SURREALISM

release the unconscious

DADAISM
1916-1950

 A rebellion against the

insanity of war and genocide,
arms production, nationalist
policy and petty bourgeois
narrow mindedness.
Used shock, provocation, and
irrationality as a weapons of
establishment
Mocked seriousness and

Marquis cassati
by Man Ray

 The movement primarily involvedvisual

arts,literature,poetry,art manifestoes,art
theory, theatre, andgraphic design, and
concentrated itsanti-warpolitics through a
rejection of the prevailing standards
inartthroughanti-artcultural works.
Many Dadaists believed that the 'reason'
and 'logic' of bourgeoiscapitalistsociety
had led people into war. They expressed
their rejection of that ideology in artistic
expression that appeared to reject logic
and embracechaosandirrationality

Art techniques
Collage: imitated the techniques
developed during the cubist
movement through the pasting of
cut pieces of paper items, but
extended their art to encompass
items such as transportation tickets,
maps, plastic wrappers, etc. to
portray aspects of life, rather than
representing objects viewed as still
life.
Photomontage: used scissors and
glue rather than paintbrushes and
paints to express their views of

Raoul
Hausmann
ABCD (Selfportrait) A
photomontage
from 1923-2

 Assemblage:

Theassemblageswere threedimensional variations of the collage the assembly of

everyday objects to produce meaningful or meaningless
(relative to the war) pieces of work including war objects
and trash.

Ready-mades:

Marcel Duchampbegan to view the

manufactured objects of his collection as objects of art,
which he called "ready-mades".
Raoul Hausmann
Mechanischer Kopf
(Mechanical Head
[The Spirit of Our
Age]), c. 1920,
Fountain on right.

Surrealism
1920-1950

The Subconscious
A style of art and literature
developed principally in the 20th
century, in which fantastic visual
imagery from the subconscious
mind is used with no intention of
making the artwork logically
comprehensible.

Involves fantasy & dreams

Is illogical
Stresses the subconscious
Demented sense of humor

More than an art movement

Surrealism was not only an art

movement, but a philosophy that
embraced literature, music, cinema,
and popular culture.

Automatism
Surrealist poets experimented with
Automatism, a form of writing that
had poets trying to record their
thoughts, without conscious control
and without any conscious regard for
aesthetic or moral considerations.
Surrealist artists thought of their
images as visual poems.
They were suggestive, rather than
descriptive. Like poems, their full
impact can be simply enjoyed, rather

Origin
Surrealism flourished in Europe
between World Wars I and II. It grew
out of the earlier Dada movement,
which before World War I produced
works of anti-art that deliberately
defied reason; but Surrealisms
emphasis was not on negation but on
positive expression.

 Surrealism was a reaction against the

destruction wrought by the
"rationalism" that had guided
European culture and politics in the
past and had culminated in the
horrors of World War I.

 According to the major

spokesman of the
movement, the poet and
critic Andr Breton, who
published "The Surrealist
Manifesto" in 1924,
Surrealism united
conscious and
unconscious realms of
experience so that the
world of dream and
fantasy would be joined
to the everyday rational
world in "an absolute

ANDRE BRETON. The poet

from Paris.

 The Surrealists were

greatly inspired by
the psychological
studies of Sigmund
Freud
Freud thought that
by analyzing
dreams, you could
figure out certain
psychoses and
mental disorders.

Characteristics
The exploration of the dream and
unconsciousness as a valid form of
reality,
A willingness to depict images of
perverse sexuality, scatology, decay
and violence.
The desire to push against the
boundaries of socially acceptable
behaviors and traditions in order to
discover pure thought and the artist's

The influence of revolutionary 19th

century poets, such as Charles
Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud and Isidore
Ducasse.
Emphasis on the mysterious, marvelous,
mythological and irrational in an effort to
make art ambiguous and strange.
Fundamentally, Surrealism gave artists
permission to express their most basic
drives: hunger, sexuality, anger, fear,
dread, ecstasy, and so forth.
Exposing these uncensored feelings as if
in a dream still exists in many form of art
to this day.

Two forms of surrealism

Biomorphic (interested in life
forms): Joan Miro, Max ernst
Naturalistic (recognizable scenes
of nightmare or dream images): Rene
Magritte, Salvador Dali

Surrealist techniques

Automatism
Aerograph
Bulletism
Cubomania
Cut-up technique
Photomontage
Involuntary sculpture
Autography

Dalis The Pioneers of

Israel: "With one of his
hands, he wrought the
work and, with the other,
held his weapon
Bulletism technique

How to make the ordinary look

extraordinary

Scale
Levitation
Juxtaposition
Dislocation
Transparency
Transformation

Salvador Dali
Salvador Dali is
often the first
name we associate
with Surrealism
but he did not join
the movement
until 1929, five
years after its
founding, and he
was kicked out of
the movement in
1939, because of

 Dali was something

of an exhibitionist;
he loved to gain
publicity by
shocking or
provoking his
critics.
He spent the war
years (WWII) in
America, where he
made a fortune
working with
advertisers and
with Disney.

Salvador Dali The Enigma of

Hitler - 1939

 Europe was on the brink of war when Dali

painted this mysterious work.
The melting telephone suspended in a
broken tree of life suggests a breakdown in
communication, as world leaders tried to
appease Hitler.
The umbrella is a reference to British
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who
always carried a black umbrella. Hitler
ridiculed him and the umbrella came to be
seen as a symbol of weakness and
appeasement.

The Persistence of Memory

 This enigmatic image is one of Dalis

best known paintings.
Measuring just 24 by 33cm, this tiny
painting is one of Dali's most iconic
works.
The rocks and landscape of his home
form the backdrop for a dream-like
scene apparently inspired by the
sight of melting Camembert cheese.

 The startling imagery is meticulously

detailed and has an almost
photographic quality, with the
beautifully rendered watches
symbolizing the passing of time and
mortality
The melting clock motif was one he
explored repeatedly in numerous
paintings and sculptures (clock
makers have actually produced and
sold products modeled on Dalis

Underlying meaning
Dali juxtaposes two ordinary symbols of time:
clocks and sand; but in Dals arresting vision the
clocks are melting over a vast and lonely beach
that resembles the sands of time.
To emphasize the paintings temporal images, he
also incorporates
a swarm of crawling ants, whose uniquely shaped
bodies resemble hourglasses.
Sand, hourglasses, and watches all connect below
the threshold of awareness till the viewers mind
swings around to focus on the very nature and
meaning of time.

 Salvador Dali
The Enigma of Time

 The distortion of the clocks suggests

the way that time is distorted by the
subconscious. In dreams, time often
seems fluid; events do not follow in a
linear or chronological sequence.

Dali - Apparition of the Aphrodite of

Cnidus

Salvador Dali Geopolitical Child

Geopolitical Child
A new world power hatches from
the egg shaped globe, emerging
from the United States.
Chamberlains umbrella is in tatters,
and the infant has a powerful grip on
Britain, the world power that was so
reduced by World War II.

 Salvador Dali
The Burning Giraffe
Here we see one of
Dalis motifs, the
drawers that
suggest the hidden
contents of the
human
subconscious

The City of Drawers

Salvador Dali
Space Elephant
Dali returned to this
spindly legged
elephant motif
over and over
again. The fragile
legs seem
incapable of
supporting the
weight of the
animal.

Salvador Dali Alice in

Wonderland
Lewis Carols story
of the girl who fell
down a rabbit hole
held a special
fascination for Dali,
as Alices journey is
a voyage into the
subconscious, the
realm of
surrealism.

Thank you

Shreya shah
Janki parikh
Divyang bhatt
Shivangi pandya