VISUAL ARTBOOK
1920s -1930s
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REAL ALRE
ISM MIS
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Se
Sure uarlism
Sur ealism
Surrealism was the most influential avant-garde
movement of the inter-war years. Its chief goal,
asserted by its founder and leader, Andre Breton, was
to meld the unconscious with the conscious to create a
new "super reality" - a súrrealism. Cubism, Dada, and
Freud were its starting points. Its enduring influence
can be found notably in present-day advertising and
avant-garde humour.
Perhaps not surprisingly for a movement whose
origins were largely literary and which actively
championed anarchy, Surrealism in the visual arts
almost immediately developed a bewildering variety
of styles.
It could be highly finished, aiming at a kind of
heightened realism (Dalí), or, at the other end of
the spectrum, entirely abstract (Miró). In whatever
style it was executed, it generally aimed to surprise,
often to shock, frequently to disturb, and always to
create a dreamlike atmosphere, sometimes specific,
and at other times vague and suggestive.
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Subjects The unconscious
is a vast and
mysterious realm,
At its core, surrealism and surrealism seeks
is characterized by to explore it
three main themes: through art.
dreams, the Dreams have always Surrealist works
unconscious, and the fascinated humans. often incorporate
irrational. Surrealist artists often symbols and
drew inspiration from archetypes that have
their own dreams, deep psychological
using them as a significance, such Surrealism rejects
starting point for their as the human body, the notion of reason
creations. animals, and and embraces the
Dreams offer a everyday objects. irrational. Surrealist
window into the works frequently
unconscious, where juxtapose seemingly
thoughts and emotions unrelated objects or
are free to roam ideas, creating a sense
without the constraints of disorientation
of reason. and confusion. This
technique is known
as “dislocation,” and
it challenges our
preconceived notions
of reality.
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Around the mid-
1920s the prime
theorist of Surrealism
- André Breton -
reconsidered the
potential of visual
Key arts as a means to
unlock the power of
ideas
the psyche and create
absurd imagery,
behind
partly humorous
and partly ominous:
a manifestation of
DreeamsTh
contradictions in
Few other artistic
everyday life.
movements were
as cross-sectorial
and inclusive as
Surrealism. It entailed
a philosophical
approach instead,
as – in artist Joyce
Mansour’s words –
“It is not the technique of painting that is surrealist,
it’s the painter and the painter’s vision of life”.
Dali was a
flamboyant self-
publicist, and one
of the most popular
painters of the 20th
century. He made Ultimately he was
a brief but major just a flashy showman
contribution to with a big ego and a
Surrealism. long mustache-like
a singer who churns
He was an artist of out popular arias in a
astonishing technical spectacular way, but
precocity and is devoid of any real
virtuosity. He mastered expression, meaning,
almost any style, or freshness.
finally choosing one
There is one Using Freudian
based on the detailed,
exception to the ideas about dreams
“realistic,” 17th-
above. Look for the and madness, he
century Dutch masters
works of 1928-33, produced obsessional
instantly popular
which are great and images in which
and recognizable as
profound. Briefly, as detailed reality is
“very skilful” (the
a true pioneer of the suddenly transformed
optical illusions are
Surrealist movement, into different, intricate,
breathtaking).
Dali created works to and disturbing images-
1904 -1989 • Spanish technically and
explore his "paranoia-
MIXED MEDIA; OILS; imaginatively brilliant.
critical method".
SCULPTURE He ought to have
persisted with it.
”The Persistence
of Memory“
•
•
•
”The
Elephants“
“I ampint“gc“i cu“i“raesrrgnw“ghiwa
••
•
•
mpintuh“rai gtkd
•
“I am painting pictures which make me die for joy, I am creating with
an absolute naturalness, without the slightest aesthetic concern, I am
making things that inspire me with a profound emotion and I am trying
to paint them honestly."
”The Great
Masturbator“ Dalaí
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Dalí depicts himself with his
eyes shut and a large grasshopper
placed on his mouth.
Miro was a leading Let them suggest
Surrealist painter and anything (especially
sculptor: experimental, something biological,
unconventional, and sexual, primitive).
influential. Enjoy the naughty
thoughts, silliness,
color, beauty, light,
He searched Miro is best known warmth. He used a
for a new visual for his abstract and limited number of
language, purged of semiabstract works- forms, but repeated
stale meanings and highly structured, and made rhymes
appealing to poetic, and dreamy; of them.
the senses. simple forms floating
on fields of color. He drew on an
unconscious memory
bank of natural and
landscape forms,
which suggest
generative power
in nature. He
experimented with
“magic realism”
before breaking into a
new style.
Joan
Miró
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fanciful juxtaposition
of human, animal, and
vegetal forms and its
Although thematically array of schematized
related to his earlier creatures constitute a
quasi-realistic, Fauvist- realm visible only to
colored rural views, the mind’s eye, and
During the summer The Village, this reveal the great range
of 1923, Joan Miró painting is the first of Miró’s imagination.
began painting “The example of Miró’s
Tilled Field”, a view Surrealist vision. Its
of his family’s farm in
Montroig, Catalonia.
”The
Tilled
Field“
Magritte used
classic Freudian
symbols and
references - death
and decay, sex and
He transformed
phallic symbols.
the familiar into
His themes were
the unfamiliar with
claustrophobia
weird juxtapositions,
and yearning for
changes of scale
liberty. His work
Magritte was a and texture, and by
risked becoming
leading Surrealist defying expectation.
a tired formula,
painter who made a The titles of his
but was saved
virtue of his bowler- works (sometimes
by an active
hatted, cheap-suited chosen by friends) are
imagination
provincialism. deliberately designed
and a
to confuse and
sense of
He was famous for obscure.
the absurd.
his use of everyday
objects plus a deadpan His best work dates
style, creating mildly from the 1920s and
disturbing images that 1930s. He changed
suggest the dislocated style after 1943. He
world of dreams. He worked as a freelance
painted small(ish) oil advertising artist from
paintings and used 1924 to 1967.
a deliberately banal
technique, without
aesthetic virtue-
RenÉ
imagery is everything. 1894 -1967 • Belgian
OILS; GUACHE; PRINTS Magrit e
”The
Human
Condition“
Two of Magritte's
favored themes were the
"window painting" and
the "painting within a
painting". “The Human Condition”
displays an easel placed
“The Human Condition” inside a room and in
is one of Magritte's front of a window. The
earliest treatments of easel holds an unframed
either subject, and in it painting of a landscape
he combines the two, that seems in every detail
making what may be his contiguous with the
most subtle and profound landscape seen outside the
statement of their the window that it hides
shared meaning. from view.
“The Lovers” (French: In this unsettling The device of a
Les Amants) is a image, the artist draped cloth or veil
surrealist painting by invokes the cinematic to conceal a figure’s
René Magritte, made cliché of a close–up identity corresponds
in Paris in 1928. It's the kiss but subverts our to a larger Surrealist
first in a series of four voyeuristic pleasure by interest in masks,
variations, and in the shrouding the faces disguises, and what
painting two people in cloth. lies beyond or beneath
can be seen kissing visible surfaces.
passionately with
their faces covered in
a white cloth hiding
their identities.
The i
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hndd rhalsmh(etldleih
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tInt oioncIv.ovgln
a-fiia.h-ynrvIrin
Icnosovl,flnghcoen
dvofth-ynfnio-ionn The familiar
Icn,hiIvho-tfthI-n becomes unfamiliar,
f-,nh-dI-yvahtlbn the normal, strange;
Magritte creates a
paradoxical world
that is, in his own
words, "a defiance
of common sense."
