Dadaism And Surrealist Movement : Max Ernst

Surrealism is a movement that built off of the burgeoning look into art, psychology, and the workings of the mind. Popularly associated with the works of Salvador Dali, Surrealist art takes imagery and ideology and creates correlation where there is none, creating new forms of art. In this essay I will look to explore the inception of the surrealist movement, including the Surrealist Manifesto, to stress the importance of these artists and their work in the 20th century and beyond. I also will look to films from our European Cinema course to express how films incorporate the influence of surrealism both intentionally and unintentionally.

As the world began healing from World War I, modern artists decided to listen to their subconscious minds. Surrealism was a new style of art that formed from Dadaism. The leader of surrealism, André Breton, believed that because surrealism required unique thoughts, it showed an active mind. Not only is surrealism found in art, it is also found in theater, literature, philosophy, and politics. The creation of surrealism is achieved by abstract or realistic images that may be bursting with voice or cold and impersonal. Bending the principles of design to give new feelings could create this feeling. After World War I, European artists explored their unconscious minds to create compositions that challenged common beliefs of artistic and emotional expression.

Kandinsky transformed colour into a completely abstract art absolutely divorced from subject matter. The fauvists and expressionists shared an appreciation of the pure and simplified shapes of various examples of primitive art, an enthusiasm that was generated by Gauguin and extended to Picasso, Brancusi, Modigliani, Derain, and others.

Impactful across the globe, both Dada and Surrealism were artistic movements created in the early 20th century that were significant in redefining modern art today. The Dada movement came about in 1916 through the performance of Hugo Ball’s sound poem “Karawane” at the Cabaret Voltaire that he opened with his partner, nightclub singer Emmy Hennings, in Zurich, Switzerland. The poem made absolutely no sense, purposely, and it didn’t have to. Ball would also dress in wild costumes for his performances as seen below:

Dada was an art movement described by Dada poet Tristan Tzara as “not the beginnings of art, but of disgust.” The movement came into existence through a small group of artists and poets in Zurich who eventually wrote a set of strategies and philosophies aiming to revolutionise visual art, performance and poetry, as well as revolutionary ideas about the politics and social values. Dada came into existence amid the first world war. For the artists the war was evidence that the break down of social structures, corrupt nationalist politics, and unquestioning conformity of culture and thought led to such violence. (Moma.org, n.d.)

While Vonnegut expressed his interpretation of that idea through his novel, I chose to create a mixed media work of art that, like Billy’s aliens, is an attempt to come to terms with confusing and overwhelming ideas.

Freud’s theories have launched what is now known as the psychoanalytic approach to literature. Freud was interested in writers, especially those who depended largely on symbols. Such writers tend to tinge their ideas and figures with mystery or ambiguity that only make sense once interpreted, just as the analyst tries to figure out the dreams and bizarre actions that the unconscious mind of a neurotic releases out of repression. A work of literature is thus treated as a fantasy or a dream that Freudian analysis comes to explain the nature of the mind that produced it. The purpose of a work of art is what psychoanalysis has found to be the purpose of the dream: the secret gratification of an infantile and forbidden wish that has been repressed into the unconscious (Wright 765).

While Dada was intended to be a rebellious and purposeful response to conventional and traditional thinking in society, its successor Surrealism resulted from the desire to explore the unconscious mind. Also, the movement aimed to upset the conventions of reality. Surrealism started as a literary movement that utilized a technique called automatism.

Since there is no doninant style for Surrealism but I classify its surrealism. The technique itself is cubism but the theme of the work is Surrealism. This work made caused of WWI, it's expressing the chaos and depression. It's the condition of "irritate" of the surrealism style.

Frida Kahlo and Salvador Dali were two figures that emerged in the mid-1900s who made their marks on the artistic world through their interpretations of surrealism. Surrealism, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, can be defined as “a 20th century art form in which an artist or writer combines unrelated images or events in a very strange and dreamlike way” ("Surrealism”). The overall goal of surrealism is to unearth an idea that lies within one’s mind and imagination, and express it. Moreover, the movement of surrealism began in the late 1910s and lasted until the early 1920s (Ades and Gale). While both Kahlo and Dali were classified surrealists of their time, Kahlo expressed herself through a wide range of tragedy-filled paintings,

Giger were significant as he revolutionized the outlook in surrealism. His work was classified under Magic Realism, however his contemporaries such as Ernst Fuchs were drastically different as the trend were to create positive, fantasy artworks. Fuchs’ style utilizes vivid imagery of many colour tones to communicate his thoughts. (Fig. 8) However, the two artists shared some similarities, as they expressed their envisioned world through the use of life, death, and spiritual elements. The comparison of the two is interesting as Ernst Fuch’s artwork captures the positive outlook of life through the use of heavy natural elements. H.R. Giger is on the opposite side of the spectrum, as he uses natural elements to heighten our senses of fear. Giger harnesses our natural senses of fear through the use of familiar imagery such as bones, representing death along with the gruesomeness of drooling slime, demonstrated in Aliens (Fig. 9). To keep a realistic approach of an alien invasion in the observer’s minds, he implemented realistic themes of invasion and reproduction as a reinterpretation of the activities humans act upon each other to survive. These concepts were clearly demonstrated in the face-hugger encounter scene as it began to invade the astronaut’s body (Fig. 10). Along with the creation of the alien, this scene was an excellent demonstration Giger’s understanding of spatial composition through the use of materiality and natural elements (Fig. 11). Along

Max Ernst, a painter and sculptor, was a huge innovator of many different art techniques that are still being used today since 1919. In 1919, Ernst entered a period of constant innovation and experimentation where he discovered techniques such as, frottage, grattage, and the manner of Celebes. These techniques became known as Ernst’s personal tradition in painting and would later be the center of his entire career as a painter. The Horde was the product of that creative period in which Ernst employed two techniques that he invented known as frottage and grattage or also known as “rubbing” and “scraping.”

Breton also explains the Surrealist Manifesto that Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist credited with the theory of psychoanalysis, influenced surrealism (Breton). Breton was fascinated with Freud analysis on the connection between dreams and the subconscious. According to Leon Hoffman in an interview with the American Psychoanalytic Association on Freud's book, Interpretation of Dreams, Freud believes that a person's subconscious is communicating with their conscious through their dreams (Hoffman). As it relates to surrealism, surrealists use psychoanalysis as a tool to produce their artworks. Psychoanalysis was a way to free

As Dali moved into his Surrealist years he became more interested in psychology and exploring his own fears and fantasies. Dali’s Surrealist period last from 1929-1940, in which years he joined the Surrealist Movement, and shortly after became a leader in this movement. In order to bring images from his “subconscious mind”, Dali began to use a method to find inspiration for his art; he would induce hallucinatory states in himself. As his work matured, and his fame grew

The surrealist movement holds emotional authenticity and social activism as the highest ideals. Influenced by the work of Freud and Jung, the arts are viewed as psychic manifestations that go deeper than external reality. Spontaneous techniques, like psychic automatism (i.e. automatic writing and drawing), generate images from the unconscious and result in content similar to dream experiences and contemplating these images provides a new experience of reality (McNiff, 2009).