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Movements in Modern Art
Surrealism
A collective adventure begun by a small group of intellectuals in Paris in the early 1920s, amongst them Max Ernst, Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali, Surealism's influence was felt through the rest of continenal Europe and in Britain, the Americas, Mexico, and Japan. This introduction documents how the artists met, the relationship of Surrealism to Dada, and the influences that informed the movement, particularly the work of Sigmund Freud. The position of women, as Surrealist subject mater as well as artists in their own right, is also examined.
- GenresArtNonfictionArt History
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 18, 2019
As a writer who treats reading as work, I enjoy how it forces me to read books I normally would pass up. Take a textbook on Surrealism, such as this one.
What stands out above all is how Fiona Bradley illustrates the personal narratives behind the movement known as Surrealism, particular as found in the larger-than-life character, André Breton. Entering this book, I had only an ignorant awareness of Surrealism as being “bizarre” or “weird” art and I understood that it originated in the 1920s, related to disillusionment in the popular culture following Western rationalism’s perceived failure after World War I. What I instead have come to understand, after reading this book, is how it is far more nuanced than that, and very much about the grand personalities who defined it, their specific exhibitions and issues of their journals, their artistic communities and how friends and friends of friends influenced one another. We all know the name Jean Cocteau, but reading Bradley’s text, we learn how he “quarrelled violently” with Breton; how he mocked the whole Surrealism movement with his film, Orphée, equating Breton and the Surrealists’ automatic writing process to following obsessively a horse whose central epiphany is “SHIT”. Or, the matter of Dalí and how he decided the best way to present a lecture was in an old-fashion diver suit — and before he could deliver his lecture in full, he nearly suffocated, having to be saved by a “hastily procured spanner”. Now that’s devotion. Or the other nuances between Dalí and Breton, and why Dalí earned the acronym moniker “Avido Dollars” by Breton for how he “cheapened” the Surrealist movement in the 1940s by appealing to the market by way of portraiture.
These are just a few of the gems hiding in this book. There are more than 50 selected works, which cover the many nations to which Surrealism’s expansionist aims reached (more than 15, by the time of the Tokyo International Surrealist Exhibition in 1938). The book also treats the subject of women as an underrepresented group in Surrealism, particular due to the nature of Breton’s domineering approach to how he decided who was “in” and who was “out”, and how the wide array of mostly male Surrealists treated women as subjects, in their pursuit of the “muse” as a Surrealist object (and fetishism by way of the femme-enfante), while simultaneously overlooking the fact that they vastly misunderstood women as people. Poignantly, Fiona Bradley shares René Magritte’s “The Hidden Woman”, by a man, which shows “mugshots” of the Surrealist artists (all men) with eyes closed in a seeming trance state, laid out in miniature in a border around a large, generic female sculpture, looking to the side with eyes open; this itself helps us appreciate the later wave of Surrealism in the 1930s as female artists appear. I particularly liked Bradley’s analysis of Ithell Colquhoun’s “Scylla” of 1938, which utilizes Dalí’s double-image technique to expose the male-oriented biases, by way of superimposing first our expectation that the twin pillars, with boat entering (Scylla is named after a Greek nymph who was believed to lure sailors into dangerous waters on the Italian side of the Straits of Messina), on what we think instead when we hear the artist say she was depicting her legs in the bathtub — one sees the phallic boat object trying to enter the space, where knees can push together to refuse it entry, in radically new light, in a way that in turn inverts the very nature of who is villain and who is victim. There were many female artists presented, of whom Leonora Carrington and inversion of the “muse” by way of Max Ernst stood out, though in my mind it is a shame the power of Surrealism remained so entrenched in male patriarchy and Bradley’s analysis presents one this picture by way of study, leaving the reader to make this conclusion.
Breton died in 1966 and, according to Bradley, the Surrealist movement died with him. While there has been a Surrealist legacy, including the term’s usage in common language to mean “bizarre” or “weird” — as I at first thought, before reading this book — it is noteworthy that the study of Surrealism is not a study so much of a style of art as a historic period centred on artists who were trying to find a new way to express the lines between community and collaboration in the space between World War I and World War II, and indeed the legacy continues today in the very nature of how we are prone to seek the blurry grey of truth rather than the simpler black and white.
Perhaps as artists, writers, and creators of our time we can draw deep lessons from this book, especially by way of discerning what it means to collaborate, what it means to create, to impose thought on the unshaped inner world of the unconscious, where form emerges, where it is about personal thought and where it is about something beyond, that “being” we are a part of that might be more than just thought, which we strive to capture, always in new ways, when we discipline ourselves to spend time in our medium, when we create. And are we creating? Or are we capturing? Or neither? Or both? The nature of Surrealism calls into question this very orientation toward art, and as Breton explained, art is not the work itself but the activity that creates the art.
What stands out above all is how Fiona Bradley illustrates the personal narratives behind the movement known as Surrealism, particular as found in the larger-than-life character, André Breton. Entering this book, I had only an ignorant awareness of Surrealism as being “bizarre” or “weird” art and I understood that it originated in the 1920s, related to disillusionment in the popular culture following Western rationalism’s perceived failure after World War I. What I instead have come to understand, after reading this book, is how it is far more nuanced than that, and very much about the grand personalities who defined it, their specific exhibitions and issues of their journals, their artistic communities and how friends and friends of friends influenced one another. We all know the name Jean Cocteau, but reading Bradley’s text, we learn how he “quarrelled violently” with Breton; how he mocked the whole Surrealism movement with his film, Orphée, equating Breton and the Surrealists’ automatic writing process to following obsessively a horse whose central epiphany is “SHIT”. Or, the matter of Dalí and how he decided the best way to present a lecture was in an old-fashion diver suit — and before he could deliver his lecture in full, he nearly suffocated, having to be saved by a “hastily procured spanner”. Now that’s devotion. Or the other nuances between Dalí and Breton, and why Dalí earned the acronym moniker “Avido Dollars” by Breton for how he “cheapened” the Surrealist movement in the 1940s by appealing to the market by way of portraiture.
These are just a few of the gems hiding in this book. There are more than 50 selected works, which cover the many nations to which Surrealism’s expansionist aims reached (more than 15, by the time of the Tokyo International Surrealist Exhibition in 1938). The book also treats the subject of women as an underrepresented group in Surrealism, particular due to the nature of Breton’s domineering approach to how he decided who was “in” and who was “out”, and how the wide array of mostly male Surrealists treated women as subjects, in their pursuit of the “muse” as a Surrealist object (and fetishism by way of the femme-enfante), while simultaneously overlooking the fact that they vastly misunderstood women as people. Poignantly, Fiona Bradley shares René Magritte’s “The Hidden Woman”, by a man, which shows “mugshots” of the Surrealist artists (all men) with eyes closed in a seeming trance state, laid out in miniature in a border around a large, generic female sculpture, looking to the side with eyes open; this itself helps us appreciate the later wave of Surrealism in the 1930s as female artists appear. I particularly liked Bradley’s analysis of Ithell Colquhoun’s “Scylla” of 1938, which utilizes Dalí’s double-image technique to expose the male-oriented biases, by way of superimposing first our expectation that the twin pillars, with boat entering (Scylla is named after a Greek nymph who was believed to lure sailors into dangerous waters on the Italian side of the Straits of Messina), on what we think instead when we hear the artist say she was depicting her legs in the bathtub — one sees the phallic boat object trying to enter the space, where knees can push together to refuse it entry, in radically new light, in a way that in turn inverts the very nature of who is villain and who is victim. There were many female artists presented, of whom Leonora Carrington and inversion of the “muse” by way of Max Ernst stood out, though in my mind it is a shame the power of Surrealism remained so entrenched in male patriarchy and Bradley’s analysis presents one this picture by way of study, leaving the reader to make this conclusion.
Breton died in 1966 and, according to Bradley, the Surrealist movement died with him. While there has been a Surrealist legacy, including the term’s usage in common language to mean “bizarre” or “weird” — as I at first thought, before reading this book — it is noteworthy that the study of Surrealism is not a study so much of a style of art as a historic period centred on artists who were trying to find a new way to express the lines between community and collaboration in the space between World War I and World War II, and indeed the legacy continues today in the very nature of how we are prone to seek the blurry grey of truth rather than the simpler black and white.
Perhaps as artists, writers, and creators of our time we can draw deep lessons from this book, especially by way of discerning what it means to collaborate, what it means to create, to impose thought on the unshaped inner world of the unconscious, where form emerges, where it is about personal thought and where it is about something beyond, that “being” we are a part of that might be more than just thought, which we strive to capture, always in new ways, when we discipline ourselves to spend time in our medium, when we create. And are we creating? Or are we capturing? Or neither? Or both? The nature of Surrealism calls into question this very orientation toward art, and as Breton explained, art is not the work itself but the activity that creates the art.
June 7, 2008
Surrealism Surrealism Surrealism Surrealism Surrealism Surrealism Surrealism Surrealism Surrealism Surrealism Surrealism Surrealism Surrealism Surrealism Surrealism Surrealism Surrealism Surrealism Surrealism Surrealism Surrealism Surrealism
November 14, 2022
Held my interest and I finished it within 5ish hours with notes.
February 11, 2009
Despite its thickness - or should I say, thinness, because the main body of the text only extends less than 80 pages - this book is a very informative introduction to the world of Surrealism, tracing the history of the movement, linking it with Dada, giving analysis of some well-known examples of Surrealist works, and explaining the main figures of Surrealism.
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December 19, 2014Moments in Modern Art Series
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews