Dada and Surrealism
... Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1923), an abstract work also known as The Large Glass. It was composed in oil and wire on glass, which was enthusiastically received by the surrealists. After his short creative period, Duchamp was content to let others develop the themes he had originated. His pervasive influence was crucial to the development of surrealism, Dada, and pop art. He didn’t like ‘showing off’ his artworks, in fact he strongly disliked exhibitions in general. He became an American citizen in 1955 and died in Paris on October 1, 1968. Surrealism began in 1924. There were three main features to surrealism. These were:- • Automatic writing/scribbling (Automatism) • Making up of organic shapes and putting them into unreal environments (organic surrealism) • Super surrealism – so real that you believe it When psychology talked about Automatism, these artists interpreted it as referring to a suppression of consciousness in favor of the subconscious. This group, being more focused on feeling and less analytical, understood Automatism to be the automatic way in which the images of the subconscious reach the conscience. They believed these images should not be burdened with "meaning." It would take fifty years for artists born after the Second World War to discover how right this method is for helping us all understand the architecture of the psyche. Those who have understood the method, who have faithfully followed the images of the subconscious and, with patience, painted and analyzed them, have a lot to teach us about the make up and interaction of the three planes of the Spiritual, the psychological, and the physical. Andre Breton was a French poet, essayist, critic, editor, chief promoter and one of the founders of Surrealist movement. He was born in Tinchebray (Orne), 1896, as the son of a shopkeeper. Breton studied medicine and later psychiatry, and met also in 1921 Freud in Vienna. He never qualified but during World War I he served in the neurological ward and made some attempts to use Freudian methods to psychoanalyze his patients. He first joined the Dadaists group in 1916, but turned then to Surrealism. He then wrote the manifesto for this movement, which was published in 1924. He stated that surrealism is “Pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express, either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations.” All in all, influenced by psychological theories, Breton defined Surrealism as a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to everyday world. Breton and his colleagues believed that the springs of personal freedom and social a political liberty lay in the unconscious mind. They found examples of exploration of the mind from the works of such painters as Hieronymus Bosch. He died in Paris on September 28, 1966. Max Ernst was born near Cologne in 1891, Germany. He studied philosophy and art at the University of Bonn and served in the German Army during First World War. Ernst joined the Dada movement in Cologne and in 1919 he began to work on collages and books composed of irrational images and fantastic landscapes. In 1922, Ernst moved to Paris where he became a central figure in the Surrealist Movement. In 1949 he was arrested in France as an enemy alien and escaped to New York where he was welcomed by the New York art world and made fantastical paintings that reflected his sadness and horror about the destruction in Europe. After living in Sedona, Arizona, Ernst returned to France in 1953. As an artist, Ernst’s accomplishment was to develop a syntax using found visual material in a controlled, narrative manner. In pursuit of novel images he found a link, no matter how irrational, between all the materials he employed. With frottage drawings and decalcomania, Ernst used non-traditional methods to make a work of art. Both are versions of automatism or automatic writing in which the images are not planned, but discovered through the process. He died in 1976. Salvador Dali was born in 1904 and was a Spanish painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and designer. After passing through phases of Cubism, Futuris...