Surrealism Joel Rea

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.

To begin, we will look at the ideals and influences that led to the formation of surrealist ideals,

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?

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.

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.

A piece of artwork in this case is created and invented in manner that the viewer is lost away from the world of reality. The Invention and Fantasy theme of art uses the concept of imagery as most of this type of art work usually drifts the viewer from the state of reality into the dream world.

Surrealism is type of cultural movement that came into being in 1920s and it is renowned for the visual artworks and writings. The main aim of the emergence of surrealism was to get a solution to what was a previously contradictory condition between dream and reality. Artists painted illogical, unnerving scenes that had photographic precession. They also created strange creatures from the objects that existed everyday. They were also able to develop techniques in painting which allowed what was not conscious to express itself. The work of surrealists features elements like surprise, juxtapositions that are unexpected and non sequitur. On the other hand many surrealist artists and writers term their work as being an expression of philosophical movement in the first place and their work being artifacts.

Like the Dadaists, the surrealists used many methods to free the creative process from reliance on the kind of conscious control they believed that the society had shaped too much. Surrealists used automatism-the creation of art without conscious control-and various types of planned accidents to provoke reactions closely related to subconscious experience. The Spanish artist Joan Miro was a master of this approach. Although

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

Each artist of the Dada era had a new way of expressing Freud?s ideas. They also felt that art was a powerful means of self-revelation, and that the images came from ones subconscious mind had a truth of its own. As Marcel Duchamp mocked the Mona Lisa by drawing a Padilla 3 mustache on her, stated that the painting was a lewd message set by the conventional way of thinking. Since the Dada artist did not believe in western culture this made sense, because people only want believe what is told to them, instead of what is true. The Dada movement marked a meeting of people to have ?noise concerts? where they recited poems in a free association verse. In these poetry readings the artist perceived how they felt about the world. As World War I began the Dadaist perceived it as a world gone mad. Not only did they express their work in unconventional ways; they used the subconscious as a way of making their views true. Although the Dada era was short lived it influenced and questioned the traditional concepts of the western world. These techniques set an agenda for a new trial by error art form of this same era. The spirit of Freud in the Dadaist era never really died, it is shown today as ?Pop art? or sometimes known as neo-Dada art forms. Also this revolution of thinking and art paved the way for the Surrealist movement. The Surrealist movement of the 1920?s through 1930?s captivated the world with its bizarre way of thinking. Just as the Dadaist used

An artist 's psyche can 't be placated by the ordinary or carried on by business as usual; it is parched to search out the human condition and to look profound into individuals ' characters.

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.

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

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).

Art overall is created and adored by numerous amount of people for many reasons, such as amplifying shared common visual language. The word art often branches into many different movements and components. Modern art or Contemporary art is one those components; this specific genre began mainly in the 1860’s to the 1970’s. During, this time period artists began throwing aside their own beliefs in a spirit of experimentation and the bringing of new ideas. The purpose of Modern art is to beautify one’s surroundings with intrigue, its often very diverse and cannot be easily defined through a list of visual characteristics, artistic themes or cultural concern. Moreover, Modern art is often hard to understand by people because, unlike Egyptian tomb paintings or Greek sculptures, it speaks to the dramatic social, political and technological changes of the last 50-60 years, and questions many of society’s values and assumptions. Also, Modern artists known for incorporating a great deal of abstraction into their works and representational forms to convey their ideas more elaborately; Rene Magritte is one of those artists.