Jan Mainzer, Ph. D.
Department of Art and Art History, Marist College, Poughkeepsie NY 12601
(845) 575-3000 x 2028 (Library) x 2280 (Donnelley); Jan.Mainzer@marist.edu
Text and images copyright
Jan Mainzer 1995, 2000, 2002
Meeting 26: Surrealism
Required reading to support Meeting
26: Stokstad, pp. 1099 "Dada" - 1105.
View in class: Un Chien Andalou. (Also on reserve
in Library)
Required reading to support Meetings 27 ( Class discussion) Readings posted on MERIT.
Additional recommended reading posted
on MERIT (Marist's electronic reserve room)
Tutorial : Review materials covered in class: Choose either the web-based interactive version of the tutorials, or click on "Microsoft Word version" for tutorials that you can print out and study away from the computer. This time only the Microsoft Word version of the tutorial is available.
Recap of Romanticism: Emotion vs. Reason
Dada + Surrealism: UNREASON vs. Reason
Dada + Surrealism: Brief history
Dada: An Attack on accepted values
A major contribution: Art should be a piece of Reality,
instead of an interpretation of Reality
Surrealists: Believed that salvation of Humanity lies in the subconscious
Viewing of films: Entr'Acte, Un Chien Andalou
Key sentences
Dada + Surrealism focus on Unreason as opposed to Reason,
+ Surrealism is influenced by psychoanalysis. A major
contribution of Dada + Surrealism is the idea that art should
be a PIECE OF REALITY rather than an interpretation of Reality
Today we're going to discuss briefly
2 early 20th century movements in art:
Dada + Surrealism + then look at a film that was made by
artists associated w/ these movements: Un Chien Andalou
The best way to get started is to
review some of the material that we covered
in our discussion of the Romantic period
Question: What has been the dominant
intellectual trend since around the 17th century?
...scientific materialism: ultimate reality
can be explained in terms of matter in motion
Question: And what human ability is valued above all others?
...Reason
Question: Given this context what did the Romantics stress?
...Emotion which was the flip side of the emphasis on Reason
Why is it accurate to speak of it as the
flip side of the emphasis on Reason?
...Because beginning in the 17th century
there came to be a hierarchical split
between MIND and BODY +
between REASON + EMOTION
w/ reason being much more valued than emotion
So the Romantics went for Emotion, which
the dominant intellectual trend devalued.
The Dadaists and the Surrealists of the early 20th Century took this a couple of steps further
The Dadaists + Surrealists weren't too big on Reason either
But their approach was different from the Romantics
The Romantics stressed EMOTION over Reason
The Dadaists + Surrealists stressed UNREASON over Reason
+ in a moment we'll talk about why they did
But first: a little history
The movements of Dada + Surrealism are
often mentioned in the same breath because altho
Surrealism, the later movement had a number of roots
Dada was one of its prominent ancestors
Closely related to this is the fact that Dada as a movement lasted only 6 years
Dada was founded in 1916 during the First World War
-- The year that the terrible battle of Verdun was fought
Now, keeping in mind that
emphasis on Reason was still part of the dominant intellectual trend,
The Dadaists felt that if the First World War was
what Reason had brought about
Then they wanted no more reason: They wanted UNREASON
Does this way of thinking sound familiar?
After the 30 Years War folks were appalled
at what fighting over Religion had brought about, so they veered toward Reason
After the First World War the Dadaists were appalled
at what Reason had wrought so they opted for Unreason
and their art (or anti-art) was an attack on all accepted values
So the Dadaists were using art in an intentionally destructive sense
Even their name followed this spirit:
"Dada" was a word chosen at random from a French-German dictionary
+ is a child's word in French for "hobby horse' -- a toy horse's horse's head on a stick
But for all their intentional destructiveness
One major contribution the Dadaists made to art is the
idea that Art should not INTERPRET reality
INSTEAD
art should be a PIECE OF REALITY
So since Dada was absorbed into the surrealist movement
In looking at the films today there are a few
Dada oriented things that we should keep in mind:
1. The emphasis on UNREASON
2. The fact that the art is meant to be an assault on all accepted values
3. the idea that art should not interpret reality but instead should be a piece of reality
The Surrealists took the Dadaist emphasis in unreason + went further w/ it
The writer Andre Breton was the strongest leader of the Surrealists and a
former member of the Dada movement
Breton studied the works of Sigmund Freud and
during the First World War had been an army psychiatrist
So Breton was familiar w/ Freud's methods of treating patients by having them
speak in what's called "free association"
--following their train of thought w/out restraining it w/ reason or logic
Breton asked himself what would happen if this method was used in literature
(NB: the question "What if...?" is a sure sign
that something creative is going on--it's a very important question)
So he + a friend experimented + the result was a technique called "automatic writing"
This approach later was applied to other media
-- And this method is obviously used in the films we'll see today.
What was the point of this method of free association when applied to art?
Was it just to be inventing something new or was there a serious purpose behind it?
The answer is that altho a certain amount of buffoonery
--fooling around, or clowning--
is associated w/ Surrealism, the Surrealists were quite serious
They believed that the salvation of humanity did not lie in reason
INSTEAD
They believed that the salvation of humanity lay in the subconscious
So in this sense Surrealism is
NOT nihilistic (against all accepted values) the way Dadism was
But I think you'll be able to see some nihilism in the film we'll see today
The film is: Un chien Andalou, or An Andalusian Dog
(16 minutes: Luis Bunel + Salvador Dali, ) presented in 1929
This is meant to assault:
If you find it's definitely NOT your cup of tea
Back off + treat it as a cultural artifact that you're studying
In viewing the films then, these are things to keep in mind:
1. The emphasis on UNREASON
In Surrealism: this became an interest in the subconscious
2. The fact that the art is meant to be an assault on all accepted values
3. the idea that art should not interpret reality but instead should become a piece of reality"
