Surrealism


Surrealism is a movement for the liberation of the mind that emphasizes the
critical and imaginative powers of the unconscious. Often misinterpreted as
an artistic movement, it has transformed visual art, writing, film, and
political thought, not to mention everyday life.

While related to Dada, from which many of its initial members came,
surrealism is significantly broader in scope. As Dada was a negative
response to the First World War, surrealism possesses a more positive view
that the world can be changed and transformed into a fertile crescent of
freedom, love, and poetry.

AndrŽ Breton's Surrealist Manifesto of 1924 and the publication of the
magazine La RŽvolution SurrŽaliste ("The Surrealist Revolution") marked the
beginning of the movement as a public agitation. In the manifesto of 1924
Breton defines surrealism as "pure psychic automatism" with automatism being
spontaneous creative production without conscious moral or aesthetic
self-censorship. By Breton's admission, however, as well as by the
subsequent development of the movement, this was a definition capable of
considerable expansion.

Breton and Philippe Soupault wrote the first automatic book, Les Champs
Magnetiques, in 1919. Later, automatic drawing was developed by AndrŽ
Masson, and automatic drawing and automatic painting, as well as other
automatistic methods, such as decalcomania, frottage, fumage, grattage and
parsemage became significant parts of surrealist practice. Surrealist films,
such as Un Chien Andalou and L'Age D'Or were also produced. Many of the
popular artists in Paris throughout the 1920s and 1930s were surrealists,
including RenŽ Magritte, Joan Mir—, Max Ernst, Salvador Dal’, Alberto
Giacometti, Valentine Hugo, Meret Oppenheim, Man Ray, and Yves Tanguy. Games
such as the exquisite corpse also assumed a great importance in surrealism.
Today surrealists continue to play old surrealist games and to invent new
ones, such as Time Travelers' Potlatch and What is Wrong With This Picture?.

Often considered exclusively French, surrealism was in fact international
from the beginning, with both the Belgian and Czech groups developing early.
In fact, some of the most significant surrealist theorists and the most
radical of surrealist methods have hailed from countries other than France.
For example, the technique of cubomania was invented by Romanian surrealist
Gherasim Luca. Today there continue to be groups scattered throughout world,
such as the Surrealist Group in Stockholm, and groups in Leeds (England),
Madrid, the Netherlands, Brazil, and Portugal.

Although in popular culture, particularly in the United States of America,
surrealism is often identified with the paintings of Salvador Dal’, Dal’ was
in fact expelled from the surrealist movement in the late 1930s for his far
right-wing tendencies, and after that time his painting has little
significance for surrealism, moving farther and farther away from the movement.

The 1960s saw a dramatic expansion of surrealism with the developement of
the Surrealist Movement in the United States headed by the Chicago
Surrealist Group, whose founders, Franklin and Penelope Rosemont, have
produced some of the best English language texts on surrealism, and 1976 saw
the Surrealist Movement in the United States play the major role in
organizing the World Surrealist Exhibitionin Chicago. Other surrealist
groups were later formed in the United States, such as the the Wisconsin
Surrealist Group, the Portland Surrealist Group in Oregon, the Houston
Surrealist Group, the Blue Feathers group in Minnesota, and a collection of
surrealists in San Francisco.

While Surrealism is typically associated with the arts, it has been said to
transcend them. In this sense, surrealism is not specifically the privilege
of self-identified "surrealists" or those sanctioned by Breton, it refers to
a range of creative acts of revolt and efforts to liberate the imagination.
One might say that surrealist strands may be found in movements such as Free
Jazz (Don Cherry, Sun Ra, etc.) and even in the daily lives of people in
confrontation with limiting social conditions. Thought of as the effort of
humanity to liberate the imagination as an act of insurrection against
society, surrealism dates back to, or finds precedents in, the alchemists,
possibly Dante, various heretical groups, Hieronymus Bosch, Marquis de Sade,
Charles Fourier, Comte de Lautreamont and Arthur Rimbaud. Some people
believe that "Non-western" cultures also provide a continued source of
inspiration for surrealist activity because some may strike up a better
balance between instrumental reason and the imagination in flight than
western culture.