Surrealism: 6 keys to understand it

HISTORY

Feb 5

“I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak.”

— André Breton

As an artist, surrealism has always been a huge influence on my work, and I think understanding its essence can help us appreciate art in general on a deeper level.

*Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening*, 1944, © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala - Salvador Dalí.

1. What is Surrealism?

Surrealism, born first as a literary movement, was an art movement born in the 1920s in Europe that revolutionized the way in which arts specially painting, photography and film were made. Its goal was to uncover the unconscious mind through the use of dreamlike images that defied reality.

2. Origins and Influences

The Surrealist movement was born in Paris surrounding the poet and critic, André Breton who published the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, in which he talked about how we live in such a mental state that we are not able to control nor understand why we do things, since we are guided by the desires of our unconscious mind, and how through art we can unveil these wishes and bring them to consciousness.

Breton was deeply influenced by Freud’s theories about the repressed messages we receive from the unconscious and how we can unveil some of them through the interpretation of dreams. These fascinated him and other artists.

The Surrealists borrowed many of the techniques used for psychology at the time, to stimulate their own writing and art, believing that the creativity that came from within a person’s subconscious could be more authentic than any product of our conscious mind.

Breton found inspiration for his theories in visual arts as well, specially in Picasso’s work, whom he admired. He was deeply captivated by the way in which cubists fragmentated figures into geometrical shapes to make fantastic and strange creations. He and other surrealists used art to defy what society deemed as real, natural, and correct, and so the artists frequently explored and portrayed themes such as sex, violence and blasphemy in their works.

3. Key Characteristics

The Human Condition, 1933, © René Magritte, Fair Use.

Dreams and Fantasy: With themes that often delve into the dream world, surrealism mixes fantasy with reality, allowing artists to represent their unique psyche.
Symbolism: Surrealism makes use of symbolic imagery that might seem strange or out of place in the piece, these are often related to specific events in the artist’s life.
Unusual Juxtapositions: It isn’t unusual in surrealist paintings to see unrelated objects together in ways that don’t necessarily make sense.
Techniques: Surrealists experimented with different ways to represent their ideas, automatism involved creating without conscious control and letting the hand move freely. And for Frottage, one would place a piece of paper above a textured surface and then rub the paper with graphite to copy the texture.

“[Surrealism is] psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express the actual functioning of thought...exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.”

— André Breton

4. Prominent Artists

Max Ernst: Suffered from hallucinations when he was a kid and started painting in college. He had an interest in Freud’s theories and in the art made by people that suffered from mental illnesses. In 1922 he moved to Paris and joined André Breton and the surrealists.
René Magritte: His alter ego frequently populated his paintings, an anonymous office man wearing a black suit with a black bowler hat that, just as the artist, lived in a suburb in Brussels. In 1927 he moved to Paris where he met André Breton, Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí.
Salvador Dalí: His realistic style, the oneiric scenes and his excentric personality have made Salvador Dalí the most famous among the surrealist artists. His work explores unconscious desires and often reveals feelings of sexual angst, disgust and paranoia.

*Attirement of the Bride*, 1940, © Max Ernst, Artists Rights Society.

5. Surrealism in Literature

Surrealism had a strong presence in literature too. The first surrealist works were literary works published in the magazine La Révolution Surréaliste, which first helped to spread the principles of surrealism to the masses.

Writers like André Breton and Louis Aragon used techniques like automatic writing, which intended for the author to write without any conscious control or plan of what’s going to be put down onto the paper. This technique had been used since ancient China, and spiritism where non-physical entities take control of one’s hand and start writing.

Notable works include Breton’s Nadja, and Les Champs Magnetiques, which are considered to be the first works of surreal literature.

“It was the end of sorrow lies. The rail stations were dead, flowing like bees stung from honeysuckle. The people hung back and watched the ocean, animals flew in and out of focus. The time had come. Yet king dogs never grow old – they stay young and fit, and someday they might come to the beach and have a few drinks, a few laughs, and get on with it. But not now. The time had come; we all knew it. But who would go first?”

— Les Champs Magnetiques

6. Surrealism Today

Surrealism in general has had a lasting effect in the way in which movies, publicity and media in general is made, to the point in which nowadays we use the term surreal to refer to things that have oneiric or fantastic qualities. From its beginnings surrealism has always been about breaking free from logical constraints and thought patterns and explore a deeper creativity within ourselves, one that allows us to unveil the most hidden and in a sense “authentic” aspects of us, and many artists continue to connect to these ideas and through their practice we can see examples of surrealist art being made nowadays.

We can see it in movies like Inception (2010), and Paprika (2006) that delve into the exploration of dreams and how we the limits between the unconscious and reality disappear, in series like Undone (2022) where we explore the repressed memories of a protagonist trying to make sense of her current life, in books such as Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami) that often intertwines dreams and reality within the story, or in the pieces of graphic artists like Miles Johnston, Vincent Manalo, and Ming Ying.