Surrealism

Surrealism is... Interesting. For a while now, surrealism is that one concept that I can't fully get a hold on. Surrealism, well, it is meant to be illogical. So...

What is surrealism?

L'Ange du Foyeur (1937) by Max Ernst. Taken from Max Ernst's Wikipedia page under Fair Use.

The above image is one example of what a surrealism painting looks like. One can say it is pretty bizarre. For me, this particular piece looks like some huge monster from some cartoon show that I watch, except this is way more illogical compared to those cartoon shows.

This is what surrealism looks like, or feels like

According to multiple sources, including a sentence in The Oxfard Dictionary of Art and Artist by Ian Chilvers, the aim of surrealism "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality". 

I once heard surrealism was explained like this: taking real life objects and changing them into something out of the ordinary till the point that it contradicts with any logical explanation that we know of. Mixing dream and reality. Hopes this clear up some confusion.

Surrealism is not limited to only drawings and paintings. Film, poetry and even music! You name it.

It all started with Dadaism, an artistic movement developed in reaction to World War 1 and aimed to ridicule of the meaningless of the modern world during that time. The Dada movement influenced the beginning of many other movements, including pop art, punk art and of course, surrealism.

André Breton in 1924.
Taken from André Breton's
Wikipedia page.

André Breton joined in Dada activities after he returned to Paris from serving in a neurological hospital during the war. Along with Louis Aragon and Phillippe Soupault, he started experimenting with automatism, a method that allows the subconscious to take over the making process of a particular piece of work. André Breton and Phillippe Soupault successfully wrote The Magnetic Fields using automatism.

As they wrote more and more using automatism, they believed that automatism is a better way to tackle the meaningless of modern world than Dadaism. This group attracted other people, including some of the best known surrealist artist Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí.

This, is a start of the surrealism movement.

The golden age of surrealism is during the 1930s. Many and many major surrealism exhibitions are available for the public, and the impact of that, more and more people got influenced by surrealism and also started to follow the surrealism movement.

But not everything lasts till the end. According to many historians, the surrealism movement was disbanded during or after World War II. Some historians believe that the death of André Breton in 1966 also ended the surrealism movement.

Despite the surrealism movement being abandoned after World War II, surrealism still lives on in this modern society. Many surrealists groups and literary publications are still active till this very day. Surrealism also remains popular with museum patrons. Britain's national gallery of international modern art, Tate Modern, held an surrealism art exhibition and attracted over 170,000 visitors!

For the summary, how about a quick, short entertaining video?

This video does a better job at explaining surrealism than I do. Pictures speak a thousand word, and moving pictures do it better.

Until the end, surrealism won't be gone anytime soon, and is still a great form of art culture.