SURREALISM, UNCONSCIOUS MIND TO EXPRESS ITSELF

Today, The Grandma has continued her English classes with The Bishops in Castelldefels.

First, they have been describing surrealistic works created by Salvador Dalí. 

Next, they have proposed a plan to survive a crisis of communication.

Finally, they have played Clue, also known as Cluedo, a fantastic board game when you have to question to discover the great mysteries of a murder: who the murderer is, where it happens and what kind of tool the murderer chooses to kill the victim.

More information: Salvador Dalí, Surrealism & Eccentricism in Púbol 

Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself.

Its aim was, according to leader André Breton, to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality, or surreality. It produced works of painting, writing, theatre, filmmaking, photography, and other media.

Works of Surrealism feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur. However, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost (for instance, of the pure psychic automatism Breton speaks of in the first Surrealist Manifesto), with the works themselves being secondary, i.e. artifacts of surrealist experimentation.

Leader Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a revolutionary movement. At the time, the movement was associated with political causes such as communism and anarchism. It was influenced by the Dada movement of the 1910s.

The term Surrealism originated with Guillaume Apollinaire in 1917. However, the Surrealist movement was not officially established until after October 1924, when the Surrealist Manifesto published by French poet and critic André Breton succeeded in claiming the term for his group over a rival faction led by Yvan Goll, who had published his own Surrealist manifesto two weeks prior.

The most important center of the movement was Paris, France. From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe, impacting the visual arts, literature, film, and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy, and social theory.

More information: The Art Story

The word surrealism was first coined in March 1917 by Guillaume Apollinaire. He wrote in a letter to Paul Dermée: All things considered, I think in fact it is better to adopt surrealism than supernaturalism, which I first used [Tout bien examiné, je crois en effet qu'il vaut mieux adopter surréalisme que surnaturalisme que j'avais d'abord employé].

Apollinaire used the term in his program notes for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, Parade, which premiered 18 May 1917.

The movement in the mid-1920s was characterized by meetings in cafes where the Surrealists played collaborative drawing games, discussed the theories of Surrealism, and developed a variety of techniques such as automatic drawing. Breton initially doubted that visual arts could even be useful in the Surrealist movement since they appeared to be less malleable and open to chance and automatism. This caution was overcome by the discovery of such techniques as frottage, grattage and decalcomania.

Surrealists believe that non-Western cultures also provide a continued source of inspiration for Surrealist activity because some may induce a better balance between instrumental reason and imagination in flight than Western culture.

Surrealism has had an identifiable impact on radical and revolutionary politics, both directly -as in some Surrealists joining or allying themselves with radical political groups, movements and parties- and indirectly -through the way in which Surrealists emphasize the intimate link between freeing imagination and the mind, and liberation from repressive and archaic social structures.

More information: Artsy

 Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only
what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.

Salvador Dalí

ANDRÉ R. BRETON, THE FRENCH LEADER OF SURREALISM

Today, The Grandma has received the wonderful visit of one of her closest friends, Jordi Santanyí.

 

Jordi and The Grandma love literature, and they have been talking about André Breton, the French writer and poet leader of surrealism, who was born on a day like yesterday in 1896.

André Robert Breton (18 February 1896-28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet.

He is known best as the co-founder, leader, principal theorist and chief apologist of surrealism. His writings include the first Manifeste du surréalisme of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as pure psychic automatism. Along with his role as leader of the surrealist movement he is the author of celebrated books such as Nadja and L'Amour fou.

Those activities combined with his critical and theoretical work for writing and the plastic arts, made André Breton a major figure in twentieth-century French art and literature.

André Breton was the only son born to a family of modest means in Tinchebray (Orne) in Normandy, France. His father, Louis-Justin Breton, was a policeman and atheistic, and his mother, Marguerite-Marie-Eugénie Le Gouguès, was a former seamstress. Breton attended medical school, where he developed a particular interest in mental illness. His education was interrupted when he was conscripted for World War I.

During World War I, he worked in a neurological ward in Nantes, where he met the devotee of Alfred Jarry, Jacques Vaché, whose anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition influenced Breton considerably. Vaché committed suicide when aged 24, and his war-time letters to Breton and others were published in a volume entitled Lettres de guerre (1919), for which Breton wrote four introductory essays.

More information: The Art Story

Breton married his first wife, Simone Kahn, on 15 September 1921. The couple relocated to rue Fontaine No. 42 in Paris on 1 January 1922. The flat on rue Fontaine in the Pigalle district became home to Breton's collection of more than 5,300 items: modern paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, books, art catalogs, journals, manuscripts, and works of popular and Oceanic art. Like his father, he was an atheist.

Breton launched the review Littérature in 1919, with Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault. He also associated with Dadaist Tristan Tzara. In 1924, he was instrumental in the founding of the Bureau of Surrealist Research.

In Les Champs Magnétiques, a collaboration with Soupault, he implemented the principle of automatic writing. He published the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, and was editor of the magazine La Révolution surréaliste from that year on. A group of writers became associated with him: Soupault, Louis Aragon, Paul Éluard, René Crevel, Michel Leiris, Benjamin Péret, Antonin Artaud, and Robert Desnos.

Anxious to combine the themes of personal transformation found in the works of Arthur Rimbaud with the politics of Karl Marx, Breton joined the French Communist Party in 1927, from which he was expelled in 1933. Nadja, a novel about his encounter with an imaginative woman who later became mentally ill, was published in 1928.

Breton celebrated the concept of Mad Love, and many women joined the surrealist group over the years. Toyen was a good friend. During this time, he survived mostly by the sale of paintings from his art gallery.

However, visiting Mexico provided the opportunity to meet Leon Trotsky. Breton and other surrealists travelled via a long boat ride from Patzcuaro to the town of Erongarícuaro. Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo were among the visitors to the hidden community of intellectuals and artists. Together, Breton and Trotsky wrote the Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art, published under the names of Breton and Diego Rivera, calling for complete freedom of art, which was becoming increasingly difficult with the world situation of the time.

Breton was again in the medical corps of the French Army at the start of World War II. The Vichy government banned his writings as the very negation of the national revolution and Breton escaped, with the help of the American Varian Fry and Hiram Harry Bingham IV, to the United States and the Caribbean during 1941. He emigrated to New York City and lived there for a few years. In 1942, Breton organized a groundbreaking surrealist exhibition at Yale University.

Breton returned to Paris in 1946, where he opposed French colonialism (for example as a signatory of the Manifesto of the 121 against the Algerian War) and continued, until his death, to foster a second group of surrealists in the form of expositions or reviews (La Brèche, 1961–65). In 1959, he organized an exhibit in Paris.

By the end of World War II, André Breton decided to embrace anarchism explicitly.

In 1952, Breton wrote It was in the black mirror of anarchism that surrealism first recognized itself. Breton consistently supported the francophone Anarchist Federation, and he continued to offer his solidarity after the Platformists around founder and Secretary General Georges Fontenis transformed the FA into the Fédération communiste libertaire.

André Breton died at the age of 70 in 1966, and was buried in the Cimetière des Batignolles in Paris.

More information: Surrealist Art

 Of all those arts in which the wise excel,
Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

André Breton