Surrealism

Surrealism - 1924-1945 (Around the end of WWII)

media type="flickr" key="13386699@N00" ARG0="&tags=surrealism&lang=en-us&format=rss_200" width="500" height="500" Surrealism Background - Flourishing in 1924, the art movement named Surrealism quickly became popular as Surrealists attacked the rational emphasis of Western Culture. The movement began with an aim to help people discover the more intense reality that lay beyond the narrow rational notions of what is real. These artists, also refered to as the Surrealists, developed various techniques for the sole purpose of liberating the unconscious state of one's mind; dream analysis, hypnotic trances, and free assciation to name a few. French Writer and Surrealist leader Andre Breton alluded to the fact that the problem that surrealism truly tried to solve the problem which was that "we still live under the rule of logic."

Automatism - The collective variety of techniques Surrealist Painters used to design to release art from conscious control and thus produce new and surprising forms.The primary artist who used these manual techniques was the Surrealist Max Ernst. Ernst is most famous for developing the Frottage technique, rubbing a crayon or pencil across a textured surface, and created a Grattage with the use of this technique. His use of frightening images, nightmarish scenes, and representational forms through overpainting - seen in his work **The Horde** - only go on to compliment the work of this Surrealist.

Dali and Unexpected Juxtapositions - One of the most careful, yet crafty, artists to ever paint is Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dali. Dali, after attending the San Fernando Academy of Madrid, traveled to Paris - at the time the cultural center of the world - in 1928 where he met the surrealists. Later, this meeting led to his major contribution to Surrealism; the "paranoid-critical method." The method, he hoped, would take an equal place in Western Culture along with the scientific theory for the perception of reality. Works during this unique period include the **Birth of Liquid Desires** - created by Dali - and **Object (Le Dejeuner en Fourrure)** - created by Meret Oppenheim. Regardless of Dali's work describes in detail his nightmares and Oppenheim's work visually alluding to an unexpected juxtaposition; both works show that the sub-conscious does create a different environment for our mind to percieve as reality, a false reality, yet it appears true. This is exactly what the surrealists argued during this time period, that a human's dream state should be analyzed as a reality.