Surrealism : An Anti Rationalism Of Dada

This is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for its visual artworks and writings. Artists sought to channel the unconscious to unlock the power of the imagination. They believed the rational mind repressed the power of the imagination. Artist’s images were outlandish and perplexing. It is meant to jolt the viewer out of their comforting imagery. Nature was a frequent imagery. Salvador Dali’s works often included ants or eggs. The Accommodations of Desire in 1929 was an important piece of art. It is a prime example of his ability to portray his vivid bizarre dreams. He developed a paranoid-critical method that involved irrational thought and self-induced paranoia to access his unconscious. It combined his usual hyper-realistic painting style with more experimental collage techniques.

During World War 1 at the city of Nantes one would find a man named André Breton (Sandrow). André Breton, born in 1896, is regarded as the founder of Surrealism, and the way his time was spent during the war influenced that outcome. For instance, during his time at Nantes, he encountered a few people that would leave a lasting impression on him. One of these people went by the name of Apollinaire, an admired poet-dramatist and the precursor to Surrealism. He pushed Breton away from pessimism towards investigating the philosophical relationship between poetry and painting. In fact, the word “surrealism” was first coined by Apollinaire in his play Les Mamelles de Tirésias (Magill 448).

Salvador Dali was a pioneer. Few pages are not enough to tell the story of an eccentric, hardworking, disturbed and misunderstood master. Born in Figueras, Spain on May 11, 1904 near France into a middle class family. Childhood was turbulent, difficult, and abusive. Raised full of indulgences by his mother that resulted in the known eccentricities he had. (Dali, Secret Life, 115). Bright, extreme intelligent and fast learner child that created highly sophisticated drawings by age 6. In 1916 went to study drawing at College de Hermanos in Figueres, starting to show eccentric behavior for the first time.

Salvador Dali was a surrealist painter born in the early 1900’s in Figueres, Spain. He is best known for his thought provoking images, eccentric behavior and bizarre surrealism, Dali’s art was anything but ordinary.

Explain how both Dada and Surrealism changed the form, content, and concept of art. Which two works of art discussed in the chapter would you choose to represent these two movements?

In this life, there are many forms of art or art “movements” to speak of. How we interpret art is a very subjective thing. What a person sees and feels when looking at art greatly depends on their upbringing, their values, and even their mood at the time of viewing. Could something dark and lacking color be art? What about a comic strip in the newspaper or the billboard down the street? Again, interpretation and taste in art is individual. I elected to explore into the two art movements I like the least to potentially better understand them, and to potentially link them together.

Art has evolved and regenerated itself many times during our human existence. These differences are defined through changes in styles under various theories. During the nineteenth and early twentieth century, a style known as Expressionism became popular. During this movement the artists were trying to use their artwork as a tool of expression toward life. It was mainly dominant in the nonrepresentational arts, such as abstract visual arts and music. It also was probably one of the most difficult movements to understand because the whole point of the piece lay within the artist. Not only was it a movement, it defined the act of art as a whole. From the beginning of time, each work of art, excluding replicas, show a way of expressing

Non-conformist to traditional art forms, Conceptualism challenges the viewer to delve into the mindset of the artist. It is often seen as multidimensional as it forces the audience to decipher the artists intentions. This art movement has been completely rejecting the standard ideas of art since the mid-1960’s. Since then, many artists have made a name for themselves by self-consciously expanding the boundaries of art. Many of these artists have said they’ve linked their work to artist Marcel Duchamp.

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.

During the twenty years after World War One, three major art movements appeared: dadaism, functionalism, and surrealism. Dadaism, a movement which conveyed erratic and random movements that were supposed to contradict human behavior, was a response to the anxiety of those who didn’t know how to react because of all of the strange and despairing behavior in the world. Because of these conveyed ideas, dadaism promoted outrageous and random behavior. Functionalism, a movement which tried to explore the functions and purpose of things and nature, was an attempt to find the purpose of humans in the dark times following the war. Surrealism, a movement which painted wild dreams and complex symbols, tried to spread the idea of hope from the current scary world. Through surrealism, imagination and hope was brought out through paintings that featured crazy illusions and impossible dreams. Overall, these artistic movements tried to answer and embody the general sense of anxiety felt by

The artist I would like to discuss today is Joan Miro. Joan Miro is famous for his work as a painter and sculptor well also being recognized mostly for his surrealistic work in the art community. Joan Miro has many museums in Spain that are dedicated to his work over his lifetime as an artist. He was born in Barcelona and began drawing at the age of 7. He was unique compared to the rest of his family who were goldsmiths and watchmakers. Without his father's approval, Joan enrolled in art classes as a young boy and from that point on the rest is history. Joan is and will forever be known as one of the main artists who helped push the surrealist movement.

Often, during periods of change in society, people have been drawn towards pushing boundaries in political and artistic movements in order to establish new forms of expression. The innate need to put one’s thoughts and feelings towards their outside environment into a physical piece of work is one that has been around for many centuries. Starting with the romantic period, painters created works of idealized beings and highly regarded nature as an important part of art. The works from this period were mainly those of the idolised human body and religious persons. This influence came heavily from the Renaissance and Romantic movements that were spawned from the French revolution. Numerous artists chose to worship a more nature focused life and

Salvador Dalí is best known as the flamboyant and eccentric poster-boy of the Surrealist Movement. Born in 1904, Dalí spent the majority of his life working on various forms of his art, making him one of the most versatile artists of the twentieth century. While he is notorious for his paintings, he worked with many different mediums, which included sculpting, fashion, photography, and film. He began to show an incredible skill in art from very early on in his life, a skill that was nurtured by both of his parents. He began his formal training at age ten, which he continued until he was twenty two. Dalí was enrolled in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando until he was expelled from the academy for confidently claiming that “none of

Abstract Expressionism is making its comeback within the art world. Coined as an artist movement in the 1940’s and 1950’s, at the New York School, American Abstract Expressionist began to express many ideas relevant to humanity and the world around human civilization. However, the subject matters, contributing to artists, were not meant to represent the ever-changing world around them. Rather, how the world around them affected the artist themselves. The works swayed by such worldly influences, become an important article within the artists’ pieces. Subjectively, looking inward to express the artist psyche, artists within the Abstract Expressionism movement became a part of their paintings. Making the paintings more of a representation

The surrealist artists believed the dream state and subconscious mind to be an untapped and very fertile creative fount of inspiration. The symbolism of dreams and the expressive images generated by the subconscious were far more thought provoking than the representational, logical images of the conscious mind. The surrealist artists were creating art out of what others thought to be garbled and unintelligible. They were in effect taking a concept created to heal and using it to create art instead. They were on to something with this. No matter what the medium or the style used, a bit of the self becomes visible and evident in the result. Art therapy is one of the modern descendants of this movement.