CHARACTERISTIC OF SURREALISM
(c.1924-2004)
What is
Surrealism? - Characteristics
Surrealism
was "the" fashionable art movement of the inter-war years, and the
last major art movement to be associated with the Ecole de Paris, from where it
spread across Europe, becoming one of the most influential schools or styles of
avant-garde art. Its name derived
from the phrase Drame surrealiste, the sub-title of a 1917 play by the
writer and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918). Surrealism evolved out of the nihilistic
"anti-art" Dada movement, most of
whose members became surrealists. However, while every bit as
"revolutionery" as Dada, Surrealism was less overtly political and
advocated a more positive philosophy - summed up by André Breton as "thought
expressed in the absense of any control exerted by reason, and outside all
moral and aesthetic considerations."
Initially,
the main focus of the movement was literature but this rapidly broadened to
encompass painting, sculpture and other forms of contemporary visual art. Surrealist artists aimed to generate
an entirely new set of imagery by liberating
the creative power of the unconscious mind.
|
|
All
sorts of techniques and phenomena were employed to achieve this subconscious creativity, including
dreams, hallucinations, automatic or random image generation - basically
anything that circumvented the usual "rational" thought processes
involved in creating works of art. (For more, please see Automatism in Art.) Not
surprisingly, in its attempt to produce works of art untainted by bourgeois
rationalism, Surrealism was responsible for a host of incredibly innovative but
often bizarre, and sometimes unintelligible compositions. Nonetheless, despite
its absurdist features, Surrealism was (and continues to be) highly appealing
both to artists and the public. Indeed, in its iconic pictures and its impact
on modern art, Surrealism has established itself as one of the 20th century's
most enduring movements.
|
References
Ø
Other net survey.
See
also
No comments:
Post a Comment