2. What is Surrealism?
Definition: A 20th-century avant-garde
movement in art and literature that sought to
release the creative potential of the
unconscious mind.
Our Definition: A combination of dreams and
reality all meshed into one.
3. The Beginning
• Founded in 1924
• Influenced by well known psychologist
Sigmund Freud
• Started as a literary movement but soon
expanded into paintings and eventually
photography
4. Components
• Developed out of Dada
• Believed, by its founder, to be revolutionary
• Centered around the imagination and how
you use it to see certain things
5. • Isn't always suppose to make sense to the
viewer (shouldn't be taken literally)
• Formed political expression and action
6. The Politics
• had a fierce hatred of authority and religion
• ideas early on about revolutionary anarchism
• Dada (which influenced Surrealism) was a reaction
to the WWI
• Some surrealists were members of the Communist
part
• Others were Libertarian
• Much sexism and homophobia
7. Key Characteristics
• Explored the unconsciousness and dreaming
as a form of reality
• Sexuality and violence
• Pushed boundaries of socially accepted
behaviors and of art
8. • Emphasized the irrational and the mysterious
• Expressed sexual drives, anger, and fear
• True wants, needs, and desires
9. The Founder
• Andre Breton (1896-1966)… Holy crap he
was old…
• First started in Dadaist group
• Eventually wrote "Surrealist Manifesto”
• Defined surrealism as, “a means of reuniting
conscious and unconscious realms of
experience so that the world of dream and
10. • FUN FACT!!! He went to the U.S. where he
met Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst (another
surrealist who helped shape abstract
expressionism)
11. Hierohymus Bosch
• Eccentric painter of religious visions who
dealt in particular with the torments of hell
• Surrealism was affected by his wildly erotic
and sadistic images
12. Sigmund Freud
• A well known psychologist who inspired most
surrealist artists
• Founder of the psychoanalytic theory,
oedipus theory, and the theory of the
subconscious
• Surrealism strongly followed his theory of the
subconscious. Artists used this as a
technique when painting… letting their minds
13. Psychoanalytic Theory
• Psychoanalysis: Freud's theory of
personality, our thoughts, and actions to
unconscious motives and conflicts.
• The unconscious usually consists of mostly
unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and
memories.
14. Joan Miro
• Spanish
• Studied at La Lonja of Fine Arts
• Works before 1920 were influenced by
cubism and fauvism
15. Continued….
• Automatic painting: would not control his
paintbrush, but instead had his subconscious
control it.
• Patches of color look like they've been set
down randomly
19. Rene Magritte
• Belgian
• studied at Academie Royale from 1916 to
1918
• his mom committed suicide when he was 13.
she suffered from depression and threw
herself off of a bridge - this obviously took its
toll on him as you can see in many of his
paintings
20. • portrays realistic images but places them in
surreal places
• was recognized by critics for his talent but
still wasn't completely accepted because of
his unrealistic placement of objects in his
paintings
32. Metamorphosis ofNarcissus
Poem
Narcissus,
in his immobility
absorbed by his reflection with the digestive slowness
of carnivorous plants,
becomes invisible.
There remains of him only the hallucinatingly white
oval of his head,
his head again more tender,
his head, chrysalis of hidden biological designs,
his head held up by the tips of the water's fingers,
at the tips of his fingers
33. of the insensate hand,
of the terrible hand,
of the mortal hand
of his own reflection.
When that head splits
when that head splits
when that head bursts,
it will be the flower,
the new Narcissus,
Gala - my new Narcissus
34. Technique
• Early 1930s, Dali created "Paranoid-critical
Transformation Method"
• Method used to help artist tap into their
subconscious and self induce a paranoid
state
• Helped artists understand world and reality
in order to view it in more unique ways
35. • Created "hand painted dream photographs"
• Used optical illusions and juxtapositioning
images
• painted what he witnessed
37. Summary
• Surrealism is a combination of the
subconscious and reality.
• Many of these paintings have very deep
meanings to the artists
• Most of the paintings in this movement were
inspired by Sigmund Freud and his theories
