10821 Painters within this category include René Magritte (1898-1967), Dali and Paul Delvaux (1897–1994).

Background and influences Surrealist

Fig. 1 René Magritte, Attempting the Impossible, 1928; oil on canvas, by 105.6 x 81 cm/ 41.5 x 31.8 in; Galerie Isy Brachot, .

Dr John W Nixon BRETON, AND AUTOMATISM Related Study Notes was a literary and visual arts movement Surrealism’s principal theorist and guiding force was the active across Europe c.1920–39 and dedicated to French poet and writer André Breton (1896–1966) – artistically exploring irrational and subconscious (or popularly referred to as ‘the Pope of Surrealism’, a title 10050 unconscious) areas of experience. Historical precedents suggesting something of the control he improbably, but Perspectives on realism include the bizarre visions of Hieronymus Bosch tellingly, managed to exert over the movement. Breton had 10060 (c1450–1516), the poetry of the Comte de Lautréamont been one of the Paris Dadaists, contributing articles from From realism to abstraction (1846–70: “Beautiful as the chance encounter of a 1918 and producing his own periodical, Littérature. By about sewing machine and umbrella on an operating table…”), 1920, however, he had become exasperated with Dada’s 10720 the nightmarish fantasies of Henri Fuseli (1741–1825), unfettered anarchism and negativism and had broken away Cubist painting in France Francisco Goya (1746–1828), and James Ensor (1860– from the movement. A group of like-minded writers began to 10740 1949), or the lighter and more directly contemporaneous form around him and in 1924, in Paris, he produced the First Northern Expressionist works of Paul Klee (1879–1940), Marc Chagall (1889– . In this he defined Surrealism as: painting 1985) and (1888–1978) – these three, Pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to 10845 it should be noted, resisted the association. More express, whether verbally or in writing, or in any other way, the real process of thought. Thought’s dictation, free Picasso, middle and late directly, several Surrealists, including the movement’s painting principal theorist André Breton (1896–1966), were from any control by the reason, independent of any previously Dadaists (c.1915–22). Dada’s distain for aesthetic or moral preoccupation... Surrealism rests on 20521 reason and tradition – a reaction in part to the 1914–18 the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of associ- De Stijl World War – fed into the new movement. The psycho- ation hitherto neglected, in the omnipotence of the dream, in the disinterested play of thought... 30710 logical writings of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Carl Abstract Expressionist Jung (1875-1961) were also influential. Freud’s psychol- SURREALISM THE TERM painting ogy emphasized the role of sexuality: Jung’s, myth, Breton borrowed the word surréaliste from the French poet

30720 religion and art. Dreams, hypnosis, and forms of ‘free and critic (1880–1918) who had coined Pop Art association’ or ‘automatic’ behaviour were their points it in 1917 in reference to German philosopher Friedrich of entry to what underlay consciousness. These, too, Nietzsche’s (1844–1900) notion of the Superman, Ie Sur- 30746 influenced content and methods in Surrealist practice. homme – the great artist-philosopher whose qualities of Pictorial analysis and Breton’s First Surrealist Manifesto, published in Paris willpower, creativity and imagination set him apart from the interpretation: a case study in 1924, launched the movement into the public arena. rest of humanity, the crowd, the herd. (See From Realism to Abstraction study note for earlier treatment of Nietzsche.) 30820 The first Surrealist International Exhibition was held in Surrealism, thus, means ‘above the real’, ‘super-real’, ‘a sort Modernism and Paris in 1925 and the movement rapidly became the of absolute reality, a surreality’. By implication, Breton and Postmodernism most generally popular of the 20thC. Even today, many his fellow Surrealists saw themselves licensed to operate continue to produce Surrealist work, although more 30830 with the same casual, elitist disdain for order – be it logical, within cinema and graphics than painting or sculpture. School of London painting aesthetic, moral or whatever – as did Nietzsche’s Superman. There are two main kinds of Surrealism: Dream, juxta- In the text, a Z symbol refers posing images ‘bringing together two or more dissimilar OUTWARD AND INWARD VISION to these Study Notes realities on a plane foreign to all of them’; and Automat- Surrealism, Breton makes clear, is concerned not with ic, where use of chance or accident extends into the faithfully recording outer appearance and phenomenal effect formal elements themselves, leading, for the most part, but, rather, giving expression to inner worlds of dreams, emotions, drives and imagination. Bypassing everyday to abstraction or semi-abstraction. Automatic Surrealists waking reality, with all its constraints and particularities, include (1891–1976), Joan Miró (1893–1983) Breton claims the Surrealist, like the Expressionist or and André Masson (1896–1987). Dream Surrealism limits Abstract artist, addresses a “superior reality”, one effectively ‘chance’ or ‘accident’ to the selection and juxtaposition closer to the essence of beings and things. It is worth noting, of images or ideas, the images themselves tending to be however, that Nietzsche’s perspectivist, relativist philosophy rendered academically. Dream rather than Automatic questions the superiority of any one viewpoint to another. Surrealism, understandably, generated the popular Breton’s ‘either/or’ attitude may be the norm within Modernist support, not least because of relative accessibility, at a polemic, each movement striving to overthrow its predeces- certain level, and easy adaptation to mass media such sor, but art itself is generally more complex. Whilst Surrealist as film and television. Salvador Dali (1904–89), for art emphasizes inner visions it will be seen that much of it instance, was largely responsible for the award winning also connects with outer ones. dream sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s film Spellbound, 1945, starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck.

1/5 10821u.doc: first published 2007 CCEA GCE HISTORY OF ART NIETZSCHE, FREUD AND JUNG By way of postscript to this section. The ‘scientific’ worth Nietzsche’s philosophical writings, with their intense and of Freud’s theories has been criticised in recent years, with powerfully dramatic musings on what it is to be human, some of his case studies seemingly exposed as fraudulent. anticipate certain developments in psychiatry at the turn of Nevertheless, his approach dominates current therapeutic the century. Interestingly, particularly given that early practice. Jungian analytic psychology, on the other hand, and abstraction also centred on Germany, the whilst relatively unimportant within current therapeutic two leaders in the field, Austrian Sigmund Freud (1856– practice, remains influential across the arts and humanities. 1939) and Swiss Carl Jung (1875–1961), both had German Jung’s reputation, like that of Nietzsche before him, has as their first language. suffered somewhat by association with Nazism – the Collect- In his psychiatric practice in Vienna, Freud used hypnosis, ive Unconscious having a strong racial dimension, and dream analysis, and, later, ‘automatic’ or ‘free association’1 Nietzsche’s Superman being rather close to a Hitler self- techniques to diagnose patients with hysteria and other image. Freud, as a Jewish refugee from Nazism (he spent mental disorders. Such disorders, he came to consider, his last two years in England), had no such problems. It may represented undischarged emotional energy, occasioned by also be worth noting, within this psychiatric context, that, ten repressed sexual experiences or urges. This was the basis years before his death, Nietzsche himself suffered a total of his psychoanalytical psychology and psychotherapy. A mental breakdown from which he never emerged. core element, and illustration, of Freud’s psychoanalysis is DREAMS, SYMBOLS AND MEMORY what he called the Oedipus Complex: Dreams, according to Freud in his landmark Interpretation of In psychoanalytical theory…, the normal emotional Dreams, 1899, are “the royal road to a knowledge of the crisis brought about, at an early stage of psychosexual unconscious activities of the mind”. In their bizarre and often development, by the sexual impulses of a boy towards powerfully memorable combinations of the real and unreal, his mother and jealousy of his father. Resultant guilt familiar and unfamiliar, these “series of images, ideas, feelings precipitate the development of the Superego emotions and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind (conscience). Its female counterpart is the Electra during certain stages of sleep”4 have ever intrigued with their 2 Complex. glimpses into realms beyond the mundane and rational. Freud’s references here to Greek myth, in the persons of Oedipus and Electra, suggest something of the richness and Fig. 2 Giorgio de Chirico, Mystery and Melancholy of a Street, 1914; depth of his learning and thought – and their attractiveness oil on canvas, 88.2 x 72.3 cm/ 34.25 x 28.5 in; private collection. for writers and artists. Reproduced from H. W. Janson, History of Art, 1962; Thames & For Jung, myth had an even more important role. His The Hudson, London, 4th edition, 1991, ISBN 0-500-23632-1, p. 723. Psychology of the Unconscious, 1912, marked the end of a 5-year collaboration with Freud and the start of what is now Dreams and dream-like images so pervade myths, relig- termed analytical psychology: ions and art that citing examples – as in relation to the artists …an alternative to the Freudian view and rejecting the mentioned in our opening paragraph – becomes almost emphasis on the centrality of sexual instincts. Jung left pointless. Among the most common such images are anthro- the psychoanalytical movement… in 1913 to practise pomorphic (part human, part animal) symbols, as in the great analytical psychology, according to which man’s be- Egyptian sphinx (human head on lion’s body) or the tradit- haviour is determined not only by the conflicts already ional Christian angel (human form and bird-like wings). The present in his individual and racial history (the personal interpretation of symbols is an area in which Jung excels. and collective unconscious) but also by his aims and There may be only limited understanding of the dream’s aspirations. The character and indeed even the quality essential purpose but dream-like images have long been of dreams suggests the striving towards individuation; known to serve at least one useful, rather mundane, but also according to analytic psychology, man seeks creative quite significant, purpose – mnemonics (memory aids). Vast development, wholeness, and completion. The individ- quantities of information can be committed to memory and ual personality contains memories, known as arche- retrieved at will when linked to a series of absurd mental types, of its ancestral history which can be studied pictures. The more absurd or bizarre, the more memorable. through myths. Jung postulated two personality types, This technique was as well known to the Ancient Greek characterized respectively by extroversion and intro- orator as it is to the modern memory-artist. Nowadays, of version.3 course, the human brain, as the main repository of inherited knowledge, has been surpassed by paper and ink, and other 1 “Free association: In psychotherapy, a technique which requires the recording systems. This, though, is a recent development patient to say at once, and to go on saying at once, whatever comes within the evolutionary timescale. And, within that timescale, to mind. The chief idea behind free association is that, by using it in the oral tradition must still be regarded as the norm. the benign and supportive situation of psychotherapy, the patient will be able to slowly approach and face the anxiety-producing unconsci- ous material that he cannot face at the beginning, and which is at the centre of his personal difficulties.” Alan Bullock, Oliver Stallybrass and Fig. 3 Paul Klee, Landscape with Yellow Birds, 1923; watercolour on Stephen Trombley (editors), The Fontana Dictionary of Modern paper; Benziger Collection, Basle. Reproduced from Eric Newton, Thought, Fontana Press, London, 1988, ISBN 0-00-686129-6, p. 330. The Arts of Man, Thames & Hudson, London, 1960; 1967 paperback ‘Automatism’ is the equivalent in Surrealist practice, where the reprint, p. 255. work of art is produced spontaneously, without conscious aesthetic, moral or other such self-censorship. 2 Bullock, Stallybrass and Trombley, p. 603. 3 Bullock, Stallybrass and Trombley, p. 450. 4 Www.answers.com/topic/dream, 22 May 2006.

2/5 10821u.doc: first published 2007 CCEA GCE HISTORY OF ART SURREALISM AND POLITICS Fig. 4 Marc Chagall, Bouquet with Flying Lovers, c.1934–47; oil on Given the Surrealists’ revolutionary spirit it is hardly surpris- canvas, 76 x 50 cm/ 30 x 19.7 in; Tate Gallery, London. Reproduced ing that, from about 1925, links were formed with the from www.1001.art.net. Communist party. Nor is it surprising that, within only a few years, the Communists broke off the association, in a state, MARC CHAGALL (1889–1985) apparently, of some considerable bewilderment and Marc Chagall, like Klee, is notable for the air of gentle embarrassment. innocence he brought to his painting. He too was claimed by the Surrealists but declined to join. He was born into a poor SURREALISM AND MODERNISM Jewish family in rural Russia but spent most of his life in The fact that the beginnings of Surrealism – and, before it, France. Russian folk art, Fauvism and Cubism were his Dada – are so firmly within the worlds of literature and ideas, major influences. The Poet Reclining, 1915, was painted in rather than those of the visual arts or visual observation, has Russia whilst Chagall was there on his honeymoon and can disquieted artists and commentators on the visual arts. be related to a passage in his autobiography: Modernists tend to see narrative, literariness and illustration At last we are alone in the country. Woods, fir trees, within painting or sculpture as ‘corrupt’, ‘mongrel’ elements – solitude. The moon behind the forest. The pig in the throwbacks to the tedious moralising seen in much Academic sty, the horse behind the window, in the fields. The sky painting of the 19thC and earlier. One of the major principles lilac.6 of Modernism is that each artform (painting, sculpture, music or whatever) should seek purity – truth to those aims and Bouquet with Flying Lovers, c.1934–47 (London, Tate means appropriate solely to it. Something of this Modernist Gallery; Fig. 4), with its floating figures and multiple view- unease with Surrealism comes through in the following points, typifies his work. It was worked at over some thirteen remarks by John Canaday: years. Bella, his wife, shown as a bride in the painting, was dead by the time of its last reworking. The bridal bouquet of The flaw in surrealism is self-consciousness and the spring flowers in a sense has become also a wreath, and we trickery that are apparently implicit in the exploitation of a slip backwards and forwards in time and space. hidden world on an arbitrary, theoretical, didactic basis. This at any rate is its flaw in Dali as its typical practitioner, and although he was disowned by the other surrealists, Fig. 5 Max Ernst, The Edge of a Forest, 1926; oil on canvas, private his art has come to be so identified with the word surreal- collection. Reproduced from Sir Lawrence Gowing (gen. editor), A ism that the word’s meaning has changed to accord with Biographical Dictionary of Artists, Grange Books, London, 1994, ISBN Dali’s use of the theory – at least, in the field of painting. 1-85627-666-x, p. 204. But in either case, surrealism tended to become a codifi- cation of, a guide to, the laws of mystery, and even in its GIORGIO DE CHIRICO (1888–1978) purest uses it was subject to the flaw that Dali exagger- Prominent among those authentic ‘pre-surrealists’, Canaday ated. and many others are agreed, is the Greek-born Italian ‘meta- physical’ or ‘enigmatic’ painter Giorgio de Chirico. Chirico’s Fortunately, the realm of mystery was also explored work, particularly that produced about 1912–17 and depicting (without guide books) by certain pre-surrealist and post- a dream-like world of deserted Classical streets and piazzas, surrealist painters who set down their memories of their often shown in exaggerated and under oblique voyages in ways that enable us to share the experience, lighting, was indeed widely admired and influential within the rather than the theory, of fantasy...5 Surrealist movement itself. The similarity of views at this time ‘Pre-Surrealists’ is apparent from Chirico’s stated belief that good sense and The ‘pre-Surrealists’ could be listed almost indefinitely but logic have no place in a work of art, which must approximate three, in particular, have a direct bearing on Surrealism itself. to a dreamlike or childlike state of mind. It is known also that, as a student in Munich, he was interested in the philosophy PAUL KLEE (1879–1940) of Nietzsche. In 1924 he was invited by the Surrealists to Paul Klee was born in Switzerland into a musical family; his exhibit with them. His titles are indicative of the general father was an orchestral conductor and he himself played the mood; some examples are: The Soothsayer’s Recompense, violin. By 1899 he had turned from music to painting, 1913; Uncertainly of the Poet, 1913; Melancholy and Mystery studying in Munich, Italy and Paris before, in 1906, settling in of a Street, 1914 (Fig. 2); The Painter’s Family, 1926; and Munich. Early influences included Goya, Blake, Fuseli and Piazza d’Italia, 1933–35. Chirico broke decisively with the Munch; and in literature, Byron, Poe and Baudelaire. He was Surrealists about 1930. He eventually repudiated even his associated with both Der Blaue Reiter (Z10740) and the own metaphysical work in favour of a kind of academic Bauhaus (Z20522), where he taught. His differ painting which for many years consigned him to an artistic markedly from those of his fellow Expressionists, being wilderness. It has since been ‘rediscovered’ and praised by gentle, wry, contemplative and linear, rather than angst- Postmodernist artists and critics. ridden, morbid, violent and painted with ostentatious crudity. They’re Biting, 1920; Landscape with Yellow Birds, 1923 Automatic Surrealist painters (Fig. 3); and Village in the Greenwood, 1922, are examples. MAX ERNST (1891–1976) He was claimed by the Surrealists but had no formal Max Ernst was born in Cologne, in Germany, and studied association with the movement.

6 Quoted in Sir John Rothenstein and Sir Philip Hendy, Masterpieces 5 John Canaday, Mainstreams of Modem Art, Thames and Hudson, of the Tate and National Galleries, Heron Books/ Thames & Hudson, London, 1959, p. 528. London, 1964, p. 247.

3/5 10821u.doc: first published 2007 CCEA GCE HISTORY OF ART philosophy at Bonn University 1908–14 before becoming in Strings, 1950. 1919 a co-founder of the Cologne Dadaists. He moved to Paris in 1921 and, although tending to associate more with Fig. 7 André Masson, The Battle of Fishes, 1926-7; Museum of Mod- poets than painters, became one of the most active and ern Art, New York. Reproduced from www.heliosfera.blogger.com. inventive of Surrealist artists. His paintings The Elephant Celebes, 1921; Oedipus Rex, 1923; and Men Will Know ANDRÉ MASSON (1896–1987) Nothing of This, 1923, are regarded as major Surrealist André Masson, born at Balagny in France, was severely works, even though they were produced before the move- wounded in World War I, an experience that deeply affected ment itself was publicly launched. In 1925 he invented the him. He joined the Surrealists in 1924 but remained with technique of frottage in which rubbings were taken of textur- them only until 1928. He is notable for being the first ed surfaces – such as leaves or wooden floorboards – and Surrealist artist to deliberately induce in himself a trance-like from these were worked up fantastic images, such as The state from which to produce ‘automatic’ art. His method was Edge of a Forest, 1926 (Fig. 5); Forest and Dove, 1927; or to draw ‘automatically’ on canvas using adhesive over which The Whole Town, 1934. Another technique, decalomania, he then poured coloured sands, as in The Battle of Fishes, involved painting a smooth surface – such as glass, metal or 1926–27 (Fig. 7) – a method that influenced the Abstract shiny paper – and then pressing this onto paper or canvas to Expressionists. produce an image which was then worked on imaginatively. He also produced highly innovative work using collage and Dream Surrealist painters photomontage, as in his Woman with 100 Heads, 1929. Fig. 8 René Magritte, The Human Condition I, 1933; oil on canvas, JOAN MIRÓ (1893–1983) 100 x 81 cm/ 39.3 x 31.9 in; Choisel Claude Spaak Collection. Joan Miró was born in Spanish Catalonia, studied art in Reproduced from Marianne Oesterreicher-Mollwo, Surrealism and Dadaism, Phaidon, Oxford, 1979, ISBN 0-7148-1954-9, p. 72. Barcelona, joined the Dadaists in Paris in 1920 and the Surrealists in 1925. He returned to Barcelona from Paris in

1940 and, following the end of the Second World War, alternated between the two cities. His early Surrealist works, RENÉ MAGRITTE (1898–1967) such as The Farm, 1921-22; The Ploughed Earth, 1923-24; René Magritte, born at Lessines in , is along with and The Hunter (Catalan Landscape), 1923–24 (Fig. 6), set Dali one of the most widely recognised of Surrealist painters. the basic pattern for his very personal style. Of the latter His mother committed suicide, by drowning, in 1913, an work, Anthony Bertram writes: event often linked to recurring themes and images in his work, particularly those of female nudes with their faces Fig. 6 Joan Miró, The Hunter (Catalan Landscape), 1923–24; oil on canvas, 64.8 x 100.3 cm/ 25.5 x 39.5 in; Museum of Modern Art, New shrouded. Magritte criticised ‘automatic’ techniques as being York. Reproduced from hip.cgu.edu/aisenberg/20thslides/miro.htm. contrived and mechanical. His own painting technique is at first sight banally academic; there is little if any apparent Its manner is still formal, but it contains many elements for concern with aesthetic, ‘painterly’, effects. Instead, attention their associative value – elements he was to use with focuses on absurd juxtapositions of content, scale, or con- nostalgic insistence in much of his subsequent work. text, or plays between visual images and the written word. Here, for example... the ladder and wheel which first Examples are: Attempting the Impossible, 1928 (Fig. 1); The appeared in The Farm. The whole picture is a gay and Use of Words I (Ceci n’est pas une Pipe), 1928–29; The tender evocation of his childhood home. The letters SARD Human Condition, 1934 (Fig. 8); The Promenades of Euclid, abbreviate the name of a Catalan dance – the Sardana. 1955; and Carte Blanche, 1965. His painter’s palette in the lower left corner seems to be meeting a harrow and the two worlds he moved in are Fig. 9 Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931; oil, 24.2 x 33 clearly symbolised in the colours of the Spanish flag on cm/ 9.5 x 13 in; Museum of Modern Art, New York. Reproduced from the right and the French towards the left – the tricolour Hugh Honour and John Fleming, A World History of Art, 1984; 6th smoke that comes from the pipe. There is the sea, too; edition, Laurence King Publishing, London, 2002, ISBN 1-85669-315- and there are birds and underwater creatures: but they 5, p. 822. are all bright flickers in the imagination rather than ‘real’ things. They inhabit a luminous equivalent of happy earth SALVADOR DALI (1904–89) and sky in pure muted pink and yellow.7 Salvador Dali, like Miró, was born in Spanish Catalonia. He Other examples of Miró’s early work are Harlequin Carnival, studied art in Madrid and came under the influence of the 1924–25 (based on drawings produced in a hallucinatory metaphysical paintings of Chirico, the meticulous realism of state induced by hunger); Dog Barking at the Moon, 1926; the Pre-Raphaelites, and the psychoanalytical writings of Composition in Blue, 1927; and Dutch Interior, 1928. The last Freud. He went to Paris in 1928 and was presented by Miró two illustrate his later use of clear outlines and solid masses to the other Surrealists. Between then and 1936 he produced of bright colour. From the late 1940s and 1950s he tended to

oscillate between this kind of painting and a much freer and Fig. 10 Salvador Dali, Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premon- more spontaneous technique, sometimes involving alien ition of Civil War), 1936; oil on canvas, 100 x 99 cm/ 39 x 38.5 in; the materials and spattered paint, as in Composition with Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Reproduced from Edmund Swingle- hurst, Salvador Dali, Exploring the Irrational, Todtri Book Publishers, 7 Anthony Bertram, The History of Western Art; slide sets with texts; New York, 1996, ISBN 1-57717-003-2, p. 55. Visual Publications, Cheltenham, 1988, Section 1.3.Vll, p. 8.

4/5 10821u.doc: first published 2007 CCEA GCE HISTORY OF ART a series of highly detailed ‘magic realist’ canvases of Fig. 14 Francis Bacon, Figure in a Landscape, 1945; oil on canvas, phantasmagorical scenes, heavy with sexual innuendo and 145 x 128 cm/ 57 x 50.5 in; Tate Gallery, London. Reproduced from set usually within landscapes recognisable as of northern Dawn Ades, Andrew Forge, Andrew Durham, and Krzysztof Cieszkowski, Francis Bacon, The Tate Gallery in association with Spain. Examples of his work are: The Persistence of Thames and Hudson, 1985, ISBN 0-946590-19-2, plate 2. Memory, 1931 (Fig. 9), with its references to Einstein’s relativist concept of time; Composition: Invocation of Lenin, Very little of Bacon’s surviving work predates 1945, the cut- 1931; Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of off point in our specification between AS and A2 subject Civil War), 1936 (Fig. 10); and Sleep, 1937. He had a content. He produced comparatively little painting during considerable talent for self-promotion, which did not, how- these early years and most of what he did produce he ever, prevent his expulsion from the movement by Breton. destroyed. Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucif- Fig. 11 Paul Delvaux, Sleeping Venus, 1944; oil on canvas, 172.5 x ixion, 1944 (Tate Gallery, London); Figure in a Landscape, 200 cm/ 68 x 78.7 in; Tate Gallery, London. Reproduced from 1945 (Tate Gallery, London; Fig. 14); Painting, 1946 (Mus- Oesterreicher-Mollwo, p. 85. eum of Modern Art, New York); Head II, 1949 (Ulster Museum, Belfast); and Study After Velázquez’s Port of Pope PAUL DELVAUX (1897–1994) Innocent X, 1953 (Des Moines Art Center, Iowa), are major Paul Delvaux, born in Belgium, began painting in a Surrealist examples of his work from about this time. (Fuller treatment fashion only in 1935 but he continued with it long after it fell of Bacon is given in the 30746 and 30830 study notes.) out of favour with others. His paintings typically depict

dressed and nude women among otherwise deserted Classical buildings, as in Sleeping Venus, 1944 (Fig. 11), or The Great Avenue, 1964.

Fig. 12 Paul Nash, Voyages of the Moon, 1934-7; oil on canvas, 73.5 x 54 cm/ 28 x 21.25 in; Tate Gallery, London. Reproduced from The Tate Gallery, Tate Gallery Publications Department, London, 1969, p. 145.

PAUL NASH (1889–1946) Paul Nash was born in London and produced a body of work in which a Romantic feeling for the English landscape often combined with a Surrealist sense of mystery, as in Pillar and Moon, 1932–42; Voyages of the Moon, 1934–37 (Fig. 12); and Landscape from a Dream, 1938 (Fig. 13) . He also worked as an official war artist in both World Wars.

Fig. 13 Paul Nash, Landscape from a Dream, 1936–8; oil on canvas, 67.9 x 101.6 cm/ 26.75 x 40 in; Tate Gallery, London. Reproduced from Jemima Montagu (editor), Paul Nash: Modern Artist, Ancient Landscape, Tate Publishing, London, 2003, ISBN 1-85437-468-0 p. 75.

FRANCIS BACON (1909–92) Francis Bacon was born in Dublin, of English parents, and spent most of his life in London. Following the death of Picasso in 1973, he was widely regarded as the world’s leading painter. Very much an independent, he did, though, submit work to the International Surrealist Exhibition, held in London in 1936 – it was rejected as “insufficiently Surreal- ist”.8 Despite this, Surrealism continued to interest him, and that, of any label, is probably the most apt that could be attached to his work. In an interview published in 1983, he was asked by Joshua Gilder: The Surrealists spoke of accident as a way of subvert- ing the conscious or the super-ego. Do you agree? FB: I think so. The difficulty is, so much in Surrealism was really interesting as ideas, but the actual painters, the real Surrealist painters, were not very interesting. Their technique was very academic and boring.9

8 See, for instance, Ronald Alley and John Rothenstein, Francis Bacon, Thames and Hudson, London, 1964, p. 9. 9 Joshua Gilder, “I think about death every day “, interview with Bacon, Flash Art magazine, May 1983, p. 19.

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