Surrealism's original manifesto was a call to arms; a politically charaged artistic movement was born with the aim of delving into the subconscious mind and bringing it into the light, pairing it with the conscious mind of everyday living.
Expressing something like the subconscious involved stepping out of rational boundaries and reconsidering what perception means and theories of realism.
Why?
Why do it?
Andre Breton wrote the manifesto:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/186128/Manifesto-of-Surrealism-Andre-Breton
Bascially they were interested in accessing difficult hard to reach parts of the mind, labelled under the un or subconscious and where hugely influenced by Freud's Interpretation of Dreams book. Yung is a future footnote in this movement.
Surrealism involved elements of surprise, unusual juxtaposition, and non sequitur (the opposite of a cliche, an unexpected an illogical ending or statement)
The Surrealists believed, quite seriously, that an over reliance on RATIONALISM led to the enormous destruction that was World War 1. They believed that by practising their art and expressing these deeper, hidden elements of the psyche they could help rebalance those more rational elements in the psyche. And in society too.
This is Ernst's painting The Elephant Celebes (1922) often considered the first surrealist painting.
But this is the one I love. It came some while later.
Really, surrealism was about more than the art it produced. It was about making psychological truth, about seeing things as they really felt, not as they appeared to the conscious mind in an effort to release imagination, set it free and let it inspire us to live more, do more and be more, unafraid of the supposed 'darkness' that dwells within us according to the rationalists, positivists and anyone who hasn't drank enough cocktails or lived naked for a year on a mushroom farm populated by sceptical nuns and children made from mice heads and bubble farts.
There. A non-seqweeter.
No comments:
Post a Comment