Kubrick 101
Thornhill
of Surrealism. It's a good beginner's course for all Kubrickophiles,
and a good refresher for others in the "graduate" department, the
sharp-eyed ref to an SK film in the article notwithstanding.
I've pasted it below, but the links on the site are good, also.
"Enjoy!"
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2061761
Thornhill
culturebox
Ceci N'est Pas Surrealism
Even if you don't know Surrealism, it knows you.
By Carol Kino
Posted Tuesday, February 19, 2002, at 11:02 AM PT
Since September, Surrealist exhibitions seem to be cropping up
everywhere: in big surveys in London, New York, San Francisco, and
soon, Paris, and in countless smaller gallery shows. Perhaps you feel
that life in those and other cities has grown surreal enough already.
But there's a major difference between the little-s and big-S
surrealisms: Our everyday use of the term shows how much we owe to the
artistic movement of the same name, but it also glosses over its aims
and accomplishments. If nothing else, the current explosion of
historical Surrealism may help clarify the matter.
Even those who know something about Surrealism (the movement) often
get it somewhat muddled. Because the best-known Surrealists are
Salvador Dalí (he of the melting watches) and René Magritte (famed for
"Ceci n'est pas une pipe" and men in bowler hats), many believe today
that their goal was to concoct wacky, fantastical imagery. Au
contraire. Like many early 20th-century art movements, Surrealism
aimed to revolutionize life and art both—in this case, by
accessing the subconscious and recording the results.
Guillaume Apollinaire coined the term "surrealism" in 1917 to describe
a spontaneous verbal creation—one that was beyond, or "sur,"
reality. In the next few years, several creative types vied to expand
the term into a full-fledged movement that would incarnate the
Zeitgeist. But the one who won out was André Breton, a minor poet and
surgeon who published his first "Manifesto of Surrealism" in 1924. In
it, Breton denounced "the reign of logic" and applauded Picasso and
Freud (whose work at that stage was barely known in France). He gave
Surrealism a historical pedigree, which included the Marquis de Sade,
Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, and Arthur Rimbaud. He also
delineated the many methods he and his friends had used to expand
their minds, such as falling into a hypnotic trance or practicing
automatic writing (made by penning whatever words came into their
heads). Breton's own automatic writing, some of which he included,
drew on other flotsam and jetsam of the times, such as advertising
slogans and the ravings of shell-shocked soldiers that he'd treated at
a sanatorium during the Great War.
In fact, Surrealism, together with its precursor, Dada, is generally
regarded as a reaction to the climate of despair that surrounded World
War I, when it seemed as though Europe's social and technological
advances had culminated in nothing greater than its own
self-destruction. With Dada, which began in New York and Zurich,
artists protested with "actions" and other activities designed to
disrupt the status quo (like Marcel Duchamp's classic
gambit—displaying a urinal as art). Surrealism, which began in
Paris, took this radical impulse in a more positive and creative
direction.
Surrealism was more of a religion or philosophy than an artistic
style. Its artists—including Dalí, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, and
the poets Jacques Prévert and Paul Eluard, among others—valued
any technique that would allow them to make work automatically, the
better to freely associate and thereby reach into the collective
unconscious. Collage was a favored method. So was Exquisite Corpse,
derived from a party game: One person would begin a drawing or a
sentence, cover it, and pass it on to others to be continued and
completed. They also developed many other automatic methods, like
decalcomania, in which watercolor was pressed between two pieces of
paper to make a Rorschach-like blot, and frottage, a pencil-on-paper
rubbing of an object to which one felt attracted.
The sexualized nature of some of this terminology was no accident, for
the Surrealists were notably active on that front, too. In their
lexicon, desire, the open relationship, the chance encounter, and the
ménage à trois (or more) loom large, often as an avenue to
self-revelation. (Breton's book Nadja, for instance, which documents
an intense affair, begins with the words "Who am I?") What's curious,
though, is that these relationships were the opposite of casual:
Desire was frequently accompanied by love, which often led to
marriage. And in many cases, these unions lasted for years, albeit in
a somewhat untraditional fashion.
But perhaps the most alluring aspect of Surrealism was that it was
open to all—so long as Breton, its rather autocratic leader,
approved. Poets and booksellers made collages; photographers made
paintings; painters and sculptors made films and played around with
word games. Perhaps because of Breton's medical background, the
movement also had a quasi-scientific bent: Its first office was called
"The Central Bureau of Surrealist Research," to which the public was
invited to voice their views and find out more. They even passed out
advertising fliers that bore slogans like "Parents! Tell your children
your dreams" and "If you love love, you'll love Surrealism." By the
1930s, Surrealism had spread throughout most of Europe, with a
particularly active chapter in Prague. In the 1940s, after World War
II began, many of its adherents decamped for America and Mexico, where
the movement continued to thrive until Breton's death in Paris in
1966.
Art professionals are becoming hot on Surrealism because this
extraordinarily long-running movement can now be seen as part of
20th-century art history—and also, perhaps, because it was so
all-pervasive that it has never quite gotten its due. Surrealism, we
now realize, prefigured Abstract Expressionism, 1960s Happenings,
1970s performance art—just about everything, in short, from
Jackson Pollock's drip paintings to the 1980s
porn-star-turned-performance-artist Annie Sprinkle. Many of the young
British artists included in Charles Saatchi's "Sensation" show are
clearly reworking Surrealist concerns. Even the ineffectual, so-called
"political" art that we saw too much of in the early 1990s has a
Surrealist precedent: Before the war, many of Breton's followers
protested fascism with shows, leaflets, and "actions" designed to
awaken Europe to the enemy within.
Yet the truly fascinating thing about Surrealism is that American
cultural life as we know it today would not be possible without it.
Most of our visual culture, including music videos, television, and
advertising, remains permeated by its typically disjunctive imagery,
its knee-jerk desire to shock, and its fixation upon sexuality and the
subconscious. Tabloid front pages, with their dummied-up composite
photographs, frequently resemble Surrealist collages. Movies, too, owe
much to the movement: The orgy scene in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide
Shut recalls a famous Surrealist costume party, to which guests came
naked from chest to thigh, as well as the elaborate masks concocted by
Argentinian Surrealist Leonor Fini (also said to have inspired Pauline
Réage's Story of O). And at the Metropolitan Museum show, I was
astonished to see a painting by the Spanish artist Oscar Dominguez
that depicted a woman caught in an "electrosexual" sewing machine;
it's horribly reminiscent of the girl-in-a-meat-grinder idea that
graced that notorious Hustler magazine cover.
The Surrealists helped to popularize Freud: Our love of therapy,
self-knowledge, personal autonomy, and the child within probably could
not have advanced so far without them. They also helped promote what
used to be called "exploring my sexuality." At times, reading movement
histories, it's easy to believe that the story is set in 1970s-era San
Francisco. "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" is a
semi-Surrealist statement. So, perhaps, is the bumper sticker that
enjoins us to "challenge authority" and the mandate "go with the
flow." They're also responsible for popularizing the game Truth or
Consequences.
What's even more surprising is that the Surrealists may well be
responsible for the most purportedly rational aspect of the modern
world: our obsession with polls. Starting in 1928, they began holding
round-table discussions, sending each other surveys, filling out
questionnaires, and otherwise probing each other's opinions on
subjects like love, sexuality, the chance encounter, and the
striptease. They even discussed impotence, multiple partners,
"clitoral" versus "vaginal" orgasms, and how they felt about women who
faked them. (Because these discussions were open only to men, perhaps
they weren't so revolutionary after all.) This happened nearly 10
years before statisticians like George Gallup began to quantify
public-opinion gathering as a science and nearly three decades before
Masters and Johnson started their grand study of human sexual
relations.
Of course, in recent months, we have come to value the common good
over individualism and are perhaps more bent on rediscovering humanist
values rather than challenging what's left of the status quo.
Curiously enough, however, Breton foretold this, too. In 1960, he
reflected: "The sickness that the world exhibits today differs from
the one exhibited in the 1920s. ... In France, for example, the mind
was threatened back then with coagulation, whereas today it's
threatened with dissolution. ... It's perfectly obvious that such a
situation calls for different reactions from today's youth."
Click on the image below for a short tour of Surrealist art. All works
come from the Metropolitan Museum's version of "Surrealism: Desire
Unbound" unless otherwise stated.
Bob K
> Get "a leg up" with this fine thumbnail history of the art and culture
> of Surrealism. It's a good beginner's course for all Kubrickophiles,
> and a good refresher for others in the "graduate" department, the
> sharp-eyed ref to an SK film in the article notwithstanding.
>
>
Thornhill
I love the kissing figures wrapped in drop-cloths! They could easily
be posed in front of a large ornate mirror. Thousand yard stares not
needed here with the "zero yard" stare taking its place. After all,
what is the difference?
I think I'll pass on the NYC show however. After all, what is more
s(S)urreal than a 50 foot deep smoldering hole in the ground with an
observation platform perched above for the curious/reverent. More
than enough fodder for reflection (Freudian and otherwise).
Bob
Thornhill
> everywhere: in big surveys in London, New York, San Francisco, and
> soon, Paris, and in countless smaller gallery shows. Perhaps you feel
> that life in those and other cities has grown surreal enough already.
And, deeper:
>In fact, Surrealism, together with its precursor, Dada, is generally
>regarded as a reaction to the climate of despair that surrounded
World
>War I, when it seemed as though Europe's social and technological
>advances had culminated in nothing greater than its own
>self-destruction.
Could this Surrealist "explosion" itself have been, to a moderate
degree, a result of the 'cognitive dissonance' produced by the events
of Sept. 11 in America? These gallery shows seem something like a
mirror-image....but one spied in a "fun house" glass.
And, what might the 'next phase' be?
Thornhill
Winston Castro
wrote:
>Could this Surrealist "explosion" itself have been, to a moderate
>degree, a result of the 'cognitive dissonance' produced by the events
>of Sept. 11 in America? These gallery shows seem something like a
>mirror-image....but one spied in a "fun house" glass.
>
>And, what might the 'next phase' be?
>
Interesting. Yes the events of sept. 11th were certainly surreal
enough. (They can't attack the war room!)
Seeing two giant passenger jets "melt" into NYC's biggest
skyscrapers and produce Hollywood style fireballs in the process was
much to bear. Then seeing them collapse one at a time, like a 'house
of cards,' was nothing if not surreal. Yes, they knocked NYC's two
front teeth out that day.
My brother's apt. is a 15-minute walk from the towers and he has
not walked down there once yet to witness any of the wreckage. Of
course he is the kind of guy that turns his head in the other
direction as he passes a traffic accident. He refuses to cave into
morbid curiosity under any circumstance. But knowing my gruesome and
carnal nature, I'd be on top of the observation tower with popcorn,
digital video camera, and binoculars in hand.