Essay On Surrealism

Salvador Dali was an artist who was almost more notorious for his colorful personality as for his artistic talents. He took an apolitical outlook on world politics, but often dabbled in anti-establishment movements. This essay explores the life of Salvador Dali, the historical and political time he lived in, and how these influenced his work.

Dali employs a “concrete irrationality” surrealist style giving us the illusion of realism. Design is precise, using symmetrical perspective employing a geometrical figure’s composition. The painting is well balanced. Presence of the light coming from the northeast gives a sense of a natural landscape. The light and shadow relationship “pops the elements out” and creates contrast. The pain of war is expressed by the grotesque mutating human body ripping itself apart with the anguishing facial expression.

The influence of surrealist art on society on the past centuries has been powerful, and artists like Salvador Dali contributed a lot to this form of art, in this research paper I piece together the career and life then by focusing on one of his remarkable artworks and trying to analyze it and how it affected the target audience of the culture and society and for all these topics which makes the main questions in my research paper I did a research to know more about them so that I can be able to link them together and understands how they affected the society.(1)

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.

I wrote this paper to get a better understanding of Sigmund Freud’s method and theory of dream analysis. The purpose of the paper will be to show the principals of Freud’s dream related theory that focuses on the physiology, interpretation, and psychology of dreams and to explain concepts such as latent and manifest content of dreams, the part of unconscious process, and the nature of dreams role in the determination of dream content. I would like to explore Sigmund Freud’s explanations of psycho-analytic and psychological theory and method to reveal whether Freud’s continuous revising to sexually based conclusions are able to support his own arguments. One of his themes was the amount of activity that goes on in our brains without us even

Similarly, in 1948 Balakian described the work of the Surrealists with a patronizing tone, stating that due to the realistic imagery required in Naturalistic Surrealism, the works produced were uninteresting in their application, becoming “… a smooth, academic, almost banal way of using the painter's material” (Hodin).

1. Use the words relativity and uncertainty in a paragraph that describes the revolution in modern physics that took place in the early twentieth century.

The surrealist movement of the 1920s-1930s was largely based on the notion that excessive rational thought is a catalyst of conflict and war throughout the world. Salvador Dali’s The Persistence

Surrealism was one of the most influential artistic movements of the 20th Century. André Breton consolidated Surrealism as a movement in the early 1920s, trying to achieve the “total liberation of the mind and of all that resembles it[1]” through innovative and varied ideas. Surrealism deeply influenced the world in the era between the two world wars and played a big role in the diffusion and adoption of psychology worldwide. Surrealism faded after World War II, but its revolutionary genius has influenced every artistic movement ever since.

Giorgio De Chirico’s art can be viewed one that evolved tremendously over time. However, his artwork portrayed a number of characteristics and traits that differentiated them from the works of other artists in his time. This is probably why his art remains a puzzling factor to many from the 20th Century to date. A wide use themes and concepts can be seen in a number of his works. He has played a huge role in shaping the surrealist works of art.

Although there are significant distinctions between Dadaism and Surrealist movement in their focus of interest in exploring the language and the art, they also happen to have similar concept for groundbreaking the norms and sometimes makes it hard for people to differentiate them. Then, here is an artist who manage to cover and is considered to be one of the pioneers for both Dadaism and Surrealism: Max Ernst. Due to the traumatic army experience during the World War 1, Ernst became highly critical of the western culture. His experience of the brutality of the world critically influenced his later works to become quite absurd, yet interesting like those of other Dadaists. In terms of relationship between the word and the image, Ernst created the so-called fatagaga, or Fabrication de Tableaux Gasometriques Garantis, which meant the combination of the artists to create an artwork including imagery and text. These Dadaist collaborative works deemphasized the importance of individual authorship and allowed the artists’ interactions to further development of Dadaism.

"It is not the fear of madness which will oblige us to leave the flag of imagination furled." ~ Andre Breton, "Manifesto of Surrealism"

The Stranger by Albert Camus is inspired by the Holocaust. After World War II ended, philosophies such as absurdism were created as a result. The title The Stranger signifies Meursault’s alienation from society by his beliefs in both absurdism and existentialism. The Stranger took place during World War II where thousands died and the death toll was off the charts. This influenced Camus’s writing a great deal.

What elements of dada and surrealism suggest the influence of Freud? The 20th Century marked a changed in how people viewed the known world. Since its beginning art has played a major role in how people were able to express themselves. The early 20th century brought rise to new and exciting art forms. These were types of writings, paintings and, documentaries that no one had ever seen before. From expressionism to Dadaism types of work ranged by all means of the artist. About the 1920's a new wave of art would soon be seen worlds over. This art form introduced psychology in a new way to look at the conscious and subconscious minds. From the beginning Dadaism and surrealism showed true signs of influence from

As mentioned surrealism, like Dadaism, tried to distance itself from contemporary culture and sought to shock the familiarity of reality. Hence, the unconscious has a centrepiece in surrealist art and the underlying theme was to create images of such unconscious situation or universes. This was primarily achieved with the use of symbolism and the placing of objects in unfamiliar settings. This would revitalize and redefine such objects outside the conventional reality that is the adversary in surrealist art and hence create the desired conflict between the conventional and the unconscious (Waldberg 1997; Martin 1987).