Art movement Surrealism

Mysterious objects in paintings are objects that still look the same just in a weird way. René Magritte’s painting "Not to be Reproduced" is an example of a painting with mysterious objects. There are two reflections in a mirror the person and the book. The book's reflection is correct, but the person's reflection is of the back of his head instead of his face.

Rene Magrittes painting "Son of Man" is another example of a surrealist painting with mysterious objects. There is a guy stiff with an apple on his face.

Salvador Dali did not paint dreamlike paintings all the time. He also painted optical illusions. He painted "Apparition of face, and fruit dish on a beach". It has one optical illusion that looks like a fruit dish but could also look like a face and a lady sitting down. There is also a mountain that looks like a dog.

 

From reading this section you now know many interesting facts about surrealism. You also know how surrealist artists changed objects into optical illusions, mysterious objects, and familiar objects that have been oddly changed optical illusions.

Surrealism shared much of the anti-rationalism of Dada, the movement out of which it grew. However, Breton, who was a part of the Dada group, wanted to form a movement in which artists could unite to protest war by accessing subconscious thoughts. The original Parisian Surrealists organized group activities as a reprieve from violent political situations and to address the unease they felt about the world's uncertainties. Surrealists were interested in exposing the complex and repressed inner worlds of sexuality, desire, and violence, and interest in these topics fostered transgressive behavior. Many of the artists underwent psychoanalysis to study and uproot their latent feelings and behaviors as a cure for what they believed to be the constraining and repressed codes and morals of society.

The Surrealists generated creative works that exposed the artists' inner minds in bizarre, symbolic ways in order to uncover anxieties and to treat them analytically through visual means. The Surrealists depicted dream imagery and archetypal symbols derived from their unconsciousness. The collage aesthetic was significant to the Surrealists, as they believed it tapped into the subconscious by creating unlikely juxtapositions using imagery garnered from popular culture. The Surrealists employed collage in every medium including film.

Rise and Decline of Surrealism

Though Surrealism originated in France, strains of it can be identified in art throughout the world. Particularly in the 1930s and 1940s, many artists were swept into its orbit as increasing political upheaval and a second global war encouraged fears that human civilization was in a state of crisis and collapse. The emigration of many Surrealists to the US during WWII spread their ideas further. However, following the war, the group's ideas were challenged by the rise of Existentialism. And in the arts, the Abstract Expressionists usurped their dominance by pioneering new techniques for representing the unconscious. Breton became increasingly interested in revolutionary political activism as the movement's primary goal. The result was the dispersal of the original movement into smaller factions of artists. The Bretonians, such as Robert Matta, believed that art was inherently political. Others, like Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, and Dorothea Tanning, remained in America to separate from Breton. Salvador Dalí, likewise, retreated to Spain, believing in the centrality of the individual in art.

Further Developments:

Abstract Expressionism

In 1936, the Museum of Modern Art in New York staged an exhibition entitled Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, and many American artists were powerfully impressed by it. Some, such as Jackson Pollock, began to experiment with automatism, and with imagery which seemed to derive from the unconscious - experiments which would later lead to his 'drip' paintings. Robert Motherwell, similarly, is said to have been "stuck between the two worlds" of abstraction and automatism.


http://www.theartstory.org/movement-surrealism.htm