Surrealism is a dream - it is not real, but it is not irreal either. The style is characterized by allusions and paradoxical combination of forms, visual deception. On the canvases of surrealists often solid objects, stones spread out, and water on the contrary - stone.
The first half of the twentieth century is famous for the turbulent course of events not only in political life, but also in cultural life. One after another, artistic movements and groups emerged, disappeared, merged, flowed out of each other. Many of them passed imperceptibly past the memory of history. Some left only a small imprint, and some became the banner of the era. Such was surrealism, which managed to survive for half a century.
As an artistic movement, surrealism originates from Dadaism. More precisely, it comes to replace it when the latter drowns in its own world of chaos. Dadaism was aimed at destroying everything, including itself. Surrealism changes the direction of creativity. Here it is no longer merely destructive, but creative, though through destruction. That is, the methods remain similar, but the goal is different. Surrealists try to build aesthetics with the help of those methods that served the Dadaists first of all to dismantle all meanings, style and any other systems.
Let's start with history. Somewhere around 1919, André Breton, Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault became close. They can be called the progenitors of a new current, which begins to take shape after the release of "Magnetic Fields" by André Breton and Philippe Soupault in May 1920. This book manifested the main artistic idea of surrealism - automatism.
The automatic drawings were made by André Masson. He "scribbled" with a pen or pencil on a sheet of paper until images began to emerge from the lines and spots.
In 1924, the world sees the First Manifesto of Surrealism. Here its "daddy" - André Breton, defines the style: "Surrealism. Pure mental automatism, aiming to express, either verbally, or in writing, or in any other way, the real functioning of thought. The dictation of thought beyond any control of reason, beyond any aesthetic or moral considerations."
The development of the style was greatly influenced by Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis, which was very popular at the time, especially his analysis of dreams. For Freud, dreaming is the work of the subconscious mind, which breaks free when the conscious mind rests. Surrealists shared the scientist's insights into the importance of the subconscious mind and its inexhaustibility. Surrealists see real art in the rejection of their own conscious thought, because thought is subjective, and art should be the opposite - objective. This is exactly what the subconscious is - a dream. The dream is a continuation of reality, but an objective reality, which is not imposed by certain ideas of consciousness and is not constrained by the Super-Ego or the so-called censorship of consciousness.
For the Surrealists, sleep is a kind of revelation. It is worth remembering Salvador Dalí, who started working immediately after waking up, when his brain had not yet been completely freed from subconscious images. Sometimes he even woke up in the middle of the night for the same purpose. This method corresponds to one of the techniques of psychoanalysis - recording dreams immediately upon awakening. It is believed that over a period of time the consciousness dulls, distorts, and transforms the images from the dream.
Surrealists seek to liberate the self that is repressed by reality. Such art is meant to enable a person to master his inner self, of which he knows nothing. The same "daddy" of Surrealism, Breton, said that there is nowhere to escape from oppressive reality but into childhood, dreams and fantasies. It is also worth noting that the Surrealists' sphere of activity was not only art, they wanted to change life.
However, the work of the Surrealists cannot be summed up by one common feature that could give a clear and unambiguous characterization of the style as a whole. For example, the automatism inherent in the work of artists of the early stage of Surrealism - Max Ernst and André Masson, we will not find in the clearly defined images and compositions of Salvador Dali and René Magritte.
René Magritte, by the way, had a negative attitude to psychoanalysis in art. Unlike other surrealists, the objects on his canvases do not lose their usual form and qualities. The artist's work can be called philosophical-poetic, his goal is to make the viewer think. Often under ordinary objects the author wrote "This is not him", thus turning the picture into a rebus, which is completely impossible to solve.
Surrealism was one of the few movements that had its own theoretical postulates and fixed truths, which the members of the group had to strictly observe. Everything was stipulated down to the last detail - what could and could not be written, how one could and how one should write; even how to behave was stipulated. For non-compliance with strict rules, for example, Salvador Dali brought on himself expulsion from the group and "anathema" from the leader of the current Andre Breton. But, nevertheless, Dalí is one of the most famous Surrealist painters, who confirmed with his work once said the phrase "Surrealism is me!". Speaking about the painting of surrealism, involuntarily in front of my eyes arise images of paintings by Dali.
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