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SOME OF THE SURREALIST ARTISTS:
Miro
Arp
Duchamp
Masson
Matta
Dali
deChirico
Magritte
Delvaux
Varo
Carrington
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| WHAT
IS SURREALISM? |
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| Surrealism
- The Surrealists' aim was to use the arts as a counter to the
ordered and restricted ways of civilization by opening up the
super-reality of fantasy, dream and imagination which, they
claimed, is man's true habitat. |
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The Story of Modern Art by Norbert Lynton (Phaidon)
1980
ISBN 0 7148 2421 6 (hardback)
!SBN 0 7148 2422 4 (paperback)
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Click on the names above to visit sites
featuring these artists
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Surrealism - a definition from the Collins School Dictionary:
(adjective) Surrealism began
in the 1920s. It involves the putting together of strange
images and things that are not normally seen together.
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Surrealist
(adjective), surrealistic (adjective).
[From French surréalisme
meaning 'beyond realism']
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HOW
IT ALL BEGAN...
Surrealism, like other movements in art history, was influenced
by precursors such as DADA, and therefore inevitably by politics.
Socialism, in the eyes of Andre Breton and other Surrealist
members, seemed to offer an answer to the ills of early twentieth
century Europe.
Breton was also influenced by the writings of Carl
Yung and the research of Freud. |
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Breton spent part
of the First World War as an orderly at a front-line hospital,
dealing with the victims of psychological and psychiatric
injury.
He was amazed to hear the story of one soldier who had cut
himself off from reality whilst facing the enemy in the trenches.
He had heard how the soldier had stood upon the battlements
inviting the enemy to shoot at him. The soldier refused to
believe that the horrors of the war could be real. He refused
to accept the reality of the blood and death and serious injuries
that he witnessed around him each day. He chose to shut them
out. Breton was fascinated with this possibility. The soldier
had chosen to refute the reality of the 'normal' world for
the 'safer' reality of his imagination.
Andre Breton (a
poet, considered to be the leader of the movement) blamed
the older generation for the troubles that haunted the world
in the early part of the twentieth century (with good reason).
The First World War was horrific and Breton wanted to distance
himself from it. He believed that a better world existed through
dreams and imagination. Breton wanted to subvert society.
The 'normal' behaviour of citizens failed to protect them
from the horrors of the war. Breton felt it was time to shake
civilization from the reality of life.
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Michael
S. Bell, a specialist in American Art, researched the surrealist
phenomena while he was assistant curator at the Museum of Modern
Art in San Francisco fifteen years ago. He came to the conclusion
that two very distinct trends of surrealism had developed. One
could be qualified as Automatism, and the other as Veristic
Surrealism.
http://www.bway.net/~monique/
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AUTOMATISM: An attempt to remove the conscious
controls of the brain from the process of painting and poetry.
VERISTIC: A more representational, academic method
of producing images images of the inner subjective, rather
than the outer objective world.
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| AUTOMATISM: |
VERISTIC: |
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Perhaps this is
the most illusive of the forms of Surrealism.
To be successful
It is necessary to remove the process of producing art or
poetry from the conscious mind.
Many methods were
considered to achieve this - from drugs to systems of automatic
writing and painting, but always the conscious mind found
a way through to influence the work. For example - the choice
of materials.
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Perhaps Salvador
Dali is the best example of this style of Surrealism. Dali
constructed strange dreamlike images by juxtaposing many unconnected
objects in altered states.
...Veristic
Surrealism got thrown out with pre-impressionistic academic
art without much second thought, and is still in danger of
that fate...
Michael S.
Bell
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IRRATIONALITY
(the joys of
anti-rational speculation).
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How
could they capture irrationality?
The conscious mind constantly intervened. |
In
writing - they played games of using random words - much
in the same way as we can now play with sentences from a box
of magnetic fridge poetry. |
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automatism is perhaps impossible to achieve. Even thinking about
producing an automatistic image or poem introduces the element
of thought at some stage in that process - thereby defeating
the object. |
In
Art - perhaps the closest any artists came to automatism
would be Jackson
Pollock's drip painting. |
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| WHAT
HAPPENED TO SURREALISM? |
Check
out some 'Welsh' work influenced by Surrealism: |
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Surrealism still
exists in many forms.
Many artists all over the world still use some, if not all,
of the principles, ideals, and techniques of Surrealism to
produce an eclectic range of work, unified by the influence
of the Surrealist movement.
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Ceri Richards
Keith Bayliss
William Brown
Tony Goble
Jon Ratigan
Jean Walcot
Nigel Williams
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Further
Reading:
The History
of Surrealism
By Maurice
Nadeau, Richard Howard (Translator)
Reprint Edition, Paperback, Belknap Pr, 1989, ISBN: 0674403452
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Manifestoes of Surrealism
By Andre Breton
Paperback, Univ of Michigan Pr, 1972, ISBN: 0472061828
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Converstations:
The Autobiography of Surrealism
By Andre Breton, Mark Polizzotti (Translator)
Reissue Edition, Paperback, Shooting Star Pr, 1995, ISBN: 1569248540
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Dada
& Surrealist Art & Their Inheritors: The Gabrielle Keiller
Bequest
By Elizabeth Cowling
Paperback, Antique Collectors Club, 1997, ISBN: 090359868X
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Dali
and Postmodernism: This Is Not an Essence
By Marc J. Lafountain
Paperback, State Univ of New York Pr, 1994, ISBN: 0791433269
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Max Ernst; Dada and the Dawn of Surrealism
By William Camfield
Paperback, Prestel, 1998, ISBN: 3791319442
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Women
Artists and the Surrealist Movement
By Whitney Chadwick
Reprint Edition, Paperback, Thames & Hudson, 1991, ISBN:
0500276226
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Surrealism:
The Dream of Revolution
By Richard Leslie
Hardcover, Smithmark Publishing, 1997, ISBN: 0765194899
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Surrealism:
The Road to the Absolute
By Anna Balakian
Reprint Edition, Paperback, University of Chicago Press, 1986,
ISBN: 0226035603
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Surrealist
Poetry in English
By Edward B. Germain
Paperback, Penguin USA, 1993, ISBN: 0140184864
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Acknowledgments:
http://www.bway.net/~monique/
is a site we can recommend for further reading and information and
links to asociated sites of interest.
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