A term first used in connection with Kandinsky in 1919, but more commonly associated with post-war American art. Robert Coates, an American critic, coined it in 1946, referring to Gorky, Pollock and de Kooning. By the 1951 Museum of Modern Art exhibition 'Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America', the term was used to refer to all types of non-geometric abstraction. There are two distinct groups within the movement: Colour Field artists (Rothko, Newman, Still) worked with simple, unified blocks of colour; and gestural painters like Pollock, De Kooning and Hofmann who made use of Surrealist techniques of automatic art. Not all the artists associated with the term produced either purely abstract, or purely Expressionist work: Harold Rosenburg preferred the phrase Action Painting, whilst Greenberg used the less specific 'American Type Painting', and because of the concentration of artists in New York, they are also known as the New York School. The only real connection between Abstract Expressionists was in their artistic philosophy, and publications like Tiger's Eye, an avant-garde magazine that helped spread their ideas. All were influenced by Existentialist ideas, which emphasized the importance of the act of creating, not of the finished object. Most had a Surrealist background, inspired by the presence of Breton, Masson and Matta in New York in the 1940s and by retrospectives on Miró (1941) and Kandinsky (1945), and the Abstract Expressionists sought to express their subconscious through their art. They also shared an interest in Jung's ideas on myth, ritual and memory (inspired by exhibitions of African and American Indian art in 1935 and 1941 respectively) and conceived an almost Romantic view of the artist, seeing their painting as a way of life and themselves as disillusioned commentators on contemporary society after the Depression and the Second World War. Other American artists associated with the movement were Motherwell, Tobey, Kline and Philip Guston.
The Surrealists explored unique ways of interpreting the world, turning to dreams and the unconscious as inspiration for a new vision. Their innovative thinking challenged convention, changing perceptions of the world in which they lived and transforming the language of art and design. Surrealist imagery and ideas were absorbed into the worlds of fashion, commercial design, graphics and film and many Surrealist artists were actively engaged with these activities throughout their careers.
During the 1930s Surrealism escaped the bounds of a radical avant-garde art movement and transformed the wider worlds of theatre, design, fashion and advertising. For some, Surrealism's assimilation into the commercial world was to be celebrated and embraced, while for others it went against the political principles of the movement.
The journey from art movement to commercial phenomenon was not merely a matter of artists and designers outside the movement borrowing Surrealist imagery and techniques. It was also precipitated from within.
Surrealism's thematic preoccupations and visual strategies often lent themselves to commercial appropriation, while Surrealist artists themselves frequently worked as designers.
Protest: The Ballet
The patronage of the Ballets Russes provided an opportunity for many avant-garde artists to engage with the world of design. It presented exciting new possibilities for the realisation of an illusory world and, unsurprisingly, attracted some of the leading artists of the early phase of Surrealism - Max Ernst, Jean Miró and André Masson.
The ballet was also one of the first spheres to reveal the wider influence of Surrealism. In 1926 Serge Diaghilev, the artistic director of the Ballets Russes, commissioned Ernst and Miró to design sets for 'Romeo and Juliet'.
The event crystallised debates on the morality of artistic engagement with the commercial world. The Paris premiére was disrupted by a gang blowing whistles, shouting and distributing leaflets. Orchestrated by André Breton and Louis Aragon, who were perhaps goaded into action by Pablo Picasso's suggestion that these artists had sold out, the leaflet or 'Protestation' stated, 'It is inadmissable that ideas should be at the behest of money.'
Surrealism and the Object
Surrealist practise during the 1920s was largely focused on the exploration of automatic processes in writing, drawing, collage and painting. The early 1930s saw the emergence of new debates and a new type of practice - the Surrealist object.
The shift away from text and image towards the constructed object was driven by the need to engage directly with the material world - the world of objects and commerce. The Surrealist object could, it was felt, represent the complexities and contradictions of modern life.
At the instigation of Salvador Dali, several artists began to create Surrealist objects. A basic opposition lay in the creation of integrated sculptural works versus new objects constructed out of pre-existing and often outmoded commodities. These constructions forced new meanings through bizarre juxtapositions that alluded to subjective dreams or desires.
Though intended as a critique of consumer culture, the advent of the Surrealist object allowed for the wider assimilation of Surrealist ideas. The use of commodities pointed to the commercial possibilities of using a Surrealist language for applied and decorative arts, while the juxtaposition of diverse elements opened up new formal solutions in design.
The Illusory Interior
The domestic interior became a staple theme of Surrealism. In Freudian dream analysis, the home no longer signified domesticity and security, but carried a range of disturbing and sexualised meanings that preoccupied the Surrealists. It provided a series of interconnected structures - from cellar and stair to door and attic - symbolic of both psychic and physical scenarios.
For instance, in dream analysis climbing the stair was interpreted as copulation. Refuting rationalist and technologically driven visions of the home, the Surrealists explored a variety of subjective approaches. They celebrated its capacity to convey the historical trace of previous events, contents and inhabitants, and invested old objects with new meanings. By combining the antique, the new and the bizarre, they created a multi-referential environment that offered a stark contrast to the prevailing views in modern design.
Displaying the Body
The representation of the body, and particularly the female body, provides a common thread through the public displays, exhibitions and commercial activities of the Surrealists.
The body became the subject of intense scrutiny - dismembered, fragmented, desecrated, eroticised and eulogised in the pursuit of a range of psychological, sociological and sexual concerns.
The body was a universal. It united the spheres of the physical and psychological, and allowed for an exploration of sexuality as an aspect of modernity. Importantly, the body also proved the primary agent in the commercialisation of Surrealism.
Nature Made Strange
Nature, as one of the key themes of Surrealism, offered a rich store of forms and motifs that were quickly adapted for use in design.
The Surrealists borrowed from disparate sources, including 19th-century natural science, Art Nouveau and new technologies such as microphotography and film. They invested nature with a range of psychological and subjective associations. In particular, nature represented the Surrealist concept of the 'Marvellous' and became a metaphor for the unconscious.
This new symbolism, coupled with the development of biomorphism as an aesthetic strand within Surrealism, led to the adoption of an organic form language by many artists and designers in the 1930s.
In America, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, biomorphism appeared in all fields of design and garnered a whole range of new meanings. 'Free-form', as it became known, clearly carried associations of the subjective, but also came to symbolise reassurance and nurture in the nuclear age.
Dream
In 1940 Dali summed up his desire to make objects: 'I try to create fantastic things, magical things, things like in a dream. The world needs more fantasy. Our civilisation is too mechanical. We can make the fantastic real, and then it is more real than that which actually exists.'
In rejecting the rational, mechanical world and celebrating dream and the fantastic, Dali reiterated a fundamental objective of Surrealism. But in making the 'fantastic real', Dali also acknowledged the necessity of a direct engagement with the material world and the world of materialism-the world of Surreal things.
“The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd.”
André Breton
The Surrealist manifesto in 1924 defines Surrealism as:
“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. This can be applied in any circumstance of life, and is not merely restricted to the artistic realm. The importance of the dream as a reservoir of Surrealist inspiration is also highlighted”.
The manifesto also refers to the numerous precursors of Surrealism that embodied the Surrealist spirit prior to his composing the manifesto, including such luminaries as Giorgio de Chirico, the Marquis de Sade, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, the Comte de Lautréamont, Raymond Roussel, and even back as far as Dante.
The manifesto was written with a great deal of absurdist humour, demonstrating the influence of the Dada movement which immediately preceded it in France, and in which Breton was also a key player.
The group aimed to revolutionize human experience, including its personal, cultural, social, and political aspects, by freeing people from what they saw as false rationality, and restrictive customs and structures. Breton proclaimed, the true aim of Surrealism is "long live the social revolution, and it alone!" To this goal, at various times surrealists aligned with communism and anarchism.
Giorgio de Chirico, and his Metaphysical art, was one of the important joining figures between the philosophical and visual aspects of Surrealism. De Chirico was an influence on the two artists who would be even more closely associated with Surrealism in the public mind: Salvador Dalí and Rene Magritte. He would, however, leave the Surrealist group in 1928.
Metaphysical art (Italian: Pittura metafisica) is the name of an Italian art movement, created by Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà in 1917. Their dream-like paintings of squares typical of idealized Italian cities, as well as apparently casual juxtapositions of objects, represented a visionary world which engaged most immediately with the unconscious mind, beyond physical reality, hence the name. Pittura Metafisica provided significant impetus for the development of Surrealism.
André Masson was one of the most enthusiastic employers of automatic drawing, making a number of automatic works in pen and ink. Masson would often force himself to work under strict conditions, for example, after long periods of time without food or sleep, or under the influence of drugs. He believed forcing himself into a reduced state of consciousness would help his art be free from rational control, and hence get closer to the workings of his subconscious mind.
“How did I think up my drawings and my ideas for painting? Well I'd come home to my Paris studio in Rue Blomet at night, I'd go to bed, and sometimes I hadn't any supper. I saw things, and I jotted them down in a notebook. I saw shapes on the ceiling...”
Surrealism as a visual movement had found a method: to expose psychological truth by stripping ordinary objects of their normal significance, in order to create a compelling image that was beyond ordinary formal organization, in order to evoke empathy from the viewer.
The characteristics of this style - a combination of the depictive, the abstract, and the psychological - came to stand for the alienation which many people felt in the modern period, combined with the sense of reaching more deeply into the psyche.
Another important surrealist artis was Meret Oppenheim. Many of Oppenheim’s pieces consisted of everyday objects arranged as such that they allude to female sexuality and feminine exploitation by the opposite sex. Her paintings focused on the same themes. Her originality and audacity established her as a leading figure in the movement.
Dalí was a versatile artist, not limiting himself only to painting in his artistic activities. Some of his more popular artistic works are sculptures and other objects, and he is also noted for his contributions to theatre, fashion, and photography, among other areas.
Two of the most popular objects of the surrealist movement were the Lobster Telephone and the Mae West Lips Sofa, completed by Dalí in 1936 and 1937 respectively, for the Surrealist artist and patron Edward James. Lobsters and telephones had strong sexual connotations for Dalí and he drew a close analogy between food and sex.
The wood and satin Mae West Lips Sofa was shaped after the lips of actress Mae West, whom Dalí found fascinating. West in fact was previously the subject of Dalí's 1935 painting The Face of Mae West.
Surrealism was a deeply revolutionary movement that developed in Paris, partly in response to the carnage and futility of the World War I. Calling for a revision of values, it was a reaction against positivism, realism, reason, logic, and the 19th-c. belief in progress.
For three years its activity and personnel coincided with those of the Paris branch of Dada, but the publication of André Breton's Manifeste du surréalisme in 1924 finally established its greater creative potential.
Surrealist artworks feature the element of surprise, irrationality and unexpected juxtapositions. Particularly important was Sigmund Freud's work with free association, dream analysis and the hidden unconscious to liberate imagination.
In the Surrealist Manifesto Breton advocates the idea that ordinary and depictive expressions are vital and important, but that the sense of their arrangement must be open to the full range of imagination.
I have a BA (Hons) in painting from the “Accademia di Belle Arti” in Bologna, Italy. In 2003 I gained a Master Degree in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design. Between 1998 and 2000 I was a guest tutor at HISK, Institute for Fine Arts, Antwerp. Since 2007 I have been teaching at Kensington and Chelsea College. In 2008 I obtained a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. I divide my time between teaching art and producing it. For more information about what I do please visit my website: www.gianlucacosci.com
