SURREALISM.

In view of its global impact, as Anna Balakian has persuasively argued, Surrealism constituted the major poetic and artistic current of the twentieth century. Of the dozens of movements that vied for this honor, Surrealism proved to be the most influential and the most persistent. Although abstraction enjoyed a huge success, it was limited almost entirely to art. Surrealism's most serious rival was probably Cubism, since it had an important impact on both literature and painting. Another leading contender was Expressionism, however one chooses to define it, which influenced a broad spectrum of aesthetic creations. Nevertheless, Surrealism was the only movement to span the greater part of the century and to enjoy widespread popularity.

In the Beginning

The term "surrealism" was coined by Guillaume Apollinaire in 1917 to describe Jean Cocteau's ballet Parade and his own play The Mammaries of Tiresias. After Apollinaire died the following year, André Breton appropriated the term in homage to the fallen poet. In contrast to Apollinaire's surrealism, which was basically analogical, Breton's Surrealism (with a capital S) was preoccupied with the Freudian unconscious. Breton, a former medical student who served as a psychiatric orderly during the war, sought to probe the secret recesses of the mind. In particular, since he was a practicing poet, he wondered what aesthetic discoveries they might hold.

Although Surrealist art and film were destined to achieve greater popular success, Surrealism was originally conceived as a literary movement. The Surrealists proposed exploring the unconscious via the written and/or spoken word. By systematically violating linguistic rules, they attempted to increase our ability to describe irrational experiences and illogical events. By pushing language to the edge of intelligibility—and beyond—the Surrealists created a powerful instrument for exploring the unconscious. Like the Dada movement, from which it originally sprang, Surrealism strove not only to revolutionize language but also to renew its primary function. Surrealist practitioners no longer regarded words as passive objects but rather as autonomous entities. "Words … have finished playing silly games," Breton proclaimed; "Words have discovered how to make love" (p. 286).

Surrealism's basic principles were not all promulgated at the same moment nor adopted by everyone with the same measure of enthusiasm. The first Manifesto of Surrealism (1924) focused on the role of psychic automatism:

SURREALISM, n. Pure psychic automatism by which we propose to express—either verbally or in writing or in some other manner—the true functioning of thought. The dictation of thought, in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside all aesthetic and moral preoccupations.

ENCYCL. Philos. Surrealism rests on a belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association neglected until now, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. Ultimately it tends to destroy all other psychic mechanisms and to take their place in resolving the principal problems of life.

Despite the excitement evident in these and similar proclamations, psychic automatism assumed a limited role in Surrealism. Most, if not all, of the Surrealists exercised a certain amount of conscious control over their works. Breton himself distinguished between Surrealist texts, which were entirely automatic, and Surrealist poems, in which unconscious desires were encompassed by a broader design.

Marvelous Encounters

The concept of the marvelous also played a crucial role in Surrealist works. Differing from one era to the next, the marvelous was defined basically as exacerbated beauty. Provoking an involuntary shudder in the reader or viewer, the marvelous mirrored the perpetual anxiety underlying human experience. In Surrealist works, it often assumes the form of eerie images and enigmatic adventures. The concept of objective chance played an equally important role. According to Surrealist theory, the most powerful imagery was that which caused the greatest surprise. In order to create marvelous images, Surrealist poets juxtaposed two terms that appeared to conflict with each other but were secretly related. The power of the resulting imagery was directly proportional to their apparent dissimilarity.

Surrealist artists performed a similar operation by juxtaposing incongruous or contradictory images on the canvas. Psychic automatism provided one means of achieving this goal. Artists and writers also resorted to chance operations like those governing an exercise called "the exquisite cadaver," in which several individuals contributed different words to create a nonsensical utterance. The name derived from their first attempt, which produced the following phrase: "The exquisite cadaver will drink the new wine."

Later Developments

With the publication of the Second Manifesto six years later, the Surrealist program acquired additional principles. These principles applied to every official member of the Surrealist movement. One of these, which Breton called "the supreme point" (or sometimes "the sublime point"), attempted to revive the medieval concept of coincidentia oppositorum. "According to all indications," he declared, "a certain point exists in the mind where life and death, the real and the imaginary, the past and the future, the communicable and the incommunicable, the high and the low cease to be perceived as contradictions." The Surrealists sought to eliminate traditional binary oppositions, including the distinction between beauty and ugliness, truth and falsehood, and good and evil, because they appeared to be arbitrary. In their opinion, these and other cultural constructions merely restricted the imagination.

Since the Surrealists strove to revolutionize life as well as art, they also, almost without exception, became ardent Marxists. How could one liberate humanity, they reasoned, without correcting widespread social abuses? Psychological freedom clearly depended on the achievement of political and economic freedom. Although the French Communist Party refused to take Breton and his colleagues seriously, they continued to subscribe to Marxist goals.

A final principle to be enshrined in the Surrealist pantheon was delirious love. Officially adopted in 1937, when Breton published a book of the same name, it was already well established. Hence the Second Manifesto (1930) celebrated love as the "only [idea] capable of reconciling every individual, momentarily or not, with the idea of life " (Breton, p. 823). In keeping with Surrealism's objectives, passionate commitment was portrayed as a liberating force.

As much as anything, Breton and his colleagues insisted, Surrealism sought to improve the quality of everyday life. Although the movement's accomplishments were largely aesthetic, it strove to revolutionize our view of the world around us. Among other things, Surrealism offered potential solutions to a number of problematic situations. One of the problems it addressed was the relation between the individual and his or her unconscious. By inventing strategies to glimpse this hidden realm, it conferred a new significance on the ancient Greek motto "Know thyself." In addition, Surrealism explored the relation between individuals and the natural world. While the concept of the supreme point stressed the unity of life, the principles of objective chance and the marvelous emphasized its extraordinary beauty. In addition, the Surrealists aimed to redefine the relation between the individual and society and between man and woman. Reflecting the movement's eclectic origins, they succeeded in reconciling Freud with the alchemist Fulcanelli and Eros with Marx. Ultimately, they attempted to modify the process of seeing, thinking, and feeling in order to achieve total liberation.

The Movement's Reception

Originating in France, Surrealism soon spread to every corner of the globe. Painters and poets all over the world were attracted to the Surrealist endeavor, especially those living in Spain and Latin America. At least two of the latter artists, Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró, were destined to play a major part in the movement. An analogous role was reserved for Luis Buñuel, who founded the Surrealist cinema. In addition, Surrealism attracted three poets who would eventually receive the Nobel prize for literature: Vicente Aleixandre, Pablo Neruda, and Octavio Paz. In retrospect, Surrealism cast a long, indelible shadow over most of the twentieth century. Artists and writers who were not affiliated with the movement also benefited—and continue to benefit—from the Surrealist enterprise. Surrealism led to the creation of a new language, a new vision, and a vast body of exciting, innovative works. It revolutionized not only the way we perceive ourselves and the world around us but the way in which we translate this perception into words and images.

See also Arts: Overview ; Avant-Garde ; Dada ; Dream ; Periodization of the Arts .

bibliography

Balakian, Anna. Surrealism: The Road to the Absolute. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. A classic study.

Bohn, Willard. The Rise of Surrealism: Cubism, Dada, and the Pursuit of the Marvelous. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.

Breton, Andre. Oeuvres complètes. Edited by Marguerite Bonnet et al. Vol. 1. Paris: Gallimard/Pléiade, 1988.

Caws, Mary Ann. The Poetry of Dada and Surrealism: Aragon, Breton, Tzara, Eluard, and Desnos. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970.

——, ed. Surrealist Poets and Painters: An Anthology. Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 2001. A valuable collection of essays, manifestos, and illustrations.

Chadwick, Whitney. Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement. Boston: Little, Brown, 1985. The basic text on women and Surrealism.

Chénieux-Gendron, Jacqueline. Surrealism. Translated by Vivian Folkenflik. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.

Gale, Matthew. Dada and Surrealism. London: Phaidon, 1997. Primarily devoted to art.

Ilie, Paul. The Surrealist Mode in Spanish Literature: An Interpretation of Basic Trends from Post-Romanticism to the Spanish Vanguard. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968. A basic text on Spanish Surrealism.

Matthews, J. H. Toward the Poetics of Surrealism. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1976. One of many books on Surrealism by a prolific author.

Morris, C. B. Surrealism and Spain, 1920–1936. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1972. A basic text on Spanish Surrealism.

Willard Bohn

Surrealism. Movement in art and literature flourishing in the 1920s and 1930s, characterized by a fascination with the bizarre, the incongruous, and the irrational. It was closely related to Dada, its principal source; several artists figured successively in both movements, each of which was conceived as a revolutionary mode of thought and action—a way of life rather than a set of stylistic attitudes. Both were strongly anti-rationalist and much concerned with creating effects that were disturbing or shocking, but whereas Dada was essentially nihilist, Surrealism was positive in spirit.

Surrealism originated in France. Its founder and chief spokesman was the writer André Breton, who officially launched the movement with his first Manifeste du surréalisme, published in 1924. In this long and difficult document he defined Surrealism as: ‘purely psychic automatism through which we undertake to express, in words, writing, or any other activity, the actual functioning of thought, thoughts dictated apart from any control by reason and any moral or aesthetic consideration. Surrealism rests upon belief in the higher reality of specific forms of associations, previously neglected, in the omnipotence of dreams, and in the disinterested play of thinking.’ He said its purpose was ‘to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality'. Within this general aim it embraced a large number of different and not altogether coherent doctrines and techniques, characteristically aimed at breaching the dominance of reason and conscious control by methods designed to release primitive urges and imagery. Breton and other members of the movement drew liberally on Freud's theories concerning the unconscious and its relation to dreams.

Breton's first manifesto dealt primarily with Surrealism in literature, but he soon extended his theoretical concerns to the visual arts. The way in which Surrealist artists set about exploration of submerged impulses and imagery varied greatly (in spite of Breton's demands there was little doctrinal unity, and defections, expulsions, and personal attacks are a feature of the history of the movement). Broadly speaking, however, there were three contrasting approaches. Some artists, for example Ernst and Masson, cultivated various types of automatism in an effort to eliminate conscious control. At the other extreme, Dalí, Magritte, and others painted in a scrupulously detailed manner to give an hallucinatory sense of reality to scenes that make no rational sense. Finally, in Surrealist objects, as well as in some paintings, the startling juxtaposition of unrelated items was used to create a sense not so much of unreality as of a fantastic but compelling reality outside the everyday world. The text quoted to justify this search for the unexpected combination of incompatibles was a sentence from the 19th-century poet Lautréamont, whom the Surrealists regarded as one of their precursors: ‘Beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table.’

Paris remained the centre of Surrealism until the Second World War, when the emigration of many European artists to the USA made New York the new hub of its activity. However, it became the most widely disseminated and controversial aesthetic movement of the 1920s and 1930s, spread partly by a number of prestigious journals (beginning with La Révolution surréaliste in 1924) and partly by a series of major international exhibitions. The first of these was held at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, in 1931, and two of the most famous were held in 1936: the ‘International Surrealist Exhibition’ at the New Burlington Galleries, London, and ‘Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism’ at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The movement did not take root in Germany ( Ernst, the major German Surrealist, lived mostly in France and the USA), but it flourished vigorously in Belgium—in the work particularly of Magritte, the most inspired of all Surrealist painters, and Delvaux, the most long-lived upholder of the tradition. Many artists who were not in sympathy with the political aims of Surrealism (for a time it was associated with the French Communist Party), and who were never formal members of the movement, nevertheless found its liberating effects on the imagination bracing and were influenced by its imagery. In Britain, Henry Moore and Paul Nash were among the major artists who went through a Surrealist phase, and Herbert Read was the most distinguished critic who gave the movement his support. The English Surrealist Group was founded in 1936, but it was social rather than revolutionary in its aims.

By the end of the Second World War, Surrealism had more or less broken up as a coherent movement (an exhibition at the Galerie Maeght, Paris, in 1947, organized by Breton and Marcel Duchamp, was the last major show staged by original members). However, although it had spent its main force, the spirit of Surrealism lived on. With its stress on the marvellous and the poetic, Surrealism offered an alternative approach to the formalism of Cubism and various types of abstract art, and its methods and techniques continued to influence artists in many countries. It was, for example, a fundamental source for Abstract Expressionism. A good many individual Surrealists, too, remained devoted to its ideals long after its heyday was past and new groups emerged, for example in Chicago and Prague. Among the artists who have most unwaveringly kept the spirit of Surrealism alive is Conroy Maddox, who in 1978 said ‘No other movement has had more to say about the human condition, or has so determinedly put liberty, both poetic and political, above all else'.

Surrealism. Movement in art and literature flourishing in the 1920s and 1930s, characterized by a fascination with the bizarre, the incongruous, and the irrational. It was closely related to Dada, its principal source; several artists figured successively in both movements, each of which was conceived as a revolutionary mode of thought and action—a way of life rather than a set of stylistic attitudes. Both were strongly anti-rationalist and much concerned with creating effects that were disturbing or shocking, but whereas Dada was essentially nihilist, Surrealism was positive in spirit.

The movement originated in France. Its founder and chief spokesman was the writer André Breton, who believed that the world had been corrupted by excessive materialism and rationalism and wanted to assert the importance of emotional and imaginative values. He officially launched the movement with his first Manifeste du surréalisme, published in 1924; however, it had been taking shape for a few years before this and the term ‘surréalisme’ had been coined by Apollinaire in 1917. The central idea of the movement was to release the creative powers of the unconscious mind, or as Breton put it, ‘to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality’. Essentially it aimed at breaching the dominance of reason and conscious control by releasing primitive urges and imagery, and Breton and other members of the movement drew liberally on Freud's theories concerning the unconscious and its relation to dreams. The way in which they set about exploration of submerged impulses and imagery varied greatly (in spite of Breton's demands there was little doctrinal unity, and defections, expulsions, and personal attacks are a feature of the history of the movement). Some artists, for example Ernst and Masson, cultivated various spontaneous techniques such as frottage in an effort to eliminate conscious control. At the other extreme, Dalí, Magritte, and others painted in a scrupulously detailed manner to give a hallucinatory sense of reality to scenes that make no rational sense.

Paris remained the centre of Surrealism until the Second World War, when the emigration of many European artists to the USA made New York the new hub of its activity. It made an impact in many other places and indeed became the most widely disseminated and controversial aesthetic movement of the 1920s and 1930s, spread partly by a series of major international exhibitions. Two of the most important took place in 1936: the International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries in London, and ‘Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism’ at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Surrealism did not take root in Germany (Ernst, the major German Surrealist, lived mostly in France and the USA), but it flourished vigorously in Belgium—in the work particularly of Magritte, the most inspired of all Surrealist painters, and Delvaux, the most long-lived upholder of the tradition. Many artists who were not in sympathy with the political aims of Surrealism (for a time it was associated with the French Communist Party), and who were never formal members of the movement, nevertheless found its ideas stimulating and were influenced by its imagery. In Britain, Henry Moore and Paul Nash were among the major artists who went through a Surrealist phase. The English Surrealist Group was founded in 1936, but it was social rather than revolutionary in its aims.

Although it broke up as an organized movement during the war and by this time had spent its main force, the spirit of Surrealism lived on. With its stress on the marvellous and the poetic, it offered an alternative approach to the formalism of Cubism and various types of abstract art, and its methods and techniques continued to influence artists in many countries. It was, for example, a fundamental source for Abstract Expressionism. Among the artists who have most unwaveringly kept the Surrealist spirit alive is the British painter Conroy Maddox (1912– ), who in 1978 said, ‘No other movement has had more to say about the human condition, or has so determinedly put liberty, both poetic and political, above all else.’

Surrealism. Movement in art and literature flourishing in the 1920s and 1930s, characterized by a fascination with the bizarre, the incongruous, and the irrational. It was closely related to Dada, its principal source; several artists figured successively in both movements, each of which was conceived as a revolutionary mode of thought and action—a way of life rather than a set of stylistic attitudes. Both were strongly anti-rationalist and much concerned with creating effects that were disturbing or shocking, but whereas Dada was essentially nihilist, Surrealism was positive in spirit. The movement originated in France. Its founder and chief spokesman was the writer André Breton, who officially launched it with his first Manifeste du surréalisme, published in 1924; however, it had been taking shape for a few years before this and the term ‘surréalisme’ had been coined by Apollinaire in 1917. The central idea of the movement was to release the creative powers of the unconscious mind, or as Breton put it, ‘to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality’. Essentially it aimed at breaching the dominance of reason and conscious control by releasing primitive urges and imagery, and Breton and other members of the movement drew liberally on Freud's theories concerning the unconscious and its relation to dreams. The way in which they set about exploration of submerged impulses and imagery varied greatly (in spite of Breton's demands there was little doctrinal unity, and defections, expulsions, and personal attacks are a feature of the history of the movement). Some artists, for example Ernst and Masson, cultivated various spontaneous techniques such as frottage in an effort to eliminate conscious control (see automatism). At the other extreme, Dalí, Magritte, and others painted in a scrupulously detailed style to give a hallucinatory sense of reality to scenes that make no rational sense.

Paris remained the centre of Surrealism until the Second World War, when the emigration of many European artists to the USA made New York the new hub of its activity. It made an impact in many other places and indeed became the most widely disseminated and controversial aesthetic movement of the 1920s and 1930s, spread partly by a series of major international exhibitions. Two of the most important took place in 1936: the International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries in London, and ‘Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism’ at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Surrealism did not take root in Germany (Ernst, the major German Surrealist, lived mostly in France and the USA), but it flourished vigorously in Belgium—in the work particularly of Magritte, the most inspired of all Surrealist painters, and Delvaux, the most long-lived upholder of the tradition. Many artists who were not in sympathy with the political aims of Surrealism (for a time it was associated with the French Communist Party), and who were never formal members of the movement, nevertheless found its ideas stimulating and were influenced by its imagery. In Britain, Henry Moore and Paul Nash were among the major artists who went through a Surrealist phase. The English Surrealist Group was founded in 1936, but it was social rather than revolutionary in its aims.

Although it broke up as an organized movement during the war and by this time had spent its main force, the spirit of Surrealism lived on. With its stress on the marvellous and the poetic, it offered an alternative approach to the formalism of Cubism and various types of abstract art, and its methods and techniques continued to influence artists in many countries. It was, for example, a fundamental source for Abstract Expressionism. Among the artists who have most unwaveringly kept the Surrealist spirit alive is the British painter Conroy Maddox (1912– ), who in 1978 said ‘No other movement has had more to say about the human condition, or has so determinedly put liberty, both poetic and political, above all else.’

surrealism , literary and art movement influenced by Freudianism and dedicated to the expression of imagination as revealed in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason and free of convention. The movement was founded (1924) in Paris by André Breton , with his Manifeste du surréalisme, but its ancestry is traced to the French poets Baudelaire , Rimbaud , Apollinaire , and to the Italian painter, Giorgio de Chirico . Many of its adherents had belonged to the Dada movement. In literature, surrealism was confined almost exclusively to France. Surrealist writers were interested in the associations and implications of words rather than their literal meanings; their works are thus extraordinarily difficult to read. Among the leading surrealist writers were Louis Aragon , Paul Éluard , Robert Desnos , and Jean Cocteau , the last noted particularly for his surreal films. In art the movement became dominant in the 1920s and 30s and was internationally practiced with many and varied forms of expression. Salvador Dalí and Yves Tanguy used dreamlike perception of space and dream-inspired symbols such as melting watches and huge metronomes. Max Ernst and René Magritte constructed fantastic imagery from startling combinations of incongruous elements of reality painted with photographic attention to detail. These artists have been labeled as verists because their paintings involve transformations of the real world. "Absolute" surrealism depends upon images derived from psychic automatism, the subconscious, or spontaneous thought. Works by Joan Miró and André Masson are in this vein. The movement survived but was greatly diminished after World War II.

Bibliography: See A. Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism (tr. 1969); L. Lippard, ed., Surrealists on Art (1970); R. Brandon, Surreal Lives (1999); studies by P. Waldberg (1966), W. S. Rubin (1969), S. Alexandrian (1970), H. S. Gershman (1969, repr. 1974), J. H. Matthews (1977), E. B. Henning (1979), A. Balakian (1987), H. Lewis (1988), and M. Nadeau (tr. 1967, repr. 1989).

Surrealism, a movement founded in Paris in 1924 with the publication of André Breton's first Surrealist Manifesto. It was conceived as a revolutionary mode of thought and action, concerned with politics, philosophy, and psychology as well as literature and art. The Manifesto attacked rationalism and narrow logical systems; drawing on Freud's theories concerning the unconscious and its relation to dreams, it called for the exploration of hidden and neglected areas of the human psyche. The group of writers and painters that gathered round Breton experimented with automatic processes, which were considered the best means of producing the surreal poetic image: the spontaneous coupling of unrelated objects. An extended conception of poetry, which was to be part of, not separate from, life, was central to surrealism. In England the movement attracted some attention among literary circles, but it was only after the International Surrealist Exhibition of 1936 that a surrealist group was established, its members including D. Gascoyne, H. Read, Roland Penrose (1900–84), and the documentary film-maker Humphrey Jennings (1907–50).

surrealism Twentieth-century artistic movement that evolved out of Dada. André Breton's Surrealist Manifesto (1924) set out the key features of the movement. Taking inspiration from Sigmund Freud's theories of the unconscious, the surrealists used the techniques of ‘free association’ to produce bizarre imagery and strange juxtapositions to surprise and shock viewers. Important surrealist writers include Paul Éluard, Louis Aragon, Georges Bataille, and Benjamin Peret, while painters include Jean Arp, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Salvador Dali, Joan Miró, and Paul Klee. Jean Cocteau and Luis Buñuel directed surrealist films.

sur·re·al·ism / səˈrēəˌlizəm/ • n. a 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature that sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images. DERIVATIVES: sur·re·al·ist n. & adj. sur·re·al·is·tic / səˌrēəˈlistik/ adj. sur·re·al·is·ti·cal·ly / səˌrēəˈlistik(ə)lē/ adv.

surrealism a 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature which sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images. Launched in 1924 by a manifesto of André Breton and having a strong political content, the movement grew out of symbolism and Dada and was strongly influenced by Sigmund Freud.

surrealism XX. — F. surréalisme; see SUR-2, REALISM.
So surrealist, surrealistic XX.