Characteristics of SURREALISM in painting

The surrealism is one of the most revolutionary artistic vanguards of the 20th century, influencing later artistic movements. Its vindication of the dreamlike, of the automatic expression of thought or of the subconscious or its special emphasis on the power of imagination connect surrealism with romanticism, being also inspiration for artistic movements later. Thus, and although it began as a literary movement associated with Dadaism, the surrealist ideology was soon adopted by other artistic expressions, especially painting. A) Yes, La Révolution surrealiste, a magazine of the movement published between 1924 and 1929, included both texts and reproductions of drawings by artists such as Chirico, Max Ernst or Man Ray.

In a PROFESSOR we show you what are the characteristics of surrealism in painting so you can learn the keys to this avant-garde artistic movement, in addition to showing you techniques, themes and trends.

Index

1. Background and influences on Surrealism
2. Pictorial trends in Surrealism
3. Pictorial techniques used in Surrealism
4. Main pictorial works of Surrealism

Before talking about the characteristics of surrealism in painting, it is important that we better understand this trend. The surreal movement was founded by André Breton in 1924, embodying in his work "The Surrealist Manifesto" the intellectual foundations of the movement. The term "surrealism" it had already been used in 1917 by Guillaume Apollinaire when defining the ballet "Parade", a work by Jean Cocteau with music by Erik Satie, set design and costumes by Pablo Picasso and Leonide Massine's choreography, as "a type of surrealism", coining the word years before Surrealism emerged as an artistic movement in Paris. An artistic avant-garde that not only attracted painters and sculptors, its influence also extended to new artistic expressions such as film and photography.

Within the surrealist movement a series of antecedents and influences that help to understand its keys:

• The psychoanalytic studies of Sigmund Freud, especially his most emblematic work, The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), became a reference for the surrealists. The dream world and the unconscious as inspiration and revelation of repressed emotions and desires, facing and shaping the inner world of the artist: phobias, philias, dreams, monsters, psychosis, etc. Sexuality, desire and violence are the aspects most repressed by the rational mind, the surrealists highlighting how these taboos imposed by reason stifle the imagination.
• Breton's obsession with ending the so-called reasonable art and for this he opted for the spontaneous creation. A type of creation for which different methods were used, from random automatism, madness, primitivism or illogicality.
• The political ideology of Karl Marx. The surrealists wanted the psyche to be able to show all the contradictions of society and go towards a revolution. Surrealism was a movement full of rebellion that emerged after the enormous disenchantment that the First World War generated among young people. This movement constituted a violent, iconoclastic and revolutionary upheaval against conventionalisms and the established power.

However, after the Second World War, Breton became even more interested in the Political activismrevolutionary as the main objective of the movement. The result was the dispersal of the original movement into smaller factions of artists. Bretonnians, like Roberto Matta, believed that art was inherently political. Others, such as Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, and Dorothea Tanning, remained in America to separate from Breton. Salvador Dalí, likewise, retired to Spain, believing in the centrality of the individual in art.

The Dadaism, a movement to which Breton also belonged and which he abandoned due to differences with Tristan Tzara, another of the visible heads of this artistic avant-garde. The taste for chance, rebellion, the unconscious and imagination are some of the tastes inherited from Dada. The painter Marx Ernst will be one of the great figures of Dadaism and Surrealism.

Image: Slideshare

Within surrealism two very clear trends are usually distinguished:

Figurative surrealism

The topics that figurative surrealism usually treats are the dream world and magical realism. The technique is hyper-realistic, dominating the drawing and including numerous details, creating the illusion of three-dimensionality and emphasizing a dreamlike atmosphere. Color in these works was also used for this purpose, often using saturated colors, as is the case with Dalí, or monochromatic ranges such as Tanguy. Among the most prominent painters of figurative surrealism are figures of the stature of Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Yves Tanguy or Paul Delvaux.

Abstract surrealism

The painters who opted for abstract surrealism opted for the technique of automatism, painting in automatically, quickly, following almost a compulsion in which images are associated in a mechanics. It is about creating original universes, without coherence or apparent meaning, being the reflection of that part that is not dominated by reason. Within this group are grouped figures such as Joan Miró and André Masson.

To start talking about the characteristics of Surrealism in painting, we must know the different techniques that were used during Surrealism in art in general. The most prominent are the following:

The automatism

It was about painting on impulse, without control of the mind. One of the techniques based on automation was "The exquisite corpse", a technique in which a first painter began a work with the first idea or line that occurred to him, the Next he would add a new line and thus the whole group of painters gathered took turns to finish off a work joint. Among the painters who resorted to automatism are André Masson And Wifredo Lamé.

Chance

It seeks to find beauty in what happens spontaneously, at random, trying to create surprising images and compositions. Inside the painting will be Max ernst one of the most prominent figures in this search for technical procedures of the unpredictable and chance. Thus, the surrealists used techniques such as:

• The dripping or dropping color randomly. This technique has the artist Jackson Pollock as one of its highest representatives.
• The collage or pasting disjointed or randomly chosen images to create a composition.
• The grattage or use of surface scraping techniques.
• The frottage or rub graphite on paper placed on a textured surface.
• The decal or paint on cardboard and its application on the canvas as if it were a decal.

The irrational

One of the best known methods is critical paranoid method. A technique created by Salvador Dali and by means of which it was a question of accessing the irrational since everything we see is not in things, since everything is "in the depths of our soul." This method was created by Dalí after reading Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams", acquiring from then on the habit of interpreting everything that happened, however trivial it seemed.

Naivety or primitivism

The last of the characteristics of surrealism in painting is that this type of art tried to flee from the artificiality of academicism in Art and looks towards naive or naive art, as well as primitive art. Among the most prominent figures are Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo.

Now that you know the characteristics of surrealism in painting, we are going to discover the most important works. The topics were very varied, being especially relevant and frequent topics related to the sexuality and eroticism, love, freedom, as well as everything that violated social norms. Thus, dream scenes, metamorphoses, scenes of chaos, fantastic settings, magical and mythological characters and unreal situations abound.

Among some of the most outstanding pictorial works of Surrealism we highlight:

• Celebes (1921) by Max Ernst
• The Harlequin Carnival (1924) by Joan Miró
• Lovers (1928) by René Magritte
• Dutch interior (1928) by Joan Miró
• The great masturbator (1929) by Salvador Dalí
• This is not a pipe (1929) by René Magritte
• Seated bather (1930) by Pablo Picasso
• The Persistence of Memory (1931) by Salvador Dalí
• Observatory Hour - The Lovers (1934) by Man Ray
• Autobiography of an embryo (1934) by Eileen Agar
• What the water brought me (1938) by Frida Kahlo
• Still and always (1942) by Yves Tanguy
• Creation of birds (1957) by Remedios Varo
• Son of man (1964) by René Magritte

Image: The Great Masturbator, by Dalí

If you want to read more articles similar to Characteristics of surrealism in painting, we recommend that you enter our category of Story.

• Dempsey, A. (2019). Surrealism, essentials of Art. Blume.
• Breton, André and Eluar, Paul (2015). Abbreviated Dictionary of Surrealism. Madrid: Siruela.
• Combalia, Victoria (2016). Muses, patrons and lovers: Women around surrealism. Barcelona: Elba
• Breton, André (2014). Manifests of surrealism. Argonaut.
• VVAA, (2012). Surrealism in Spain. Susaeta.