Born in the twentieth century, the surrealist movement upset classical artistic codes. Indeed, the founders of surrealism wanted to create a whole new artistic goal and get out of the shackles already existing for years, even centuries.
Header: The Nymph Echo (1936), Max Ersnt.
Origins & inspirations:
Surrealism was created little by little at the beginning of the twentieth century. Before talking about surrealism, we must talk about Dadaism, or rather the Dada movement. It was created before surrealism, and greatly inspired the future leaders of surrealism.
During the First World War, several artists gathered in Germany and wanted to create a new art form: from the grotesque to madness, nothing stopped them. It was Hugo Ball, a German playwright, and Tristan Tzara, a Romanian writer, who invented the Dada movement – the name having been found simply by taking the first word they found in the dictionary, it was this one. Within the Cabaret Voltaire, these two characters and other artists created Dadaism, which consisted of doing everything that was conventionally judged as "ugly" or "unrefined". For example, during the shows the artists communicated only in sound effects, or wore totally crazy outfits. In fact, Dadaism challenged all the codes of "beauty" and had a profound experimental value.
When some other artists such as André Breton, Guillaume Apollinaire or Philippe Soupault became interested in the Dada movement, many ideas came to mind. They wanted to create a movement that also moved away from classical codes, but with a more "worked" and plural dimension.
Andre Breton.
The founders & principles of the movement:
When we talk about surrealism, we think directly of André Breton. Indeed, even if Apollinaire was the first to use the term "surrealism" in 1917 shortly before his death (November 9, 1918), Breton wrote in 1924 The Manifesto of Surrealism which became the absolute reference to talk about this new artistic process. In this new movement, Breton was accompanied by Louis Aragon, Philippe Soupault, Paul Eluard, and Pierre Reverdy.
For these writers, the goal of surrealism was simple: to make our mind travel in our unconscious, and to transcribe it on paper, as it is. This is how the practice of automatic writing was created. In short, the goal was to write in a raw way what instantly came out of our minds. There was to be no formatting done before the passage to writing: the hand had to act exactly at the same time as the mind, as if the writer was not "thinking" beforehand. The surrealists wanted to work on the unconscious of the mind; subject that was – among other things – the object of work of Sigmund Freud, psychoanalyst well recognized for his many works and the creation of psychoanalytic science. This is how the writers and Freud worked together in order to be able to search deep within our unconscious what could be transcribed artistically.
Recurring themes:
Of all the surrealist writings, the majority of them have common themes. First of all, thedream and the imagination are very present. Since the goal is to search into the unconscious, the dream is automatically associated with surrealism. According to Freud, dreams come from our unconscious and necessarily have meanings. In this sense, surrealist writings are easily assimilated to dreams put into words. Everything seems far from being descriptions of reality, hence also the term "sur"realism. To this is added a very imaginary setting that leaves room for many interpretations. Through these 'written dreams', the authors write a lot about love and the body. The movement is very descriptive and gives the impression of wandering through the thoughts of the authors. Desire and madness are also favorite themes.
Other artists:
Surrealism was a very 'living' movement: all types of artists met to discuss their work. Surrealism was also very popular in painting: Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst and René Magritte were the main pioneers. Always in the process of playing with the unconscious and the representation of dreams, the works of these artists want to transcribe 'truly' the thought of the sleeping mind. The photographer Man Ray was also a very important artist for the movement. Photographer and draftsman, he worked with many surrealists. We can cite for example his collaboration with the poet Paul Eluard for the elaboration of the collection Les Mains Libres.
Les Amants (1928), René Magritte.
The Meditative Rose (1958), Salvador Dalí.
Excerpt from Les Mains Libres (1937), Paul Eluard (author) and Man Ray (cartoonist).
Surrealism is still today a movement described as strange and hermetic. It certainly marked its time, but it also allowed 'madness' to take hold in the arts, and to go beyond what was normally appropriate. Surrealism is definitely the movement of dreams, imagination and senses, so if you are interested, we strongly invite you to read works such as L'Amour Fou et Nadja by André Breton, or the poems of Paul Eluard or Robert Desnos.
Sources:
- https://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/surrealisme-histoire/
- The interpretation of dreams, Freud.
- https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dada
- https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surréalisme
- Manifesto of Surrealism, Breton.
