Surrealism

110 History of English Literature - from 1900-2000

1. PAPER NO:110 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE –FROM 1900-2000 Prepared by- Mayuri Pandya

2. Personal Information Name: Mayuri Pandya Roll no :14 Email id:[email protected] Submitted to: Department of English, MKBU. Topic: Surrealism

3. Meaning of Surrealism “a type of 20th-century art and literature in which unusual or impossible things are shown happening”. (Cambridge meaning)  Surrealism, movement in visual art and literature, flourishing in Europe between World Wars I and II. Surrealism grew principally out of the earlier Dada movement, which before World War I produced works of anti-art that deliberately defied reason; but Surrealism’s emphasis was not on negation but on positive expression. The movement represented a reaction against what its members saw as the destruction wrought by the “rationalism” that had guided European culture and politics in the past and that had culminated in the horrors of World War I. According to the major spokesman of the movement, the poet and critic André Breton, who published The Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in “an absolute reality, a surreality.” Drawing heavily on theories adapted from Sigmund Freud, Breton saw the unconscious as the wellspring of the imagination. He defined genius in terms of accessibility to this normally untapped realm, which, he believed, could be attained by poets and painters alike.(Britanica) 

4. Characteristics Dream-like scenes and symbolic images Unexpected, illogical juxtapositions Bizarre assemblages of ordinary objects Automatism and a spirit of spontaneity Games and techniques to create random effects Personal iconography Visual puns  Distorted figures and biomorphic shapes Uninhibited sexuality and taboo subjects Primitive or child-like designs .

5. Two Type of Surrealism 1. Automatism Have you found yourself doodling nonsense while speaking on the phone? That act of making art without thinking is called Automatism. In psychology, ‘automatism’ refers to involuntary actions and processes that are not under the control of the conscious mind–dreaming, breathing, blinking. Automatism played a very important role for Surrealist techniques. Spontaneous (automatic) writing, painting, and drawing; free association of images and words; and collaborative creation though games like the Exquisite Corpse meant to suppress the conscious mind to liberate the subconscious without any further need to investigate meaning.

6. 2.Veristic surrealism Veristic Surrealists were deeply interested in interpreting dreams as channels for unknown feelings and desires. Their artworks did not begin with a preconceived result. Instead, dreams and subconscious associations between images, text and their meanings became a direct source for their artwork. Artists like Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Rene Magritte, Dorothea Tanning allowed the images of their subconscious to be undisturbed so that meaning could be understood through analysis. They linked images between the abstract spiritual realities and the real forms of the world. For them, their paintings were a metaphor to an inner reality.

7. Major surrealist artist Jean Arp Max Ernst  André Masson  René Magritte  Yves Tanguy  Salvador Dalí  Pierre Roy Paul Delvaux  Joan Miró. Women artist Dorothea Tanning Kay Sage  Leonora Carring Oppenheim Eileen Agar  

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9. Influence of Surrealism in Indian Art Surrealism, in contrast to the art movement in Europe, certainly showed influence on Indian visual-arts contemplation since the time immemorial. Iconography in Indian art epitomizes an inimitable panorama of surrealistic metaphors. Indian epics, folklores, ceremonies and the wide selection of different folk arts which proliferate as an incarnate practice, depict the unusual image of the artist’s mind. Over the past few decades, an effort has been made by various distinguished and upcoming artists to track the influence of surrealism in contemporary art. The artists who have created surreal Indian paintings are Sanat Kar, Ganesh Pyne, Shuvaprasanna, Jogen Chowdhury, Partha Pratim Deb, Asit Mondal, Dinanath Pathy, P.R.Narvekar and Dipali Bhattacharya, to name a few.

10. Ganesh Pyre Sanat Kar

11. Surrealism in LITERATURE SURREALISM,  n.  Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express—verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner—the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern. ENCYCLOPEDIA.  Philosophy.  Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life.

12. Famous work and Author André Breton, Le Manifeste du Surréalisme (Manifesto of Surrealism), 1924. Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell ,1873. André Breton, Nadja, 1928. Mary Ann Caws, ed., The Milk Bowl of Feathers, 2018. Leonora Carrington, The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington, 2017.

13. Work CITATION Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Surrealism". Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 Dec. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/art/Surrealism. Accessed 15 April 2022. Craven, Jackie. “Surrealism - The Movement and Artists Who Defied Logic.” ThoughtCo , 19 August 2019, https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-surrealism-183312. Accessed 15 April 2022. Diamond, Jonny. “Your Surrealist Literature Starter Kit ‹ Literary Hub.” Literary Hub , 8 April 2019, https://lithub.com/your-surrealist-literature-starter-kit/. Accessed 15 April 2022. Patial, Neeti. “Historical Origins of Surrealistic Art and its Impacts on Indian Paintings | IndianArtIdeas.” Indian Art Ideas Indian Art Ideas , https://indianartideas.in/blog/indian-art/historical-origins-of-surrealistic-art-and-its-impacts-on-indian-paintings. Accessed 15 April 2022.. SURREALISM | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary.” Cambridge Dictionary , 6 April 2022, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/surrealism. Accessed 15 April 2022. Tanning, Dorothea. “What is Surrealism?” Curated Tastes , 12 April 2020, https://curatedtastes.art/2020/04/12/what-is-surrealism/. Accessed 15 April 2022

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