10821 Painters within this category include René Magritte (1898-1967), Dali and Paul Delvaux (1897–1994). Background and influences Surrealist painting 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, Brussels. Dr John W Nixon BRETON, DADA AND AUTOMATISM Related Study Notes Surrealism 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– Surrealist Manifesto. In this he defined Surrealism as: painting 1985) and Giorgio de Chirico (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 Guillaume Apollinaire (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 Max Ernst (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, Expressionism 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,