FREE ESSAY ON SURREALISM

SURREALISM

Surrealism
As World War I came to an end, the Dada movement evolved into a new movement called
Surrealism. This medium of art created a palette of purity and hope though automatism and
use of dreams. The Surrealists strove for simplicity and spontaneity or as some called
it, automatism. They wanted to answer the question how shall I be free? and to express
thought without any tainted preconceptions. They believed automatism would reveal the
true and individual nature of anyone who practiced it, far more completely than could any
of his conscious creations. For automatism was the most perfect means for reaching and
tapping the unconscious. (Stangos 125) This free style of expression, first used in
literary circles headed by Andre Breton and then by painters like Max Ernst, Joan Miro,
Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte, upheld the Dadaist rejection of traditional forms of
art. However, by portraying a field of unconscious thought and thereby, following an
uncontaminated reality, the surrealists avoided the horrors of premeditated warfare and
political, social and economic lies and injustices. Surrealist theorists found Surrealism
to be:
a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imaginary, the past
and the future, the communicable and the incommunicable, the heights and the depths,
cease to be perceived contradictably. Now it is in vain that one would seek any other
motive for Surrealist activity than determining this point. (Stangos 134)
By using one's unconscious mind, the imagination in a primitive state, (Stangos 126)
Surrealism found a place where contradictory thoughts might not serve as dichotomies.
Free of a socially constructed point of view or raison, a writer or artist travels to a
place of thinking that is both irrational and rational at the same time. Through the
unconscious or a highly sensitized state of mind, the surrealist brought forth a new
manner of seeing and feeling the world as it was understood and negotiated by Western
peoples.
In its development, Surrealism celebrated the art of children, mad people and primitive
art. The Surrealists believed in the innocent eye. They found that art produced by young
children was more real than that produced by adults-- since the art of adults was usually
repressed and contaminated. The Surrealists often played children's games like the one
where each player draws a head, body or legs then folds the paper after his turn so that
his contribution is not seen. The strange images that resulted provided Joan Miro and
others with inspiration for
works, such as The Harlequin's Carnival. (Stangos 127)
In addition to this technique, Max Ernst, in 1925, began using a child's technique which
led him in his direction of art for the next two decades. The technique was termed
frottage, or rubbing. It involved placing a piece of paper over a textured surface and
then rubbing it with a pencil to record the texture. Afterwards, the images produced
would be rearranged and the results were new images and associations from these initial
rubbings. These images would then go on to become inspiration and the groundwork for
paintings and sculptures.
Ordinary forms and objects were used to create art. The Surrealists saw an object and
created art out of it because of the feelings that object inspired or what that object
lent itself to be transformed into.
In addition to the childlike innocence the Surrealist sought, looked into his dreams and
into his childhood for ideas for his art. The Surrealists looked towards dreams because
they believed dreams were thoughts and imaginations in the primitive state. Dreams were
part of the unconscious, and the unconscious was untainted. In the beginning of the
Surrealist period, artists used hypnotism and drugs to venture into the unconscious state
to extract images, word and ideas. Andre Breton said that these images and feelings could
not be had in the conscious state. Quite often, the Surrealists would create dream-like
scenes and scenarios which would otherwise be impossible in the natural world.
Salvador Dali once said the only difference between himself and a madman was that he was
not mad. His paintings were often a bizarre and erotic dream world influenced by dreams
and his fear of sex. Dali painted with a photographic like accuracy and used bright
intense colors that made his works look alive. However, his subjects were obviously
static because of the dream like scenes surrounding them. He described the theoretical
basis of his paintings as paranoiac-critical: the creation of visionary reality from
elements of visions, dreams, memories and psychological or pathological distortions
through the use of familiar objects such as watches, insects and telephone and the
primary images of blood decay and excrement. (Wheeler 291) Dali's images gradually
transformed into a visual nightmare such as the melting watches of The Persistence of
Memory.
Like the impossibilities of Dali's scenes, Rene Magritte painted reality with an
illusionistic twist. In The Human Condition and other works, Magritte uses illusion to
fool the eye into thinking something is what it really is not. In The Human Condition,
the eye is fooled into believing that the painting is of a landscape being viewed through
a window. In reality, the painting is of a painting on an easel in front of a window
containing the view outside that
window. Magritte also demonstrates this illusionistic quality in The False Mirror where
the iris of the painted eye is filled with a sky scene. Surrealists were seeking-- pure,
untainted and spontaneous.