ART HISTORY 132 Surrealism

Surrealism (c ) definition: Breton’s First Manifesto of Surrealism (1924) – “Surrealism rests in the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association neglected heretofore; in the omnipotence of the dream” definition: Breton’s Second Manifesto of Surrealism (1930) – “… a certain state of mind from which life and death, the real and the imaginary, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, height and depth, are no longer perceived as contradictory”

André Breton ( ) biography: petit-bourgeoisie – studied medicine and later psychiatry – met Freud in Vienna (1921) WWI: served in neurological ward – attempted to use Freudian methods to psychoanalyze his patients – wartime meetings w/ Apollinaire – joined Paris Dada group (1916) major periodicals: – La Révolution surréaliste ( ) – Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution ( ) process: “pure psychic automatism” – high degree of immediate absurdity – “a monologue poured out as rapidly as possible, over which the subject's critical faculty has no control” – “The dictation of thought, in the absence of all control by reason, excluding any aesthetic or moral preoccupation”

Surrealism context: Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) – Surrealists preoccupied w/ F’s methods of investigation – dreams: “wish fulfillment”  attempts by unconscious to resolve a conflict, whether something recent or something from the recesses of the past unconscious must distort and warp meaning of its information to make it through censorship of preconscious images in dreams are often not what appear to be and need deeper interpretation if they are to inform on structures of unconscious “phenomenon of condensation”  one symbol or image may have multiple meanings

Max Ernst ( ) biography: – born near Cologne – son of amateur painter & teacher of deaf training: self-taught while studying philosophy and University of Bonn ( ) – exhibited at first German Autumn Salon in 1913 – in 1914, became acquainted w/ Arp and they began lifelong friendship WWI: drafted into German military (1916 ) – after war, settled in Cologne – founded Cologne Dada group w/ Arp Dada: – exhibition of 1920 in Cologne closed by police on grounds of obscenity – Ernst exhibited w/ Paris Dada group and moved to Paris in 1922 leaves behind wife and son enters illegally settles into ménage à trois w/ Paul Éluard and wife, Gala, who eventually married Salvador Dalí in 1929

Ernst Oedipus Rex (1922) Oedipus Rex – subject: Freudian loving & hostile wishes children experience towards parents at height of phallic phase – theme: sadism – style: illusionistic – perspective: linear & aerial – scale: disjointed – architecture: dislocated

Ernst Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale (1924) – theme: Freudian – subject: childhood fears & anxiety produced by dreams – technique: tromp l’oeil – scale: intimate – aesthetic: illusionistic – perspective: linear & aerial

Salvador Dalí ( ) biography: son of prosperous notary training: Academy of Fine Arts (Madrid) – read Freud w/ enthusiasm – expelled for indiscipline (1923) met Gala Eluard when she visited him w/ her husband, poet Paul Eluard (1929) – became Dali's lover, muse, business manager, and chief inspiration WWII: clashed w/ Surrealists who were predominantly Marxist – fascination for Hitler – relations w/ Surrealist group became increasingly strained after 1934 – break finally came when D declared support for Franco in 1939 – Dali and Gala escaped from Europe, spending in the United States Breton gave him nickname  Avida Dollars (anagram of his name) in 1940

DALI’s The Persistence of Memory (1931)

Dalí Premonition of Civil War (1936) – alternative title: “Soft Construction w/ Boiled Beans” – method: “paranoiac-critical” – aesthetic: illusionistic – narrative: allegorical civil war  “delirium of auto- strangulation” break w/ Surrealists came when Dali supported Spanish dictator, Franco, in 1936 – figure: grotesque dismembered & contorted ecstatic grimace petrifying fingers & toes – landscape: lifeless

(Left) Dalí’s Surrealist Premonition of Civil War (1936) vs. (right) Goya’s Romantic Saturn Devouring His Son (c. 1815)

Dalí Crucifixion (1954) – relate to Renaissance: figure along CVA aerial & linear perspective naturalistic drapery, shadows, musculature – variance from Renaissance floating forms misplaced nails & absence of wounds figures’ scale reversed viewer deprived of C’s human emotion

Rene Magritte ( ) nationality: Belgian biography: mother committed suicide training: Académie Royale des Beaux Arts in Brussels ( ) style: illusionistic; deliberate literalism exhibition history: – first exhibition in Brussels in 1927; critics heaped abuse – depressed by failure, moved to Paris where he became friends w/ Breton aim: to challenge pre-conditioned perceptions of reality subject: “pre-consciousness” – state before /during waking up – did not draw on hallucinations, dreams, occult phenomena, etc. method: disjunction between context, size, or juxtaposition of object

Magritte’s Surrealist False Mirror (1926)

Magritte’s Surrealist Lovers (1928)

Magritte’s Surrealist The Treachery of Images (1929)

Joan Miró ( ) biography: Catalan – remained in Paris from 1936 to 1941 – returned to Barcelona – moved to NYC after WWII relation to Surrealism: – realm of dreams and fantasy – images evoke subconscious recognition gained through automatism forms: schematized & whimsical – fanciful juxtapositions – human, animal & vegetation iconography: myriad sources – Romanesque frescoes  flatness – ceramics  creatures – prehistoric cave paintings (Altamira)

Miro’s Surrealist Carnival of the Harlequin (1925)

Detail from MIRO’s Surrealist Carnival of Harlequin (1925) vs. detail from MATISSE’s Fauvist Harmony in Red (1910)

Miró Painting (1933) – aim: unconscious mind – technique: “automatism” freely drawing series of lines w/out considering what they might be or become absence of all control exercised by the reason outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations consciously reworked – forms: abstract; weightless – spatial order: flattened

IMAGE INDEX Slide 2:ERNST, Max. A Friends’ Reunion (1922), Oil on canvas, 130 x 195 cm, Museum Ludwig, Köln, Ger­many. Slide 3:Image and photograph of Andre Breton. Slide 4:Photograph of Sigmund FREUD. Slide 5:Photograph of Max ERNST. Slide 6:ERNST, Max. Oedipus Rex (1922), Oil on canvas, 93 x 102 cm., Private collection, Paris. Slide 7:ERNST, Max. Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale (1924), Oilon wood with wood construction, 2’ 3 ½” x 1’ 10 ½” x 4 ½”, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Slide 8:MAN RAY. Salvador Dali (1929), photograph. Slide 9:DALI, Salvador. The Persistence of Memory (1931), Oil on canvas, 9 1/2” x 13”, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.

IMAGE INDEX Slide 10:DALÍ, Salvador. Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: Premonition of Civil War (1936), Oil on canvas, 39 ¾ x 39 in., Philadelphia Museum of Art. Slide 11:(Left) Dalí’s Surrealist Premonition of Civil War (1936); and (right) Goya’s Romantic Saturn Devouring His Son (c. 1815) Slide 12:DALI. Crucifixion ('Hypercubic Body') (1954), Oil on canvas, x 124 cm., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Slide 13:Photograph of René MAGRITTE. Slide 14:MAGRITTE, René. The False Mirror (1926). Slide 15:MAGRITTE, René. The Lovers (1928), Oil on canvas, 21 3/8 x 28 7/8 in., Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. Slide 16:MAGRITTE. The Treachery of Images (1929), Oil on canvas, 23 1/2” x 37”, Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

IMAGE INDEX Slide 17:MIRO, Joan. Self-Portrait. Slide 18:MIRO. Carnival of Harlequin (1925), Oil on canvas, 66 x 93 cm, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y. Slide 19:(Left) Detail from MIRO’s Carnival of Harlequin (1925); and (right) detail from MATISSE’s Harmony in Red (1910). Slide 20:MIRO. Painting (1933), Oil on canvas, 4’ 3 ¼” x 5’ 3 ½”, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT.