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"Luminous Art & Design :: Art & Artists"
Surrealism :: Biography and Books"
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Surrealism (1924-1960’s) is cultural movement influenced by the theories of Freud, that attempted to express the imaginations free of self censoring and conscious control. Best known artist are André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Louis Aragon.
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Surrealism (1924-1960's) is a literary and art movement of the 20th century that is influenced by the psychoanalytic work of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Surrealism attempts to express imaginations of the subconscious mind with no intention of making the work logically comprehensible. Surrealists admired the artwork of the insane for its freedom of expression.
After the First World War Surrealism's leader André Breton began experimenting with automatic writing, and published these writings, as well as accounts of dreams in the literary journal Littérature. The publication of Manifeste du surréalisme in 1924 finally established the movement Surrealism. In this manifesto the Surrealists declared their intents and philosophy, which was expressing the functioning of thought in the absence of conscious moral or aesthetic self-censorship. Drawing on the theories of Sigmund Freud, the unconscious was seen as the wellspring of the imagination.
In the start, it was only a literary movement. Breton doubted that visual arts could be useful in the Surrealist movement for they were less open to automatism. Surrealist writers as Louis Aragon, Paul Éluard, André Breton, Robert Desnos, and Jean Cocteau were mostly interested in automatic writing and associations of words. The literal meaning was less important and therefore the Surrealist’s literary works are extremely difficult to read. Themes for literary works were often surprise, coincidences or chance encounters.
Surrealist paintings were developed later, but are now better known that the literary style.
The style focuses on psychological states which resemble dreams and fantasy and can be described into two main categories: those that use conventional techniques to create fantastic images, such as Salvador Dalí, who developed his ‘paranoiac-critical method’
and those that preferred an abstract style, such as Max Ernst, who used frottage and collage to express the unconscious, and Dominguez's decalcomania.
The Golden Age of Surrealism was in the 30s of the last century. Great works were produced in the year 1931. Salvador Dalí; The Persistence of Memory. Magritte's Voice of Space. Yves Tanguy's Promontory Palace. The characteristics of their style (depictive, abstract, psychological) stood for the alienation which many people felt in the modern period.
There was critique on the Surrealists as well. Freud himself claimed that it a mistake to regard Surrealist art works as direct manifestations of the unconscious, when they were indeed highly shaped and processed by the ego and that the Surrealists were deceiving themselves. However, they produced great works that had an impact in many other fields and tried to liberate imagination. And they had an impact on radical and revolutionary politics that was especially visible in the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s.
There were frequent expulsions from the movement and dissolution was threatened more than once. However, it is not clear if Surrealism ended and when it did end. Some historians say that the style ended during the Second World War, but the organized movement lived on until the death of leader André Breton in 1966. Also the death of Salvador Dalí in 1989 is seen as the end of Surrealism.
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