Surrealism
Surrealism is a style in which fantastical visual imagery from the subconscious mind is used with no intention of making the work logically comprehensible. Founded by Andre Breton in 1924, it was a primarily European movement that attracted many members of the chaotic Dada movement. It experimented with a new mode of expression called automatic writing, or automatism, which sought to release the unbridled imagination of the subconscious. Officially consecrated in Paris in 1924 with the publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism by the poet and critic André Breton (1896–1966), Surrealism became an international intellectual and political movement.
The Jewish Angel - Giorgio de Chirico
This still life includes painted wood elements, a pink-dotted French curve, blue-and-white meter stick, and a lot of right angles. All of these things are stacked pell-mell above what might be kilometer markers. Among these objects is an oversize eye, crudely drawn on a large piece of paper. De Chirico's father was an engineer with a railroad company, and it has been suggested that this scaffoldlike structure and eye might be an abstract and very terrifying portrait of him.
Citation: " Surrealism." Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 May 2015. .
Rayograph - Man Ray
Man Ray's pursuit of Surrealist ambiguity often included the photogram, a cameraless process in which objects are placed directly upon sensitized paper and exposed to light. Called "rayographs" by Man Ray's friend Tristan Tzara, photograms are unique, unrepeatable, and, to a degree, uncontrollable. In this, one of Man Ray's largest rayographs, white incandescent shapes float against a murky background 'painted' by liquid chemicals, probably representing a creation metaphor.
Citation: " Surrealism." Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 May 2015. .
Gala Éluard - Max Ernst
Photo: This Is the Color of My Dreams - Joan Miró
This empty canvas includes only three elements: the word "Photo", a patch of blue, and the sentence "ceci est la couleur de mes reves", which translates to "this is the color of my dreams". When asked about the meaning of the word "photo", Miró stated" I started with the idea of a photo - I don't remember at all what photo it was. I neither did a collage nor a reproduction of it. I simply painted the word 'Photo'". 'Nuff Said.
Citation: " Surrealism." Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 May 2015. .
The Potato - Joan Miró
This painting screams the word "help". it is a representation of Miro's poetic riffs on reality, taking a subject as a gigantic female thing who stretches her arms against a blue sky and above a patch of earth - probably a potato field. Miro surrounded his potato-earth-woman with fanciful decorative objects, some of which are "earthy" and some not.
Citation: " Surrealism." Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 May 2015. .
Nude Standing by the Sea - Pablo Picasso
Picasso, tired of cubism, participated in many of the Surrealists' exhibitions and activities in Paris. His work between 1926 and 1939 has been referred to as surrealist due to its fanciful imagery and sexually charged motifs. He was inspired by bathers on a beach that he previously sketched, painted, and sculpted in Cannes (1927) and Dinard (1928). His transformation of the human being in this work includes features of the female physique metamorphose into one another—the rounded buttocks also suggesting breasts, the pointed breasts suggesting sharp teeth, and the horizontal slit, a reference to both navel and genitals.
Citation: " Surrealism." Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 May 2015. .
The Accommodations of Desire - Salvador Dalí
This work deals with the 25 year-old Dali's sexual anxieties over a love affair with an older, married woman. The woman, Gala, then the wife of Surrealist poet Paul Eluard, became Dali's lifelong muse and mate. Dali includes 7 pebbles which he envisioned what lay ahead of for him: lion heads, a toupee, various vessels, a colony of ants, etc. Dali didn't even paint the lion's heads: he cut them out of an illustrated children's book.
Citation: " Surrealism." Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 May 2015. .
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Green Box) - Marcel Duchamp
This is a limited edition of notes on scraps of paper that details Duchamp's own explication of his masterpiece "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass)". It is a counterpart to the material work it describes verbally, containing one color plate, 93 notes, and photographs and facsimiles by Duchamp. Though each Green Box is organized in no particular order, there is an obsessive and disciplined quality to this project, due to Duchamp's insistence that he himself reproduce each edition by hand.
Citation: " Surrealism." Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 May 2015. .
The Doll - Hans Bellmer
Bellmer had an obsession with dolls - an endless fabrication, reconstitution, and photographic presentation of them - that was an effort to construct objects that would articulate his tortured desires in material form. The bizarre, robotic temptress in this negative print has an eerie electric aura. To love her, one would have to have, as the Surrealist poet Pierre Reverdy wrote, a "short circuit in the heart-system." Okay.
Citation: " Surrealism." Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 May 2015. .
The Barbarians - Max Ernst
Ernst created a series of small works that included birds with personified elements. The creatures represent Ernst's fearful anticipation of the impending devastation in Europe during World War II that occurred just after this painting (1937).
Citation: " Surrealism." Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 May 2015. .
Citations:
" Surrealism." Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 May 2015. <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/surr/hd_surr.htm>.
"Surrealism | Art and Literature." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 06 May 2015. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/575336/Surrealism>.
" Surrealism." Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 May 2015. <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/surr/hd_surr.htm>.
"Surrealism | Art and Literature." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 06 May 2015. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/575336/Surrealism>.