what is a surrealist about?

[cacian]

what is the true meaning of a surrealism?
is there a message in the the less- realist image?

[Mohammad Ahmad]

Surrealism

It is a movement in the visual arts and literature that flourished in Europe between World Wars I and II. Surrealism grew principally out of the earlier Dada movement, which before World War I produced works of anti-art that deliberately defied reason; Surrealism developed in reaction against the "rationalism" that had led to World War I. The movement was founded in 1924 by André Breton as a means of joining dream and fantasy to everyday reality to form "an absolute reality, a surreality.

" Drawing on the theories of Sigmund Freud, he concluded that the unconscious was the wellspring of the imagination. Breton was a poet, but Surrealism's major achievements were in painting. Some artists practiced organic, emblematic, or absolute Surrealism, expressing the unconscious through suggestive yet indefinite biomorphic images (e.g., Jean Arp, Max Ernst, André Masson, Joan Miró). Others created realistically painted images, removed from their context and reassembled within a paradoxical or shocking framework (Salvador Dalí, René Magritte). With its emphasis on content and free form, Surrealism provided a major alternative to the contemporary, highly formalistic Cubist movement and was largely responsible for perpetuating in modern painting the traditional emphasis on content.

[Mohammad Ahmad]

meaning in dictionary
surrealism
Of 20th-century artistic movement seeking to express subconscious thought processes through the use of dreamlike imagery and unusual juxtapositions

[ennison]

Watch out there's a surrealist about! They seemed to believe they were plundering the sub-conscious for reality. Good fun at times. No doubt our worries, obsessions and so on and so forth manifest themselves in the random illogicality of our dreams and irrational behavioural traits.

[Eiseabhal]

They went under that term but were quite a varied bunch. Bunuel and Dali were diametrically opposed politically even if they shared some artistic ethos.

[ennison]

Yes Eiseabhal an Uisteach I guess they were different. Was it GOrwell who described Dali as sick. Nice prudish Socialist Re-Action! But Bunuel the anti-Francoist was responsible for the Andalusian Dog which was pretty YEUCH at least in one bit. Quite the ISIS hobbyist dream. Wonder what GeorgieBoy's own nightmares and apnoeic waking to choke moments were like. Grim if 1984 holds a key. Maybe he just didn't like Dali's enjoyment of the surreally weird. Maybe he just didn't like Dali's studied apolitical stance.

[cacian]

They went under that term but were quite a varied bunch. Bunuel and Dali were diametrically opposed politically even if they shared some artistic ethos.

so are you suggesting politics is surrealism in art?

[ennison]

I can't speak for Eiseabhal but I reckon he was just pointing out that these two who came under the same artistic "umbrella" we're under very different political "umbrellas". Eiseabhal like me is Scottish and thanks to this site and a few mutual acquaintances we have met - and a very pleasing experience it was too.

[ennison]

Now here is something really surreal
S ro bheag orm fhein Cuid den sluagh a tha ann
Len coataichean drogaid s ad mor air an ceann
Le m briogaisean goirid s iad sgoilte gu m boinn
Chan fhaicear an t osan se bhochdainn sin leam.

Part of a well-known American song! As it was made in North Carolina. I kid you not.

[Eiseabhal]

You seem to have answered Cacian on my behalf. The song? American? It rings a bell. In fact I heard it not that long ago . Or a version of it.

[ennison]

Surreal only in the sense of an unexpected source so I was joking. But if you'll like a beautiful rendition you can hear it at www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p028s78t. Donna Dugdale has a lovely voice and every word is as clear as a bell.

[Eiseabhal]

Thanks for that link. Tha i gu dearbh na deagh sheinnadair. Be oran a rinn Maclachlan Rathuidhe air an robh mise a smaoineachadh. You're right it is American. Made about the time of the Revolutionary War.

[runningwithit]

what is the true meaning of a surrealism?
is there a message in the the less- realist image?


I read a surrealist book ( at least I would categorize the non-fiction work this way). This was Naked Lunch by William Burroughs. In fact it was very difficult to say if there was a true meaning. The book could be read in chapters in any particular order (hence you could read the last chapter then the first chapter then the middle chapter or the middle the first then the last, it didn't matter to the author what way the book was read by the reader.) If I got a message it was not to repeat the mistakes of the author. The work was really an absolute misery with Mugwumps and all. I don't suggest reading the book as at times it gave me a headache, though other times it was deathly funny in a very black black comedy way. There were a number of alterations and afterwords by the author but I never got around to them, I just kept thinking this is really very strange and disorderly. Another surrealist work I read was And the hippos were boiled in their tanks, which was supposedly a real news radio broadcast somewhere in Boston or England (the title of the book).

Anyway I might pinpoint the surrealism on the author, look at the authors other works, sometimes they are not always surrealist, they just have surrealism as a expressive vehicle for their ideas.

At least that is my literary interpretation of it. Anyone feel free to write a contradiction as I am not really making statements about any of this, just thinking openly.