hanging object to challenge human assumptions to a certain extent and placed ordinary objects in unusual contexts to give new meaning and thoughts to familiar things. Just like this painting has shown, the surrealist detail lies in the fact that the front of the boots naturally transforms into a pair of human feet. This is when the audience question themselves, “why does the pair of shoes not have a closure in front but instead a pair of human feet?” This piece of work gives a sense of humor because it is so unusual to be able to apply this to real life. Magritte’s work has a deep emphasis on concept and its close association with commercial art, focusing on every objects.

Moving on to another Surrealist Max Ernst, he was born into a middle-class Catholic family in Germany, near Cologne. He was a shocking and innovative artist who accessed his unconscious for dream-like imagery that mocked social conventions. A soldier in World War 1, Ernst emerged deeply traumatized and highly critical of western culture. This was the start of the basis of his artwork; it allowed his vision to change to thinking that the modern world is irrational. Ernst attacked the conventions and traditions of art; he questioned the importance of art by creating non-representational works without clear narratives. He was one of the first artists to apply Sigmund Freud’s dream theories in order for him to explore his own creativity. He has attempted to

Unit 5: Art Contextual Studies

Surrealism Essay

freely paint from his inner mind and in an attempt to reach the early development stage, which one is not yet able to communicate by means of words, preverbal state. From this attempting, he expressed his early emotions and revealed his personal traumas, which then became the subject of his collages and paintings.

‘Pieta or revolution by night’ produced in 1923 explores one of the great themes of European religious art. He is interested in Psychology, not religion.

This surrealist painting depicts a man, the artist himself supported in the arms of a kneeling bowler-hatted figure. Neither the supported nor the supporting figure seems full alive because the grey flesh of the one held up is like a recreation of a stone or a ghost. The bowler-hatted helper is brown, like a figure of clay or wood. The colours have a great significance in this piece as it easily depicts emotions and new thoughts, depending on the audience. In the background, there is a device that looks as if it is receiving messages from this realm of the unreal, in surrealist terms, the realm of dreams.

Ernst is trying to recreate the pitiful moment when Mary supports her dead son Christ on her lap, which flourished as a sculptural genre. Ernst attacked the conventions of traditions of art and was one of the first artists to apply Freud’s dream theories in order for Ernst to explore the source of his own creativity.

The most important contribution to Surrealist sculpture is probably Alberto Giacometti’s work of the 1930s. He explored themes deriving from Freudian psychoanalysis, like sexuality, obsession and trauma and developed a variety of different sculptural objects. The sculptures almost encourage the audience to physically interact with them, an idea which was very radical at the time.

Although in 1950s, the art world in both Europe and United States was dominated by abstract painting, Giacometti’s figurative sculpture came to be a hugely influential model. He is best remembered for his figurative work, which helped make the motif of the suffering human figure a popular symbol of post-war trauma. His figures represented human beings alone in the world, turned in

Unit 5: Art Contextual Studies

Surrealism Essay

on them and failing to communicate with people, despite their overwhelming desire to reach out.

One of my favorite works done by Giacometti is ‘La table Surrealiste’ produced in 1933. The form of the sculpture is abnormal as the hand of the women is misplaced on the table. This could be described as an oneiric surreal piece because it is dream-like and not realistic. It almost questions the audiences’ judgment, as the audience would have to observe it a several times.

Sculptures are unlike paintings; it is better to actually be there to see the finished piece rather than seeing an image of it. From this point of view of the image, it looks as if the table of the sculpture is not touching the floor but is hanging in mid air. This is only the case if the sculpture is view on image from this perspective. The women in the image covered with a head cloth reminds me of Mother Theresa who was a lifesaver in the history. One of her eyes is covered and the eye that is not covered seems to have no eyeballs. This could mean that she is disabled or injured because one of her eyes is covered and she looks shocked. The positioning of her hands is not positioned properly as where a normal hand should be placed. This deliberate misplacement makes the sculpture look more abstract because it is random and illogical. The hand is obviously chopped off from the body of the women because you can see the disconnection at the wrist area. Although colours cannot depict any emotions from this sculpture, from what I observed, it seems to depict sadness and trauma. It is illogical because the body part of the women is missing and it is just floating in mid air while her hand is being removed and put in front of her. The hand sign it is showing looks as if the women is pointing to the other side or asking someone to handshake her. This is an example of how Giacometti makes use of his composition to make the audience feel engaged and physically interact with the sculpture. Giacometti’s work of the 1930s represents probably the most important contribution to Surrealist sculpture. He explored the themes derived from Freudian psychoanalysis, like sexuality, obsession and trauma.

Surrealism in general is very influential, as it has influenced contemporary culture, art, cinema, fashion and literature. It might not be noticeable but the

Unit 5: Art Contextual Studies

Surrealism Essay

elements of Surrealism are still used up until this day, and are all around us. The unconscious played a large role in surrealist works and one of the underlying themes was to try to create images of unconscious worlds after accessing the unconscious mind. It was achieved through the use of symbolism and the placing of objects where they wouldn’t normally be to create a whole new meaning. This would also give the objects a new life outside of the one in conventional reality. Such techniques are widely and successfully used in advertising today in order to manipulate the common perception of the product advertised.

In this sense, this art movement was one of the leading influences, certainly in painting and sculpture and also perhaps culturally, in the 20th century. Regarding the influence of Surrealism on Fashion, Salvador Dali had some very interesting connections with Fashion although some of his costume designs were not wearable; it has always been treated as a fashionable art piece. He once collaborated with the great Surrealist of fashion, Elsa Schiparelli, one of the most original fashion designers of the 20th century. They created the Lobster Dress in 1937, based around the lobster motif, which was inspired by Dali’s Lobster Telephone. The ideas of the Lobster Dress have developed further more nowadays but Dali and Schiparelli influenced it.

Unit 5: Art Contextual Studies

Surrealism Essay