Surrealist

All you want to know about Surrealist

For further information, see Category:Surrealist groups

Surrealist individuals and groups have attempted to carry on with Surrealism after the death of André Breton in 1966. The original Paris Surrealist Group was disbanded by member Jean Schuster in 1969.

Surrealism and theatre

Surrealist theater depicts the subconscious experience, moody tone and disjointed structure, sometimes imposing a unifying idea.[17]

Antonin Artaud, one of the original Surrealists, rejected Western theatre as a perversion of the original intent of theatre, which he felt should be a religious and mystical experience. He thought that rational discourse comprised "falsehood and illusion", which embodied the worst of discourse. Endeavouring to create a new theatrical form that would be immediate and direct, linking the unconscious minds of performers and spectators, a sort of ritual event,[18] Artaud created the Theatre of Cruelty where emotions, feelings, and the metaphysical were expressed not through text or dialogue but physically, creating a mythological, archetypal, allegorical vision, closely related to the world of dreams.[19]

These sentiments also led to the Theatre of the Absurd whose inspiration came, in part, from silent film and comedy, as well as the tradition of verbal nonsense in early sound film (Laurel and Hardy, W. C. Fields, the Marx Brothers).

Surrealism and film

See also, List of surrealist films.
 Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (December 2007)


Surrealism and comedy

Main article: Surrealist humor

Criticism of Surrealism

Feminist

Feminists have in the past critiqued the Surrealist movement, claiming that it is fundamentally a male movement and a male fellowship, despite the occasional few celebrated woman Surrealist painters and poets. They believe that it adopts typical male attitudes toward women, such as worshipping them symbolically through stereotypes and sexist norms. Women are often made to represent higher values and transformed into objects of desire and of mystery.[20]

One of the pioneers in feminist critique of Surrealism was Xavière Gauthier. Her book Surréalisme et sexualité (1971) inspired further important scholarship related to the marginalization of women in relation to "the avant-garde." However these criticisms are perhaps more so of other avant-garde movements like Situationism, where women had a much more subordinate role to the men. Also, despite the theoretical objectification, Surrealism as a living praxis allowed room for women artists and painters in particular to work and produce work on their own terms.

Freudian

Freud initiated the psychoanalytic critique of Surrealism with his remark that what interested him most about the Surrealists was not their unconscious but their conscious. His meaning was that the manifestations of and experiments with psychic automatism highlighted by Surrealists as the liberation of the unconscious were highly structured by ego activity, similar to the activities of the dream censorship in dreams, and that therefore it was in principle a mistake to regard Surrealist poems and other art works as direct manifestations of the unconscious, when they were indeed highly shaped and processed by the ego. In this view, the Surrealists may have been producing great works, but they were products of the conscious, not the unconscious mind, and they deceived themselves with regard to what they were doing with the unconscious. In psychoanalysis proper, the unconscious does not just express itself automatically but can only be uncovered through the analysis of resistance and transference in the psychoanalytic process.[citation needed]

Situationist

While some individuals and groups on the core and fringes of the Situationist International were Surrealists themselves, others were very critical of the movement, or indeed what remained of the movement in the late 1950s and '60s. The Situationist International could therefore be seen as a break and continuation of the Surrealist praxis.[citation needed]

Timeline of Membership

Year Membership
1919 André Breton, Louis Aragon, and Philippe Soupault started Littérature, began an association with Dada.
1922 Breton appropriated the term "Surrealism" as a group -- which now included Paul Éluard, Benjamin Péret, Man Ray, Jacques Baron, René Crevel, Robert Desnos, Georges Limbour, Roger Vitrac, and Joseph Delteil -- organized under Breton and pulled away from the influence of Tristan Tzara and the Dadaists. Marcel Duchamp frequently associated with this group but never officially joined.
1924 The year the first Surrealist Manifesto was published, members also included Antonin Artaud, Andre Masson, Raymond Queneau, Joan Miró, Max Morise, Pierre Naville, Mathias Lübeck, Jacques-André Boiffard and Georges Malkine. Giorgio de Chirico briefly associated with the group but never joined.
1925 Jacques Prévert, Yves Tanguy, Pierre Brasseur, Marcel Duhamel, and Michel Leiris joined the group.
1926 Rene Magritte, E. L. T. Mesens, and others started a Surrealist group in Belgium. Pablo Picasso associated with the Surrealists but never officially joined.
1927 Soupault, Artaud, and Vitrac were kicked out of the group.
1929 For various reasons, including the political direction Breton was taking Surrealism, several members -- Prévert, Baron, Desnos, Leiris, Limbour, Masson, Queneau, Morise, Boiffard -- broke with the group and organized under Georges Bataille. However, several new members joined: Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel, Alberto Giacometti, René Char, and Lee Miller. Breton also reconciled with Tzara. When the second Surrealist Manifesto was published, it was signed by Aragon, Ernst, Buñuel, Char, Crevel, Dali, Eluard, Ernst, Péret, Tanguy, Tzara, Maxime Alexandre, Joe Bousquet, Camille Goemans, Paul Nougé, Francis Ponge, Marco Ristitch, Georges Sadoul, André Thirion, and Albert Valentin. Federico García Lorca was friends with Dalí and Buñuel and is often called a Surrealist though he never officially joined the group; he broke contact with Dalí and Buñuel in 1929 when he interpreted their film, Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog), as an attack on him.
1932 Aragon and Sadoul left the Surrealists because of the conflict between Communism and Surrealism and their dedication to the Communist party. Meret Oppenheim, Victor Brauner, Roger Caillois, Georges Hugnet, Jehan Mayoux, Henri Pastoureau, Guy Rosey, Claude Cahun and J. M. Monnerot joined the group.
1934 Óscar Domínguez, Dora Maar, Richard Oelze, Gisèle Prassinos, Kurt Seligmann, and Brion Gysin joined the group.
1935 Wolfgang Paalen, Pierre Mabille, and Jacques-B. Brunius joined the group. Hans Bellmer's work was published in Minotaure. Brion Gysin was expelled.
1936 Joseph Cornell debuted Rose Hobart. Though Cornell was influenced by the Surrealists and friendly with many of them, he never officially joined the group. Dalí's negative criticism of Rose Hobart further inspired Cornell to distance himself. Dalí stated "That was exactly my idea for a film. I'm not suggesting he stole the idea from me, but it's as if he did."
1937 Kay Sage met Tanguy, and Leonora Carrington met Ernst. Also, Remedios Varo settled in Paris with Peret.
1938 Breton had a falling out with Eluard but reconciled with Masson. Also, Breton met Frida Kahlo in Mexico; she is often called a Surrealist though she never officially joined. Roberto Matta, Gordon Onslow Ford and Bellmer joined the group.
1939 Dali was kicked out of the group for multiple reasons including his apparent support of Francisco Franco, his commercialism, and his abrasive personality. Breton referred to him from that point on as "Avida Dollars", and the group essentially referred to him as if he were dead. Caillois and Hugnet also left the group.
1940 Wifredo Lam joined the group.
1941 Breton met Aimé Césaire in Martinique.
1942 Breton, Duchamp, Ernst, Calas, and Carrington gained a following in New York with the publication of VVV. Newer members included Dorothea Tanning, Enrico Donati, Charles Duits, David Hare, Robert Lebel, Isabelle and Patrick Waldberg. Other artists directly influenced by the Surrealists in New York include Robert Motherwell, William Baziotes, Alexander Calder, and Frederick Kiesler.
1943 The View published the poetry of 15-year-old Philip Lamantia who later became acquainted with Breton and others in New York.
1944 Breton and Matta met with Arshile Gorky. Seligman left the group.
1948 Matta, blamed for Gorky's suicide, was kicked out of the group.
1951 In what was called "The Carrouges affair", Michel Carrouges, a writer associated with the Surrealists, was found to be a practicing Catholic and was expelled. Maurice Henry, Jacques Hérold, Marcel Jean, Robert Lebel, Patrick Waldberg, and Henri Pastoureau were also expelled.
1954 Ernst received the Grand Prix of the Venice Biennale and was subsequently expelled from the group.
1959 Jean Benoît and Mimi Parent joined the group.
1960 Ted Joans met Breton in Paris.

See also

Techniques and humor

Surrealist publications

  • La Révolution surréaliste, a seminal Surrealist publication founded by André Breton, published in Paris from 1924 to 1929
  • Documents, a surrealist journal edited by Georges Bataille from 1929 to 1930
  • Le Surrealisme au service de la revolution, the follow-up to La Révolution surréaliste, published in Paris from 1930 to 1933
  • Minotaure, a primarily surrealist-oriented publication founded by Albert Skira, published in Paris from 1933 to 1939
  • Acéphale, a surrealist review created by Georges Bataille, published from 1936 to 1939
  • VVV, a New York journal published by émigré European surrealists from 1942 through 1944
  • View, an American art magazine, primarily covering avant-garde and surrealist art, published from 1940 to 1947


References

  1. ^ In 1917, Guillaume Apollinaire coined the term "Surrealism" in the program notes describing the ballet Parade which was a collaborative work by Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie, Pablo Picasso and Léonide Massine: "From this new alliance, for until now stage sets and costumes on one side and choreography on the other had only a sham bond between them, there has come about, in Parade, a kind of super-realism ('sur-réalisme'), in which I see the starting point of a series of manifestations of this new spirit ('esprit nouveau')."
  2. ^ Breton, "Vaché is surrealist in me", in Surrealist Manifesto.
  3. ^ a b c d Dawn Ades, with Matthew Gale: "Surrealism", The Oxford Companion to Western Art. Ed. Hugh Brigstocke. Oxford University Press, 2001. Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press, 2007. Accessed March 15, 2007, http://www.groveart.com/
  4. ^ Dalí, Salvador, Diary of a Genius quoted in The Columbia World of Quotations (1996)
  5. ^ a b c d Tomkins, Calvin, Duchamp: A Biography. Henry Holt and Company, Inc, 1996. ISBN 0-8050-5789-7
  6. ^ Link to Guggenheim collection with reproduction of the painting and further information.
  7. ^ Link to Guggenheim collection with reproduction of the painting and further information.
  8. ^ Link to Guggenheim collection with reproduction of the painting and further information.
  9. ^ Modern History Sourcebook: A Surrealist Manifesto, 1925
  10. ^ http://www.generation-online.org/c/fcSurrealism1.html
  11. ^ Lewis, Helena. Dada Turns Red. 1990. University of Edinburgh Press. A history of the uneasy relations between Surrealists and Communists from the 1920s through the 1950s.
  12. ^ Kelley, Robin D.G. A Poetics of Anticolonialism. November 1999.
  13. ^ Kelley, Robin D.G. "Poetry and the Political Imagination: Aimé Césaire, Negritude, & the Applications of Surrealism". July 2001
  14. ^ Frida Kahlo, Paintings, Chronology, Biography, Bio
  15. ^ Surrealist Art from Centre Pompidou. Accessed March 20, 2007
  16. ^ Breton, André. Surrealism and Painting, Icon, 1973
  17. ^ Samuel Beckett Terms
  18. ^ Artaud and Semiotics
  19. ^ The Theatre Of The Absurd
  20. ^ Greer, Germaine, "Double vision: Surrealism's women thought they were celebrating sexual emancipation. But were they just fulfilling men's erotic fantasies?", Guardian Unlimited, March 5, 2007. (Accessed March 25, 2007).

André Breton

  • Breton, André, Manifestoes of Surrealism containing the first, second and introduction to a possible third manifesto, the novel The Soluble Fish, and political aspects of the Surrealist movement. ISBN 0-472-17900-4 .
  • Breton, André, What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings of André Breton. ISBN 0-87348-822-9 .
  • Breton, André, Conversations: The Autobiography of Surrealism (Gallimard 1952) (Paragon House English rev. ed. 1993). ISBN 1-56924-970-9.
  • Breton, André, The Abridged Dictionary of Surrealism, reprinted in:
    • Bonnet, Marguerite, ed. (1988). Oeuvres complètes, 1:328. Paris: Éditions Gallimard.

Other sources

  • Alexandrian, Sarane. Surrealist Art London: Thames & Hudson, 1970.
  • Appollinaire, Guillaume 1917, 1991. Program note for Parade, printed in Oeuvres en prose complètes, 2:865-866, Pierre Caizergues and Michel Décaudin, eds. Paris: Éditions Gallimard.
  • Brotchie, Alastair and Gooding, Mel, eds. A Book of Surrealist Games Berkeley, CA: Shambhala, 1995. ISBN 1-57062-084-9.
  • Caws, Mary Ann Surrealist Painters and Poets: An Anthology 2001, MIT Press.
  • Durozoi, Gerard, History of the Surrealist Movement Translated by Alison Anderson University of Chicago Press. 2004. ISBN 0-226-17411-5.
  • Lewis, Helena. Dada Turns Red. Edinburgh, Scotland: University of Ednburgh Press, 1990.
  • Lewis, Helena. The Politics Of Surrealism 1988
  • Low Mary, Breá Juan, Red Spanish Notebook, City Light Books, Sans Francisco, 1979, ISBN 087286-132-5 [7]
  • Melly, George Paris and the Surrealists Thames & Hudson. 1991.
  • Moebius, Stephan. Die Zauberlehrlinge. Soziologiegeschichte des Collège de Sociologie. Konstanz: UVK 2006. About the College of Sociology, its members and sociological impacts.
  • Nadeau, Maurice. History of Surrealism Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 1989. ISBN 0-674-40345-2.

External links

André Breton writings

Overview websites

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