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Period: to
Surrealism/Avant-Garde 1870-1950
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Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell ,1873
Rimbaud is often considered the father of surrealism . Even though he gave up writing at 21, his novels were highly influential to the surrealist movement . Surrealism is focused on seeing the innermost parts of the mind ... “I must say that one must be a seer, must make oneself a seer” [Rimbaud’s 1871 “Letter of a Seer”]: -
Erik Satie, Gymnopédies, 1888
Satie. was a major figure in early 20th century avant-garde, and a precursor to minimalis, and the theatre of the absurd. Satie was an eccentric who was referred to being a "gymnopedist". Gymnopedies was composted in 1887, and was his most famous composition. Satie referred to himself not as musician but as a "phonometrician", one who measures sounds. -
Sigmund Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, 1899
Freud introduced the importance of the unconscious and dreams to the world. The unconscious desires of sexuality, desires, and violence were influential to the surrealists. -
Giorgio de Chirico, The Red Tower (La tour rouge), 1913
De Chirico focused on irrational perspectives and atmosphere. He stated “every object has two appearances: one, the current one, which we nearly always see and which is seen by people in general; the other, a spectral or metaphysical appearance beheld only by some individuals in moments of clairvoyance and metaphysical abstraction, as in the case of certain bodies concealed by substances impenetrable by sunlight yet discernible, for instance, by x-ray or other powerful artificial means.” -
Leonide Massine, Parade, 1917
Parade is a ballet choreographed by Leonide Massine, with music by Erik Satie and a one-act scenario by Jean Cocteau. with costumes and sets designed by Pablo Picasso which caused Guillaume Apollinaire to coin the term surrealism, -
Freidreich Keissler, Endless House,1920-60
Frederick Kiesler’s Endless House is regarded as one of the most visionary projects of 20th Century architecture. It was a project that spanned almost forty years, developed through sketches, drawings, plans and models between mid-1920’s to the 1960’s but it was never built. -
Man Ray, Gift, c. 1958 (replica of 1921 original)
The American artist Man Ray Emanuel Radnitzky) arrived in Paris in 1921. Within a year, the artist had his first solo show at a Parisian gallery. Among the works he exhibited was one unlisted sculpture: the object, which he called The Gift, was an everyday flat iron with brass tacks glued in a column down its center. -
Yvan Goll and Andre Breton, Surrealist Manifesto's, 1924 and 1929
Four Surrealist Manifestos are known to exist. The first two manifestos, published in October 1924, were written by Yvan Goll and André Breton, the leaders of rivaling Surrealist groups. Breton published his second manifesto for the Surrealists in 1929, and wrote his third manifesto that was not issued during his lifetime. -
Man Ray,Le Violon d’Ingres,1924
Inspired by Neoclassical painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Man Ray was the inventor of photograms in a surrealist photographic style. -
Joan Miro, Carnival of Harlequin (1924-25)
Miró created elaborate, fantastical spaces in his paintings an excellent example of Surrealism in their reliance on dream-like imagery and their use of biomorphism. Biomorphic shapes resemble organic beings whose shapes seem to self-generate, morph, and dance . -
Yves Tanguay, Mama, Papa is Wounded! (1927)
Mama, Papa is Wounded depicts Tanguy's most common subject matter of war. The work is painted in a hyperrealist style with his distinctive limited color palette, both of which create a sense of dream-like reality. Tanguy often found the titles of works while looking through psychiatric case histories for compelling statements by patients. -
Andre Breton, Nadja, 1928
Nadja is a surrealist novel, written by the author of the Surrealist Manifesto. -
Claude Cahun, Que me veux tu? 1929
In Que me veux tu? (What do you want from me?) Claude Cahun similarly used darkroom manipulation to present herself doubled. Cahun’s self-portraits use multiple exposures, costumes and varied strategies of self-presentation to question the nature of individual identity. Her photographs are unusual in the context of Surrealist photography both as self-portraits and as images of a woman made by a woman. -
Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali, Un Chien Andalou (1929)
This film is the most famous surrealist movie, a collaboration between Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali. It involves the infamous eye slicing scene, and hand full of ants. Buñuel explained, that the film was constructed “from a dream image or from their cultural pattern or if, simply, NOTHING, in this film, SYMBOLIZES ANYTHING.” -
Salvador Dalí. The Persistence of Memory. 1931
Arguably, Dali's most famous and recognizable work, The Persistence of Memory, begins with a desolate coastal, landscape. The position of the objects in this painting will be indicated using the analogy of the face of a clock. -
Rene Magritte
René Magritte's hyperrealist works are intellectual, visual puns representing the relationship of space and object. In The Human Condition a canvas sits on an easel before a curtained window and the canvas represents the exact scene outside. The painted image on the easel becomes the scene, representing no difference between the two, becoming a dreamlike situation. -
Jean Arp, Human Concretion, 1933
Jean Arp or Hans Arp was a German-French sculptor, painter, poet, and abstract artist in other media such as torn and pasted paper. -
Salvador Dali, Lobster Telephone, 1936
Objet, Trouve, means found object and takes root from the Dada art movement. It is a form of automatism, and has roots in the objects unconscious recognition. The sculpture pushed and questioned what is to be considered 'low brow" in art appreciation -
Georges Bataille’s On Nietzsche (1937-1945)
The title, “Nietzsche et les Fascistes: Une Réparation.” A reparation. A repair. At the head of the table of contents, it is written in block letters “RÉPARATION À NIETZSCHE.” Reparations to Nietzsche. The volume is illustrated by André Masson’s drawings of headless and groinless figures of Man. -
Dora Maar, Pere Ubu, 1938
Surrealist photographs revealed the strangeness of the world by presenting it in a new way. Dora Maar titled her photograph of a baby armadillo after the anti-hero of Alfred Jarry’s famously transgressive and iconoclastic play Ubu Roi (1896), which was much admired by the Surrealists. -
André Masson, Portrait du poète Heinrich von Kleist, 1939
The artist is best known for his contribution to automatic painting, a Surrealist practice, which embraced spontaneity and the unknown, Masson created vibrant abstract compositions, using bold line and form -
Maya Deren, Meshes of the Afternoon, 1943
A woman is sleeping on a chair, after dropping a flower. Dreams of a hooded figure with the face of a mirror repeat themselves. With motifs that continually repeat, spatial awareness is destroyed.
Deren replicates the mind's repetitive incidents of life, to transcend into profound meaning. -
Leonora Carrington, The Giantess (c1947)
Many of Carrington’s stories and artworks are in response to the male surrealist's view of women while displaying a dream-like presence. “Leonora told me that every piece of writing she ever did was autobiographical,” -
Jean Cocteau,Orpheé (1950)
Poet, novelist, playwright and artist Jean Cocteau was associated with the surrealist movement a long time before it found its way into film. Orphee is one of the best examples of surrealism blending myth of Orpheus and descending into the underworld, while juxtaposing everyday life. -
Salvador Dalí, "Gala Placidia. Galatea of the Spheres," 1952
The painting represents Dali's wife Gala, whom he nicknamed Gradiva, after a mythical heroine with an oval-shaped face, and suntanned skin; and Lionette, “because when she gets angry she roars like the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lion."