What is surrealism and why it is important to us?
stormy0...@my-dejanews.com
What is surrealism and why it is so taken up by artists of the period like
Picasso? Is the expression of unconsciousness is so important to us? In what
way it is important?
Cheers and regards.
Reality is based on prejudice.
Get ahead or get out.
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A.A. Raimes
dejanews.com writes
>Hello,
>
>What is surrealism and why it is so taken up by artists of the period like
>Picasso? Is the expression of unconsciousness is so important to us? In what
>way it is important?
Hello to you ! Essay due by any chance ? Hope this helps.
Surrealism was originally fed on poetry taking as it's leader the French
poet Andre Breton. Like many artistic movements at that time it was
based on a reaction to the world wars and the quest for absolute freedom
fed on Philosophy and Freud. Visual artists were first invited into the
group in 1921 starting Max Ernst, followed by Henri Rousseau, Joan Miro,
Salvador Dali, Rene Margueritte and the photographer Man Ray amongst
many others. It became one of the most organised and united groups of
the age and that, I think, is why so many were attracted to it.
Surrealism replaced Cubism as the spearhead of the new - the opening up
of super reality of fantasy, dream and imagination. They adopted Dada's
game of using words in random and adopted the dream sequences of Freud
whereby sex became the subject matter.
Picasso, however, remained an admired outsider who they acclaimed for
his vivid use of imagination. That is not to say he did not show the
same interest in the unconscious that most of the artists did at that
time but just that he did not become a Surrealist. Please don't get
confused between a surrealist style and being a Surrealist which was a
very distinct and historical movement in the arts.
To answer your question about why the unconscious is important I will,
if you don't mind, answer as an artist. The unconscious stores the
mystery and magic that the world around us represses. For an artist to
be able to draw on the unconscious represents freedom from this world.
Art then becomes similar to meditation where the outside world is
transcended in order to draw on the inner - the dependency being on
spontaneity and autonomy - the driving forces of twentieth century art.
Regards.
Alison A Raimes
ali...@raimes.demon.co.uk
http://www.raimes.demon.co.uk
barrett john erickson
stormy0...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
<79jga8$db5$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>Hello,
>
>What is surrealism and why it is so taken up by artists of the period like
>Picasso? Is the expression of unconsciousness is so important to us? In
what
>way it is important?
>
since "surrealism" began as an investigation into the creative process (by a
group of poets) it's not difficult to understand why it attracted artists of
all media. but it's also important to understand that, at its center,
"surrealism" is not about art.
nor is it about the expression of the "unconscious" -- although it's easy
enough to see how this misconception evolved, since the early surrealists
believed Freud's (utilitarian and metaphorical) segmentation of cognition
and the positioning of the imagination in the "unconscious" (or
"subconscious").
concisely put, the surrealist project is to integrate the liberated
imagination into daily living.
and one need only recognize the extent to which the imagination remains
under direct attack by the new puritans, is subverted and mutilated by the
commodity marketplace, and abandoned by somnambulating "consumers" to
understand its current importance. "surrealism" is (has always been) a
project which demands a "revolution of the mind" against all that constricts
it -- governments, corporations, religions, and especially our own
complicities.
artists correctly recognize that this is a revolutionary project which
places the creative process at the center of living.
[please note that i use the present tense because this project lives today
in surrealists around the world who continue to investigate and explore this
potential for "surreality" -- that is, reality _enhanced_ by the liberated
imagination.]
perhaps not so surprisingly, science has become a tardy and unwitting ally
in this revolution (i quote from a previous text):
The poetry to be found in the most imaginative scientific
research of our day, when extended, converges on paths
long walked by Surrealists.
(and from another:)
Science is in the midst of a Kuhn style "paradigm shift"
and if there's no way to predict the next stability, we _can_ say
it is almost certain to be "more surrealist" in its integration of
investigations of self-organizing systems, dissipative
structures, emergent cognition, chaos, "quantum reality",
Artificial Intelligence, neural networks, etc.
through such investigations, i've come to view the imagination as our most
evolved "sense" -- a "sense" of the poetic dimension (the embeddedness and
latent potential) from which we _enact_ reality.
it may be science which finally confirms the fundamental importance of the
surrealist project.
--
bar...@MagneticFields.org
http://www.MagneticFields.org/
"Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of
the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and
future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be
perceived as contradictions."
...André Breton
Raphael Alvarenga
Positivism, and above all rational thinking!
Human beings have a double essence, we can say (with Edgar Morin) it is
poetic/prosaic. The world gets more and more prosaic (spetially after
industrial rev.), Surrealism (like German Romantism before it) enfasised the
poetic side of humans, of the world. It was a poetic revolution! They aimed
not to change the world, but to change life! Poetry is not to be confined in
the poem, or in literature, poetry is everywhere; that was the main message
of Surrealism. Their poems or peintures for exemple had a dreamlike
character, nothing rational, metrical or technical. Their biggest mistake
was to try to poetise politics; when you do that poetry is no longer poetry,
since it loses freedom.
We are in need of another poetical movement today; the world is just too
prosaic....
Cheers,
R.A.
barrett john erickson
points i'd like to explore to bit more depth if he's willing:
Raphael Alvarenga wrote in message <79pvnk$v5u$1...@news0.skynet.be>...
>[...]
>Human beings have a double essence, we can say (with Edgar Morin) it is
>poetic/prosaic.
personally, i think "essence" is as uninteresting as "truth".
we act, then we analyze our actions, then we make conclusions about who/what
we are. "essence" is a product of our reflexive consciousness. we create
our "essence" as an description of our living (as we create all other
"essences" as a description of our experience of them). if we are split, as
you imply, it is the result of a failure of imagination -- a failure to
integrate all aspects of our reality-as-experienced.
reality -- living -- is what interests me.
>The world gets more and more prosaic (spetially after
>industrial rev.), Surrealism (like German Romantism before it) enfasised
the
>poetic side of humans, of the world. It was a poetic revolution! They aimed
>not to change the world, but to change life! Poetry is not to be confined
in
>the poem, or in literature, poetry is everywhere; that was the main message
>of Surrealism.
i can certainly agree with your basic statement here. but again, i think it
may be too narrow to speak of emphasizing the poetic (as opposed to the
prosaic). i would say the project was always to fully integrate the poetic
into daily living, not at the expense of the prosaic, but to enhance reality
by infusing the prosaic with poetic awareness -- or more accurately enacting
the poetic dimension which is already latent in the prosaic.
>Their poems or peintures for exemple had a dreamlike
>character, nothing rational, metrical or technical. Their biggest mistake
>was to try to poetise politics; when you do that poetry is no longer
poetry,
>since it loses freedom.
the flirtation with _politcal parties_ was certainly the greatest mistake of
the first generation surrealists. its involvement in the necessary daily
struggles against the existing order were compromised.
for my view of politics take the "the poverty of political discourse" link
from:
http://www.MagneticFields.org/index2.html
>We are in need of another poetical movement today; the world is just too
>prosaic....
it is certainly true that our sense of the marvelous has been anesthetized
and abused by parents, teachers, politicians, preachers, bosses, CEO's,
stockbrokers, the pervasive model of "commodities" in the "competitive
marketplace", and the dangerously subtle seductions to surrender which
saturate the work of post-modern theorists and artists.
but we don't need "another poetical movement" -- "another" surrealist
movement. we need the surrealists and "fellow travelers" around the world
today to to accept their shared responsibility for the "poverty of everyday
life" and declare war against the ubiquitous forces of banality.
-- barrett
Raphael Alvarenga
>while i fully agree with the spirit of Raphael's post, there are a few
>points i'd like to explore to bit more depth if he's willing:
I'm always willing a good discussion!
>Raphael Alvarenga wrote:
>>[...]
>>Human beings have a double essence, we can say (with Edgar Morin) it is
>>poetic/prosaic.
>
>personally, i think "essence" is as uninteresting as "truth".
Actually, I think both are more interesting than the so called "human
nature"...
>we act, then we analyze our actions, then we make conclusions about
who/what
>we are. "essence" is a product of our reflexive consciousness. we create
>our "essence" as an description of our living (as we create all other
>"essences" as a description of our experience of them). if we are split,
as
>you imply, it is the result of a failure of imagination -- a failure to
>integrate all aspects of our reality-as-experienced.
I don't imply we're split, I'm just saying our 'soul' (or whatever you want
to call it) oscilates between two extrems (two realities as you may want to
call it); those realities have received many names thoughout history, some
exemples are:
*Apollo/Dionisius (greeks)
*Yin/Yang (taoists)
*Atma/Braman (hindoists)
*Animus/Anima (psychoanalysis)
*Introvertion/Extravertion (Jung)
*In-sistence/Ek-sistence; Inauthentic/Authentic life (Heidegger)
*Narcisus/Goldmund (Hesse)
*Chicken/Eagle (J. Aggrey)
*dia-bolic/sym-bolic (L. Boff)
*Homo Sapiens Demens; prosaic/poetic (E. Morin)
And many other names to express this double character of humans...
>reality -- living -- is what interests me.
>
>>The world gets more and more prosaic (spetially after
>>industrial rev.), Surrealism (like German Romantism before it) enfasised
>the
>>poetic side of humans, of the world. It was a poetic revolution! They
aimed
>>not to change the world, but to change life! Poetry is not to be confined
>in
>>the poem, or in literature, poetry is everywhere; that was the main
message
>>of Surrealism.
>
>i can certainly agree with your basic statement here. but again, i think
it
>may be too narrow to speak of emphasizing the poetic (as opposed to the
>prosaic). i would say the project was always to fully integrate the poetic
>into daily living, not at the expense of the prosaic, but to enhance
reality
>by infusing the prosaic with poetic awareness -- or more accurately
enacting
>the poetic dimension which is already latent in the prosaic.
I agree with what you're saying; the thing is: "to emphasize the poetic to
achieve a balance between the two realities"... that's the idea.
>>Their poems or peintures for exemple had a dreamlike
>>character, nothing rational, metrical or technical. Their biggest mistake
>>was to try to poetise politics; when you do that poetry is no longer
>poetry,
>>since it loses freedom.
>
>
>the flirtation with _politcal parties_ was certainly the greatest mistake
of
>the first generation surrealists. its involvement in the necessary daily
>struggles against the existing order were compromised.
True...
>for my view of politics take the "the poverty of political discourse" link
>from:
>http://www.MagneticFields.org/index2.html
>>We are in need of another poetical movement today; the world is just too
>>prosaic....
>
>it is certainly true that our sense of the marvelous has been anesthetized
>and abused by parents, teachers, politicians, preachers, bosses, CEO's,
>stockbrokers, the pervasive model of "commodities" in the "competitive
>marketplace", and the dangerously subtle seductions to surrender which
>saturate the work of post-modern theorists and artists.
>
>but we don't need "another poetical movement" -- "another" surrealist
>movement. we need the surrealists and "fellow travelers" around the world
>today to to accept their shared responsibility for the "poverty of everyday
>life" and declare war against the ubiquitous forces of banality.
I didn't say we need another surrealist or romantic movement... We need
indeed to reevaluate our values, beliefs, certainties, etc., because the way
it is... it's just too far away from being close to good...
The problem in our world today is not poverty; it's exactely the contrary:
the biggest problem today is richness... our world is way too rich, in many
ways, it's a problem that comes from an hiper-saturation: too much
information, too much production, too much consumation, too much polution,
too much culture, too many people, etc...