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SURREALISMSurrealism developed out of the activities of the Dadaists in the 1920s and retained some of that group's disgust with the establishment and revolutionary fervour. Organised into a relatively coherent group by the poet Andre Breton, the Surrealists took inspiration from the theories of Freud in their explorations of the subconscious mind. Louis Aragon described the relationship between daydreaming and the production of images:
In this enviable peace, how easy is daydreaming. The image to the left shows Germaine Berton surrounded by portraits of the Surrealist Group from La Revolution Surrealiste No.1, December 1924. Berton
was an anarchist who had assassinated a French politician. The
Surrealists were sympathetic to anyone who stepped outside the law,
particularly if they were idealistic and female. Click here for more information about the magazine La Revolution Surrealiste and click here for more information about this and other surrealist documents.
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Gallery
The following images represent a small selection of photographic art works inspired by Surrealism. The Surrealists were ceaseless experimenters with a desire to question the relationship between the world as it is and the world of the imagination. They used the camera as a tool in their quest for new ways of looking.
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I am currently working on a translation of this French film about the L'esprit du Surréalisme exhibition at the Pompidou Centre a couple of years ago. In the meantime, enjoy the many images and short film extracts referred to in the film. If your Fench is good, you may be interested in the other short films from this series about individual works of Surrealist photography. Here is a useful general introduction to Surrealism from The Pompidou Centre. |
In his essay "Surrealist Situation of the Object" (1935) Andre Breton remarks on the way that photography had affected the development of painting and how, "unable to engage in the seemingly futile struggle with photography, painting was forced to retreat and reorganize its ranks in an invulnerable position, under the necessity of visually expressing internal perception". Man Ray is perhaps the best known of the photographers who were engaged in and/or influenced by Surrealism in the thirties and beyond. This page hopes to give you access to some key concepts associated with Surrealist art and expose you to a few important and influential images.
According to Walter Benjamin, photography offers to consciousness modes of reality that would remain in the unconscious without its action: "It is through photography that we discover the existence of this optical unconscious, just as we discover the instinctual unconscious through psychoanalysis". The analogy is striking and apt. The photograph preserves in space that which is transient in time.
Click here to visit the Undercover Surrealism web version of the exhibition at the Hayward Gallery (2006) and here to watch hi-res versions of two films commissioned as part of the 60 second surreal project linked to the Hayward show.
"SURREALISM is not a poetic form. It is a scream of the mind finding itself again and it intends to desperately crush its shackles with artificial hammers, if need be." (Bureau of Surrealist Research, Paris January, 27, 1925)
Click here to visit the surrealist compliment generator and here to strike up a surreal conversation with ESME (Cadaveric Enigma Engine Generator). Simply type in a question, wake Esme and she will answer you. Click here to visit the Found Magazine project. The surrealists were very fond of found objects and incorporated them into their art in numerous ways. They also created found poems. The creators of Found Magazine describe the project as follows: "We certainly didn't invent the idea of found stuff being cool. Every time we visit our friends in other towns, someone's always got some kind of unbelievable discovered note or photo on their fridge. We decided to make a bunch of projects so that everyone can check out all the strange, hilarious and heartbreaking things people have picked up and passed our way."
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Film still from the "Art of Graffiti Removal" by Matt McCormick Click here to watch an extract from the film. This is a fantastic study of the unconscious art works produced by anonymous individuals responsible for the eradication of graffiti from urban spaces. The Surrealists, and Brassai in particular, were fascinated by graffiti and saw it as an instinctive expression of secret desires literally written on the fabric of the city. |
The following videos represent a small selection of films and animations about or inspired by Surrealism:
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'Entr’acte' (1924) is René Clair’s Dada-influenced 20-minute short, commissioned for the interval of Francis Picabia’s new ballet, Relâche, in Paris in 1924. The original music for the film was composed by the famous composer Erik Satie, who makes a cameo appearance along side surrealist photographer Man Ray. The soundtrack in this version is by the contemporary Cinematic Orchestra.
'L'Étoile de mer' (English: The Sea Star) is a 1928 film directed by Man Ray. The film is based on a script by Robert Desnos and depicts a couple (Alice Prin and André de la Rivière) acting through scenes that are shot out of focus.
'Dreams That Money Can Buy' is a 1947 experimental feature color film written, produced, and directed by surrealist artist and dada film-theorist Hans Richter. Collaborators included Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Alexander Calder, Darius Milhaud and Fernand Léger.
'Ballet Mécanique' (1923-4) is a Dadaist post-Cubist art film conceived, written, and co-directed by the artist Fernand Léger in collaboration with the filmmaker Dudley Murphy (with cinematographic input from Man Ray). It has a musical score by the American composer George Antheil. However, the film premiered in silent version on 24 September 1924 at the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (International Exposition for New Theater Technique) in Vienna. It is considered one of the masterpieces of early experimental filmmaking.
'L’Age d’or' (The Golden Age (1930) is a French surrealist comedy directed by Luis Buñuel about the insanities of modern life, the hypocrisy of the sexual mores of bourgeois society and the value system of the Roman Catholic Church. The screenplay is by Salvador Dalí and Buñuel.
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'Un Chien Andalou' (An Andalusian Dog) is a 1929 silent surrealist short film by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalí. It was Buñuel's first film and was initially released in 1929 with a limited showing at Studio des Ursulines in Paris, but became popular and ran for eight months. The film has no plot in the conventional sense of the word. The chronology of the film is disjointed, jumping from the initial "once upon a time" to "eight years later" without the events or characters changing very much. It uses dream logic in narrative flow that can be described in terms of then-popular Freudian free association, presenting a series of tenuously related scenes.
Hans Richter's Dada inspired film utilizes stop motion for some of its effect and live action for others. The film does not present a coherent narrative, and includes a number of seemingly arbitrary images. Richter later worked in America and created 'Dreams That Money Can Buy' (see below).
'Spellbound' is a 1945 American psychological mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It tells the story of the new head of a mental asylum who turns out not to be what he claims. Salvador Dali was commissioned to design the famous dream sequence, originally 20 minutes long, although Hitchcock had little to do with it.
'The Seashell and the Clergyman' (French: La Coquille et le clergyman) is considered by many to be the first surrealist film. It was directed by Germaine Dulac, from an original scenario by Antonin Artaud, and premiered in Paris on 9 February 1928. The film follows the erotic hallucinations of a priest lusting after the wife of a general.
The mesmerizing, utterly unclassifiable science films of Jean Painlevé (1902-89) have to be seen to be believed: delightful, surrealist-influenced dream works that are also serious science. The French filmmaker-scientist-inventor had a decades-spanning career in which he created hundreds of short films on subjects ranging from astronomy to pigeons to, most famously, such marine-life marvels as the sea horse and the sea urchin. Painlevé, like Guillaume Apollinaire in 1909, claimed that "the cinema is a creator of a surreal life".
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Written and directed by Georges Franju in 1949, this film documents the abattoirs on the outskirts of Paris. The opening is a strangely lyrical evocation of the liminal spaces at the edge of the city that so attracted the Surrealists, in particular Eli Lotar whose famous photographs of abattoirs are some of Surrealism's most haunting images.
WARNING: Those of a delicate disposition may find some of the scenes quite disturbing. |
