The word Surrealism first appeared in 1917 by the writer Guillaume Apollinaire in Paris. It was used to describe the artistic innovation of Jean Cocteau’s ballet Parade (costume designed by Pablo Picasso) and also his own play Les Mamelles de Tiresias (The Breasts of Tiresias) The word was to describe the elements that were “truth beyond realism”. Then in 1924 Andre Breton adopted the word in “The Manifesto of Surrealism” which he founded and published.

The Surrealist group was formed in Paris in Oct. of 1924, among them were Ernst, Miro and Masson.
Deeply affected by the tragedies and turmoil of World War I, the artists were looking for an escape as well as a reform of the existing art world. Freud also exerted a strong influence: to tap the creative and imaginative mind in the unconscious.

Yves Tanguy: Through Birds Through Fire

 

An early Surrealist historian Maurice Nadeau named it “The Season of Sleeps”
(L’Epoquedes Sommeils) The surrealist artists were interested in the dreams, trances, hallucinations and altered states as described in Freud’s text “The Interpretation of Dreams and Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious”

The group with Andre Breton experimented with hypnosis and automatic writing, words and sketches were made unconsciously. The early surrealist paintings
had been referred to as oneiric (dreamlike). Unconscious thoughts were often expressed in symbols.

Rene Magritte: Black Magic    Buy From Art.com

Pablo Picasso was never a member of the Surrealist group officially, but he was represented in the exhibition of Surrealist paintings at the Galerie Pierre (Paris) in 1925 organized by the Surrealist group.
Picasso’s surrealist period started around 1925. (See The Three Dancers, 1925) Over the next ten years Picasso contributed and influenced this movement.

The interpretation of a surrealist painting is more subjective and personal due to its unconscious content. By knowing the artists we can gain insight to the personal elements in the paintings. Little is known of the artists Miro and Magritte, and thus interpretations of their paintings proved to be difficult.
However, the universal side of a surrealist painting can best be summed up by Dali, “the symbolic language of the subconscious is truly an universal language, it does not depend on education or culture or intelligence…”

Claude Cahun: Claude Cahun And Marcel Moore

 

In Claude Cahun’s photographic self-portrait “Claude Cahun And Marcel Moore” (Illustration in Aveux non avenues 1929-1930), she wrote,”Under this mask another mask. I shall never finish stripping away all these faces. And underneath all these masks, there is no ‘real’ identity.”

Dorothea Tanning: Birthday

Dorothea Tanning on her 30th birthday painted her self-portrait “Birthday” in 1942.
Her fascination of the endless openings of doors depicts a surrealist’s image of the labyrinth, the ‘rooms’ of the unconscious mind. The winged creature in front of her is a nocturnal animal called a Lemur from Madagascar, usually associated with the spirits of the dead and the night. The theatrical purple jacket and the human-shaped roots skirt express the conflict and contrast of nature and culture.

Surrealism was one of the most avant garde movements of the 20th Century art world.
The artists dared to cross the boundary of the consciousness into the unknown of the mind, and thus influencing the art world even until today.