The Origins of Surrealism

2002 Words5 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: surrealism art history essay

Green 1 Controlled Chaos: The Impact of Surrealism on the Art World The Surrealist movement that began in the 1920’s, was unlike anything the art world had ever seen before. While Surrealist painters borrowed techniques from previous “ism” movements, for example Impressionism and Cubism, the prominent painters of this movement had acquired a new, shocking style all their own. Surrealism, as an art movement, stressed the importance of expanding one’s mind in order to welcome other depictions of ‘reality’. Surrealist artists channelled their subconscious and their works reflected images of total mind liberation. Unlike the art movements before it, Surrealism came the closest to truly reflecting the human dreamlike state. While this essay will explore the purpose, techniques and lasting impact of the Surrealist art movement, it should be noted that this movement transcended the boundaries of the image arts world. The influence of Surrealism can be felt in the fields of literature, film, music and philosophy, among others. The Surrealist movement started in 1920’s Europe, with Paris as the unofficial basis for the movement. Surrealism is usually linked with the Dada movement. Dadaism attacked the conventional forms of aesthetics and it stressed how absurd and unpredictable the process of artistic creation was. They created pieces of ‘non-art’ to show, out of protest, how meaningless European culture had become (de la Croix 705). The Dada movement was declared dead around 1922 when it had become ‘too organised‘ a movement, but it planted the seeds for Surrealism (de la Croix 706). While the Dada movement provided the basis for Surrealism, Surrealism was lighter and much less violent than its predecessor. Dadaism provided a basis for Su...

... middle of paper ...

...d a strong impact on the artists of the 1960’s and 1970’s, including Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons and its impact has extended to the contemporary arts, which have yet to be fully assessed (USA Today Magazine 2005). More than just an expression of the subconscious, Surrealism redefined the future of art, fashion, and popular culture. While it is said that Surrealism died when Breton passed away in 1966, its effects are still felt today. We experience Surrealism in our daily lives with the steady flow of disconnected images, seen most evidently today in advertising. Surrealism has taught us not only to tolerate, but to appreciate the strange flow of discontinuities. This lesson is monumentally important living in an increasingly multicultural and heavily media-based society where there is a fusion of different images and sounds being experienced in every facet of life.

Show More
Related

  • Surrealism In Un Chen Andalou

    789 Words  | 2 Pages

    Surrealism essentially aimed to release the subconscious thoughts, and desires of the mind from the conscious repressions and logic, as revealed in the first Surrealist Manifesto.

    Read More

  • Elsa Schiaparelli And Anthropomorphic Chest Of Drawers By Salvador Dali

    1352 Words  | 3 Pages

    Surrealism, who has not heard this word nowadays? World of the dreams and everything that is irrational, impossible or grotesque, a cultural movement founded immediately after the First World War and still embraced nowadays by many artists. In order to understand it better it is necessary to look deeper into the work of two outstanding artists strongly connected with this movement, and for whom this style was an integral part of their lives.

    Read More

  • Dadaism: The Art Movement

    262 Words  | 1 Pages

    Dadaism is a European artistic movement that went from 1916-1923. It is a movement in art, literature, music, and film, repudiating and mocking artistic and social conventions and emphasizing the illogical and absurd. This movement flouted conventional artistic and cultural values by producing works of art that were marked by nonsense, travesty, and incongruity. The word dada has many meaning in different languages so it is impossible to know which language the art movement name was based from. The dada artist’s outrage was real and it was a genuine reaction to the horrors of World War 1 and the nationalism, and rationalism, which many thought had brought war about. None of the Dada art that survives can be called aesthetically pleasing in

    Read More

  • Understanding Surrealism: Art Beyond Conventional Boundaries

    640 Words  | 2 Pages

    In today’s generation, Surrealism isn’t looked at, to many, as works of art with valuable back stories. They are broadly judged by the complex drawings of imaginative objects of the artist’s subconscious because they don’t make sense to simple minded viewers. In the 1920’s, Surrealism was introduced to the world. The movement had a large amount of critics because of its unique techniques of making the viewer think outside of the box. What got Surrealism it’s more positive views was the era it blossomed. The *DADA time period, where art was released at every time of the day, expressing the artists’ harsh feelings of the war. Whether it was paintings, political cartoons, or graffiti.

    Read More

  • breton

    2211 Words  | 5 Pages

    Shortly after World War one there was a group of people who started a movement called Dadaism. The Dadism movement was founded due to the disagreements with the previous war and the displeasures of its aftermath. These Dadaist used art to ridicule the war and to show a stand against all that it stood for. In the early 1920’s dadism was no longer a relavent movement and a few years later surrealism took the reigns. It can be said that Andre Breton was one of the founders of surrealism. Andre Breton was relatively involved in dadism, but he felt the need to start his own movement based on his own beliefs and ideals. Being one of the founders of the surrealist movement Andre Breton was a substantial part of its success with his literature alone. In works such as Manifestos of surrealism and Nadja Breton gives precise details on what surrealism is or can be. There texts show why Breton was a predominant part of the Surrealist movement.

    Read More

  • How Did Rene Magritte Influence The Use Of Repetition In Pop Art

    1310 Words  | 3 Pages

    René Magritte’s art influenced a change of movements from Surrealism to Pop Art for his use of repetition in his art works as well as of his art works. The repetition of his surrealist works influenced the use of repetition in Pop Art, though the reason behind why each of the movements incorporated them are

    Read More

  • Abstract Expressionism

    1363 Words  | 3 Pages

    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 of one’s self.

    Read More

  • Modernism in Australia

    1820 Words  | 4 Pages

    The development of modernist sentiments is largely the result of spasmodic cultural transformations and the ensuing creative exchanges between architects, modern artists and designers. For the purpose of research, this paper will solely deal with Surrealism, an important aspect of Modernism and chart its development through two contemporary Australian surrealists – James Gleeson and Sidney Nolan.

    Read More

  • Jean-Michel Basquiat

    981 Words  | 2 Pages

    The neo-expressionist movement in America lasted from the late 70s and came to an end in the early 90s. The movement was a revival of expressionism, a style in which an artist portrays emotional experience into their work (Sandler, 227). It was also a response to the popular art style of the time called minimalism, which involved mostly blank canvases or lines. Neo-expressionism, on the other hand, was raw emotion and chaos. The main figures of the movement were Julian Schnabel, David Salle, and Ada Applebroog. A pioneer of the movement, and also the focus of this essay, is Jean-Michel Basquiat. His art referenced many famous artists and art pieces, from which he found inspiration. This inspiration was one of the features that made the movement

    Read More

  • Max Ernst

    1244 Words  | 3 Pages

    Overall, Max Ernst, in particular the symbols and meanings that he is able to convey within his works. Moreover, he explored the unconsciousness of a human’s mind reflected through his works as part of the surrealism movement and revolted against the everyday reality of our lives – his primary theme and concerns of our sub-conscious and unconsciousness, in that I aim to explore.

    Read More

  • Salvador Dali and Science

    1742 Words  | 4 Pages

    Salvador Dali, “Paranoia-Criticism vs. Surrealist Automatism” Salvador Dali’s Art and Writing, 1927-1942: The Metamorphoses of Narcissus trans. Haim Finkelstein (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 181-187.

    Read More

  • Artistic comparison

    1410 Words  | 3 Pages

    Modern art serves to immerse us more thoroughly in a scene by touching on more than just our sight. Artists such as Grosz, and Duchamp try to get us to feel instead of just see. It seems that this concept has come about largely as a way to regain identity after shedding the concepts of the Enlightenment. “Philosophers, writers, and artists expressed disillusionment with the rational-humanist tradition of the Enlightenment. They no longer shared the Enlightenment's confidence in either reason's capabilities or human goodness...” (Perry, pg. 457) It is interesting to follow art through history and see how the general mood of society changed with various aspects of history, and how events have a strong connection to the art of the corresponding time.

    Read More

  • Role of Colour in Impressionism

    1686 Words  | 4 Pages

    In this essay, I shall try to examine how great a role colour played in the evolution of Impressionism. Impressionism in itself can be seen as a linkage in a long chain of procedures, which led the art to the point it is today. In order to do so, colour in Impressionism needs to be placed within an art-historical context for us to see more clearly the role it has played in the evolution of modern painting. In the late eighteenth century, for example, ancient Greek and Roman examples provided the classical sources in art. At the same time, there was a revolt against the formalism of Neo-Classicism. The accepted style was characterised by appeal to reason and intellect, with a demand for a well-disciplined order and restraint in the work. The decisive Romantic movement emphasized the individual’s right in self-expression, in which imagination and emotion were given free reign and stressed colour rather than line; colour can be seen as the expression for emotion, whereas line is the expression of rationality. Their style was painterly rather than linear; colour offered a freedom that line denied. Among the Romanticists who had a strong influence on Impressionism were Joseph Mallord William Turner and Eugéne Delacroix. In Turner’s works, colour took precedence over the realistic portrayal of form; Delacroix led the way for the Impressionists to use unmixed hues. The transition between Romanticism and Impressionism was provided by a small group of artists who lived and worked at the village of Barbizon. Their naturalistic style was based entirely on their observation and painting of nature in the open air. In their natural landscape subjects, they paid careful attention to the colourful expression of light and atmosphere. For them, colour was as important as composition, and this visual approach, with its appeal to emotion, gradually displaced the more studied and forma, with its appeal to reason.

    Read More

  • The Surrealist Movement in Art's Influence on Fashion

    1538 Words  | 4 Pages

    Surrealism and the surrealist movement is a ‘cultural’ movement that began around 1920’s, and is best known for its visual art works and writings. According to André Berton, the aim was “to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality” (Breton 1969:14). Surrealists incorporated “elements of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and ‘non sequitur”. Hence, creating unnerving, illogical paintings with photographic precision, which created strange creatures or settings from everyday real objects and developed advanced painting techniques, which allowed the unconscious to be expressed by the self (Martin 1987:26; Pass 2011:30).

    Read More

  • 19th Century Art

    1241 Words  | 3 Pages

    In conclusion, the art of the 19th century was composed of a sequence of competing artistic movements that sought to establish its superiority, ideologies and style within the artistic community of Europe. These movements, being Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, ultimately spread far beyond the confines of Europe and made modern art an international entity which can still be felt in today’s artistic world.

    Read More

More about The Origins of Surrealism

Open Document