Surrealism

From Dadaism to Surrealism
Originally, Surrealism was above all a literary movement whose hub developed in 1919 around the journal Littérature founded by Breton, Soupault and Aragon. Initially motivated by the revolutionary spirit of Tzara, Breton began by rallying to Dadaism before breaking away from a position he deemed too negative in 1923: he published anti-Dada manifestoes such as Lâchez tout and sabotaged the “Bearded Heart” event organized by Tzara.
Once this break had occurred, he responded by forming his own movement and established, in 1924, the famous Surrealist Manifesto, in which he borrowed the term invented by Apollinaire in 1917 after seeing Parade (an experimental ballet assembling Diaghilev, Cocteau, Satie and Picasso). He defined it as follows: "Surrealism: Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express – verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner – the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.”

Reducing the influence of reason and will
The man who was to become the figurehead of Surrealism immediately emphasized the fundamental role of the unconscious and the complete rejection of reason. United around this doctrine, the artists who joined the movement were all animated by the spirit of revolt for which the journal La Révolution surréaliste became the voice. Although they adopted very different languages (from painting to cinema, via photography and sculpture), these artists (Ernst, Giacometti, Magritte, Masson, Mirò, Dali, Tanguy, Man Ray, Buñuel, etc.) all had the founding manifesto in common. In a perpetual quest for the total liberation from desire called for by Breton, and in order to reduce the intervention of will, they favoured chance and invented techniques aiming to reproduce the mechanisms of dreaming: automatic writing, exquisite corpse, frottage, rayographs, etc.

Great freedom of expression, common themes
Far from presenting any visual similarity, the works produced by the various members of Surrealism reflect this freedom which they sought: dream-like landscapes, mysterious scenes, associations of all sorts of ideas, assemblies of objects, etc. Nevertheless, common themes emerge, particularly an attachment to strangeness (preferably disturbing), a taste for the hideous and a fascination with the erotic. More generally, also, a collage aesthetic favouring unlikely combinations, as Lautréamont famously described them: “As beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella”. Lasting more than 40 years, Surrealism exercised a considerable influence over American Post-War art (the automatic nature of Jackson Pollock’s action painting) and, in the 1960s, over Pop Art and New Realism (importance of the object).