Chelsea Pearsall

5-16-17

Zeitgeist

The Zeitgeist is by definition the spirit of a time period where politics, the set of ideals and beliefs, influence members of a society. Furthermore, to study a time period or movement in the past it is crucial to understand and be knowledgeable of the zeitgeist. The Surrealism art movement was a movement that was completely motivated by the times, as its purpose was to critique modernity, liberate the minds of complacency, and deal with the effect of the first world war. Examining the previous art movement that lead to Surrealism, and experiencing the work of the

Surrealist painters, photographers, film makers, sculptors and fashion designers through the lens of the 1920s, to further enrich our understanding of the art movement that occurred between the two world wars.

To understand what lead to the Surrealism movement, one must understand the world affairs leading up to this time. The birth of Surrealism came from the ideas of the Dada group, an art and literary movement that started in Switzerland. The

Dada movement started during World War I, a devastating war that is known to have killed the lives of eight million military personnel and eight million civilians. The Dada movement began as an artistic protest against the bourgeois and nationalist interests, which many of the Dada artists had believed were the cause of the war (Dada Movement Overview and Analysis).

The Dada group was also formally against the cultural and intellectual conformity in the arts and also in society, that resulted after the war. The art that Dadaist started to create was directly in response to the politics, mocking and critiquing modernity, by drawing references from newspapers, films, propaganda and technologies, which were a large part of present day life (Dada Movement

Overview and Analysis).

The works being created by Dadaist were extremely experimental, and unorthodox. The choice of materials, mediums and procedures were boundless and free. Dada artists innovated with collage and photomontage. The Dada movement influenced artists far and close in cities including, Paris, Berlin, Hanover, Cologne and New York. What was revolutionary about Dada Art was that it was the first art that wasn’t made to be pleasing to the viewer; rather it was created to generate questions about society, and the purpose of art. There were many influencers and artists involved in the Dada Movement. Artists include, Hugo Ball, Hans Arp, Marcel

Duchamp, Max Ernst, and Man Ray (Dada Movement Overview and Analysis).

Dada works of art include:

Fountain (1917) by Marcel Duchamp

Duchamp did little to this urinal accept turn it upside-down, drawing reference to both the purpose of the urinal as well to famous fountains designed by

Renaissance and Baroque artists (Dada Movement Overview and Analysis).

.

Chinese Nightingale (1920) by Max Ernst

A creature whose body is an English bomb, Ernst defuses the fear associated with bombs. The title was named after a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen (Dada

Movement Overview and Analysis).

Andre Breton, a member of the Dadaist group, a French theorist and writer, soon became the founder of the Surrealism movement. Breton writes the first

Manifeste du Surrealism in 1924. Breton writes, “Under the pretense of civilization and progress, we have managed to banish from the mind everything that may rightly or wrongly be termed superstition, or fancy; forbidden is any kind of search for truth which is not in conformance with accepted practices. It was, apparently, by pure chance that a part of our mental world, which we pretended not to be concerned with any longer -- and, in my opinion by far the most important part -- has been brought back to light. For this we must give thanks to the discoveries of

Sigmund Freud.” Breton was greatly inspired by psychologist, Sigmund Freud and his theories on dreams and the unconscious mind. Breton believed that dreams were reputable sources of truth and could be of assistance in life. Thus, the

Manifesto for Surrealism sought to overthrow the repressive rules of modern society by un-acknowledging rational thought. He accomplished this by attempting to tap into the subconscious mind, to create works of art that embodied a dream like state. With the start of the Surrealism movement, the Dada movement dissipated. It is dually notable that the ideas of the Dadaist have given much rise to the succeeding movements of modern and contemporary art.

After the Surrealism Manifesto was written, many artists joined in on the movement. For the Surrealism movement, there were artists from a wide variety of mediums. Mediums include; painters, writers, photographers, fashion designers, and illustrators. Of course, all of these different artists didn’t happen over night.

After the manifesto was written, the group of artist begins working on a publication,

“La Révolution surréaliste.” The group at this time included, Andre Breton, Salvador

Dali, Man Ray, Yves Tanguy, max Ernst, Tristan tzara, Jean Arp, Paul eluar, and René clevel. It is curious to note, that this group is all men (André Breton Artist Overview and Analysis).

The publication included mostly writing, but also reproductions of art. The

Bureau for Surrealist Research was also created at the beginning of the movement, which collected data for the artists to use for their work. Artists and writers alike conducted interviews to gather information that could detail the activities of the unconscious mind. The bureau separated data into two different segments. One archive, focused on dreams, unconsciousness and imagery whereas the other archive focused on material related to the social constructs of the time. Moving forward, the group has been organized and formed, a manifesto and leader is in place and research has been conducted for their work, they now can begin producing (André Breton Artist Overview and Analysis). In Bretons manifesto, he goes into great detail about dreams and being able to liberate the unconscious mind. Conceptually, the Surrealism art was under this vision of unconsciousness and dreams. The subject of each piece typically was in response to the politics of this time. Surrealist art had extreme visual sensibilities, jarring juxtapositions, and displacements to shock its viewers. Artists generated creative works in a variety of media that exposed their inner minds in eccentric, symbolic ways, uncovering anxieties and treating them analytically through visual means. (André Breton Artist Overview and Analysis).

For the painters in the movement, there were to main styles that were constructed under the umbrella of Surrealism. One style was a depiction of real life in an unusual or striking manner, painters in favor of this style include Salvador Dali and Tanguy. The other style is called automatism, where an artist suppresses conscious control over the making process, allowing the unconscious mind to have more control. Automatism includes, doodling, collage, frottage, decalcomania, and grattage. These techniques help assist the artist in creating the extreme outlandish imagery. Artist Miro, Ernst, and Arp used these techniques to create their work. It wasn’t uncommon for these artists to use both hyperrealism and automatism in one piece (André Breton Artist Overview and Analysis).

Great Masturbator by Salvador Dali (1929)

This piece shows the head of a woman at the crotch of a man. The man has cuts on his knees, which gives insight to his stifled sexuality. Dali commonly used bugs such as grasshopper and ants consistently in his work. In this piece; Ants give the elusion of decay and death, and an egg symbolizes fertility. It is interesting that decay, death, and fertility are the underlying subject of this work; clearly showing that world war one had an eminent presence in surrealism artwork. Several of

Salvador Dali’s paintings feature a desolate land that is both realistic, familiar but also dreamlike, each piece symbolizes different political or social issues of the time.

This concludes the surrealism style, concepts, techniques and artists involved in painting during this movement (Salvador Dalí Artist Overview and Analysis).

Surrealism took an interesting and new strategy of 3-demensional objects.

The strategy behind making an object surreal was to displace the object from its original use to create and unexpected new meaning of the object. This allowed the object to be called into question and for society as a whole to be called into question.

Mundane things presented in unexpected ways had the power to challenge reason, to urge the inhibited and uninitiated.

Ma Gouvernante (My Nurse) by Meret Oppenheim (1936)

In this example, used high heels are tied up on a silver platter; chef hats lie upon the heel of the shoe. The object clearly imitates an oven-baked chicken, lying on a silver platter. The shoe is white which symbolizes purity but they are scuffed symbolizing dirtiness, displaying the fine line between female sexuality and being merely the object of male desire. This object also suggests cannibalism and bondage.

Meret Oppenheim was a female artist and so her version of surrealism clearly calls the objectification of women into question. The object is titled “My Nurse” it is believed that symbolically this object was presenting a nursemaid tied up against her will. While this piece was being exhibited, in Paris in 1936, a female spectator became enraged by the symbolism and shattered the piece. Oppenheim’s work created controversy because it often connected women with being objects and she received heavy criticism throughout her career (Meret Oppenheim Artist Overview and Analysis).

The next group of surrealist artists with an interesting style concept and imagery are the photographers. Surrealist photographers occupied a big role in the movement, because photography has a particular ease that allows an artist to create uncanny and jarring images. Most notable, was photographer Man Ray. Man ray explored double exposure, combination printing, montage, solarization, and automatic writing to create his work. The strategy of the surrealist photographer was to create images that weren’t seen through a mundane sensibility (Surrealism

Movement Overview and Analysis).

In Man Rays photograph titled “Le Violon d'Ingres” of 1924, shows the back of a woman, and her body has been turned into a violin, by painting sound holes onto her back in the same manner that can be seen on an actual violin. It was very common for Man Ray to turn a woman’s body into an inanimate object, or distorting a women’s figure. The phrase “Violon d’Ingres” came to be known as a “Hobby” because of Ingres’ passion for the violin. Ray turned his muse Kiki into a violin titling her 'Violon d'Ingres', meaning she was his hobby. Demonstrating the apparent objectifying of women that men placed on woman (Surrealism Movement Overview and Analysis).

“Le Violon d'Ingres” by Man Ray 1924

Surrealism was one of the only art movements that segued into film production. Filmmakers Rene Clair and Luis Bunel dipped their toes into the Surrealist vision and created film under this vision. Luis Bunel, whom collaborated with Salvador Dali, his work became the most famous. The mixture of Surrealism and cinema created an extremely bizarre but realistic interpretation of the times.

The film did not have the same dream-like effect that is seen in paintings but the actions were surreal because it wasn’t something you would see in typical ordinary life. Bunel was known for his films Un Chien Andalou (1929) and L'Age d'Or (1930).

Bunel’s films were powerful in the way that they created an intellectual and emotional response of the viewer. The films featured images of insects, bodily waste, dead bodies, amputation, and other manipulations to the human body, creating narrative and disturbing imagery. For the film, L'Age d'Or, the theme of the film was about a couples desire for sex that created frustration, failure and absurd interruptions. The film mocked the church, state, and family, which are considered to the bones of society. This surrealist film combined sex, violence, jarring imagery to confront pillars of society (Surrealism Movement Overview and Analysis).

Image from film L'Age d'Or

Image from film L'Age d'Or

The full video can be seen at the attached link: https://youtu.be/RDbav8hcl5

Surrealism is also a movement that broadened its bounds into the fashion industry. Fashion played an integral role in the Surrealism movement, and many fashion designers of this time became involved in the movement. There is a disconnect that occurs when discussing the fashion designers in the Surrealism movement. Research typically does not recognize fashion as a part of the movement and some would argue that the fashion designers adopted the Surrealist style for capital gain. “Schiaparelli‘s influence on the Surrealist community has yet to be fully acknowledged or documented. Her contributions have frequently been dismissed as derivative, and she has even been accused of stealing ideas (Surrealism Movement

Overview and Analysis). Rather her fashions should be understood as another reflection of the zeitgeist of 1930s Paris, a time when a number of Surrealist artists were working in and interacting with the world of fashion and many couturiers were keenly aware of developments in the arts.” Elsa Schiaparelli was one of the most famous fashion designers that developed during this time. Elsa was ingenious at mimicking and reshaping the body; she creatively pushed the boundaries of her subject and objects. She too, created work that tricked the eye and juxtaposed the conscious and subconscious. Schiaparelli developed further the techniques of the other Surrealism artists, because the novelties of designs were on sweaters rather than canvas (Surrealism Movement Overview and Analysis). Schiaparelli developed the Bowknot sweater. It was common during this time for the woman to wear a sweater with a small scarf tied at their neck. Schiaparelli ingeniously knitted the scarf right in the sweater so that the wearer did not have to have bulkiness of additional accessories. Schiaparelli writes, “Trying courageously not to feel self conscious, convinced deep within me that I was nearly glamorous, I wore it at a smart lunch—and created a furor.” A New York City buyer immediately ordered forty sweaters, and the orders steadily rose after that.

Harper's Bazaar calls the piece modern and geometric. The sweater was cutting edge because it engages with developments in modern art and was completely different from the Cubist sweaters that were circulating on the market at the time. Schiaparelli’s Bow Knot sweater was feminine and decorative and it commanded a lot of attention for the traditional utilitarian aspect of a sweater (Pass,

Victoria Rose, 113).

Dali explains that artist should be involved in more than one medium, “The modern artist should participate in every kind of extracurricular activity.

Michelangelo designed the dress for the Pope’s Swiss Guards.” Which leads to Dali’s collaboration with fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli. The duo collaborated on a dress, which was designed after Dali’s New York Dream-Man Finds Lobster in Place of Phone, which appeared in the magazine American Weekly in 1935, and the mixed media Lobster Telephone created in 1936. In Dali’s piece the dream of Venus, he dressed live nude models with fresh seafood used as their costumes. The lobster was used to cover the female models sexual organs. In Lobster telephone, the genitalia of the lobster are placed at the mouthpiece on the telephone, referencing another sexual innuendo. In Persistence of Memory: A Personal Biography of

Salvador Dali, notes that Dali loved using lobsters as a symbol in many of his works.

According to Dali, “the skeleton is of the utmost importance. It is always the structure, which matters and is all that remains after death. Unlike humans, they carry their skeletons on the outside and their flesh on the inside” (Lear 10). The lobster dress is beautiful gown with a lobster amid parsley sprigs on the front of the skirt. Dali wanted to go as far as putting mayonnaise on the dress but Schiaparelli did not agree. The lobster was already known to be a sexual connotation, and the placement of the lobster on the dress added additional sexual tension (Surrealism

Movement Overview and Analysis).

Lobster telephone by Salvador Dali (1936)

Salvador Dali writes in his autobiography; “I don’t not understand why, when

I ask for a grilled lobster in a restaurant. I am never served a cooked telephone” “sir the rational waiter might have answered, “If you want a cooked telephone, why don’t you ask for one” (Surrealism Movement Overview and Analysis).

“The Dream of Venus”. Shows Salvador Dali grasping the nude body of a female figure. A lobster is placed directly in front of the female’s pelvic area, which symbolizes Dali’s irrational fear of castration by the female. The lobster’s claws hold a powerful ability to lacerate other objects, which lends itself to become the perfect

Surrealistic symbol for castration (Surrealism Movement Overview and Analysis).

Lobster Dress By Elsa Schiaparelli designed in collaboration with Salvador Dali

(1937)

The high-heeled Schiaparelli shoe hat was created in 1937 in collaboration with Salvador Dali. The idea came from a photograph taken in 1933 by Dali's wife

Gala, showing the artist wearing a woman's shoe on his head and another one on his shoulder (Pass, Victoria Rose, 111). The hat was captured in a photograph by Georges Saad, published in the

October 1937 number of L’Officiel de la Mode et de la Couture, and Gala herself can be seen wearing it in a photo taken by André Maillet in 1938.

Jean Cocteau was another important surrealist artist whom collaborated with Schiaparelli. Their designs together were quite different from the collaborations with Dali but nonetheless just as striking and unusual. For instance, one of their designs was a long blue silk jersey coat, with an embroidery of an optical illusion of two silhouetted faces forming the outline of a vase, at the top of their heads and the middle of the vase are a splash of pink flowers (Pass, Victoria

Rose, 113).

Elsa Schiaparelli evening jacket in collaboration with Jean Cocteau (1937)

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Another jacket that Schiaparelli and Cocteau worked together on was the outline of a women’s face, as a beading of long lush hair drapes down the arm of the jacket.it is extremely spectacular to have fine artist working with a fashion designer to create wearable art. This piece truly mixed the embodiment of an artistic painting onto a wearable and purchasable object (Pass, Victoria Rose, 115). Elsa Schiaparelli evening jacket in collaboration with Jean Cocteau (1937)

When Schiaparelli wasn’t collaborating with other artists she continued to design and bridge surrealism into her design. Hands would be used as belt clasps, lapel clips, and buttons and gloves were modified by adding fingernails, claws, and rings. Schiaparelli would embellish garments with buttons that looked like beetles, shells, faces, lips, and locks (Pass, Victoria Rose, 115).

Schiaparelli belt (1934)

By 1939, fascist politicians were gaining power in Italy, Germany, and eventually leading the world to WW2. Hitler began his invasion of France in 1940, and Schiaparelli responded by designing conservative utilitarian silhouettes in military colors. Schiaparelli’s next collection was launched after the war in 1945, but her look wasn’t what society wanted post-war. Leading to her last and final collection in 1954. Schiaparelli’s designs seemed to lack a clear goal, and after the war, the House of Schiaparelli floundered (Pass, Victoria Rose, 115).

As for the other surrealist artists, they too dissolved at the beginning of

World War 2. Breton, Dali, Ernst and other member fled to the United States and began working in New York City. The Surrealist movement was resurrected in the

America and the artist’s work was exhibited at Peggy Guggenheim’s (1898–1979) gallery, Art of This Century, and the Julien Levy Gallery. Next the group made its way to Mexico where an International Surrealist exhibition took place in Mexico City.

The exhibition included works from the newly included Hispanic Surrealist artists

Frida Khalo and Diego Riviera (Voorhies, James).

In conclusion, examining an art movement that was highly motivated by the spirit of the times gives a different angle of the history of this time period, and how people were feeling. For the Surrealists, they based their vision on the new and previously unknown teaching of psychology and the unconscious mind by Sigmund

Freud. Their work symbolizes what these artists stood for, and the issues they faced against society. The male dominance of the Surrealist’s became clear through out the research process. The work of female Surrealist’s that were working along side these men were important and just as successful as their male counterparts artist yet less represented. Giving insight to the societal norms and view of the female artists and females in general during this time period. It is also interesting to note the affect that war had on this movement. The movement began at the end of the first world war and ended as the next war began. Proving that the war, and politics and social beliefs force a collective mood on society and art has the capacity to appeal to, and connect with human emotion.

Works Cited

"André Breton Artist Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. 2017. TheArtStory.org Content compiled and written by The Art Story Contributors Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors Available from: http://www.theartstory.org/artist-breton- andre.htm [Accessed 17 May 2017]

"Dada Movement Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. 2017. TheArtStory.org Content compiled and written by The Art Story Contributors Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors Available from: http://www.theartstory.org/movement- dada.htm [Accessed 17 May 2017]

Pass, Victoria Rose. Strange glamour: fashion and surrealism in the years between the World Wars. Diss. 2011. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

"Salvador Dalí Artist Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. 2017. TheArtStory.org Content compiled and written by The Art Story Contributors Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors Available from: http://www.theartstory.org/artist-dali- salvador.htm [Accessed 17 May 2017]

"Surrealism Movement Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. 2017. TheArtStory.org Content compiled and written by The Art Story Contributors Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors Available from: http://www.theartstory.org/movement-surrealism.htm [Accessed 17 May 2017]

Voorhies, James. “Surrealism.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/surr/hd_surr.htm (October 2004)