Giraffe, Julia Sweda

The Burning Giraffe, Salvador Dali, 1936-37

SurrealismSurrealism is a cultural, artistic, and

intellectual movement oriented toward the liberation of the mind

by emphasizing the critical and imaginative faculties of the "unconscious mind" and the

attainment of a state different from, "more than", and ultimately "truer"

than everyday reality: the "sur-real", or "more than real".

Paris, 1924-1946Between World WarsCafé LifeArtists & Writers From Around the World,Concentrated in One Place

The Surrealists

International Movement, Founded in Paris * Included Poets, Painters & Musicians, many veterans & refugees

from WWIThe surrealist group in Paris, circa 1930. From left to right: Tristan

Tzara, Paul Éluard, Andre Breton, Hans Arp, Salvador Dali, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, Rene Crevel, Man Ray.

World War I: 1914-1918

Trench Warfare

First Mechanized War

Suicide in the Trenches

I knew a simple soldier boy Who grinned at life in empty joy, Slept soundly through the lonesome dark, And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum, With crumps and lice and lack of rum, He put a bullet through his brain. No one spoke of him again.

“crump” = a large explosive shell or bomb.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

Sneak home and pray you'll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go.

--Siegfried Sassoon

André Breton1896-1966, Poet

*studied psychiatry

*served in neurology ward in WWI

*met Sigmund Freudin 1921

*wrote “Surrealist Manifesto, 1924

]

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

•Founder of psychoanalytic school of psychology•“The Talking Cure”•The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)

Freud’s Iceberg Model of the Human Mind

Imagination The imagination is perhaps on the

point of reasserting itself, of reclaiming its rights. If the depths of our mind contain within it strange

forces capable of augmenting those on the surface, or of waging a

victorious battle against them, there is every reason to seize them--André Breton, “The Surrealist Manifesto,”

1924

Dreams

I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches

so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams.--André

Breton, “The Surrealist Manifesto,” 1924

The Burning Giraffe, Dali, 1936-37

L’ange de foyer, ou Le Triomphe de Surréalisme, Max Ernst, 1937

The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dalì, 1931

Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali 1904-1989

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.--Andre Breton, “The Surrealist Manifesto”

Typewriter is new invention in 1920s, put to great use by Surrealists for automatic writing

Juxtaposition

The image is a pure creation of the mind.It cannot be born from a comparison but from a

juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities. The more the relationship between

the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be--the greater its

emotional power and poetic reality.--Pierre Reverdy

LHOOQ, Marcel Duchamp, 1920

Object, Meret Oppenheim

Object, Meret Oppenheim, 1936

Lobster Telephone, Salvador Dalí, 1936

Lobster Telephone

Carnival of Harlequin, Miro

Carnival of Harlequin, Joan Miró, 1924-1925

Pipe sans mots

The Treachery of Images, Rene Magritte

The Treachery of Images, René Magritte, 1928-29

The Key of Dreams, René Magritte,

1927

Close your eyes, Ben Vautier, 1992

Untitled, Barbara Kruger, 1986

Untitled, Barbara Kruger

Untitled, Barbara Kruger, 1997

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through

sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And floundering like a man in fire or lime.-- Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

-Wilfred Owen

Ideal Mistressby Robert Desnos

• I was delayed that afternoon because I had brushed the teeth of a pretty animal that I'm patiently taming. It's a chameleon. This endearing animal smoked, as usual, some cigarettes, then I left. I met her on the stairs. "I'm mauving," she told me . . . But in vain, memories become sardine! Hardly, hardly a button doodledoos. Fall, fall down! And here the verdict: "The dancer will be executed the following morning while doing a dance step with her gems sacrificed to the heat of her body: The blood of the gems, soldiers!"And what then, the mirror yet! Mistress you black square, and if the clouds all at once forgetmenot, they mill in the ever present eternity.

OppositesIn the dark, the small dog howls my name painfully.Out in the light, big cats whisper her place pleasantly.Inside out dark, small dogs scream his nothingness

uncomfortably.Outside in light, large turtles whisper their everything

comfortably.Inside in darkness, small evils scream my nothingness

awkwardly.Outside in brightness, large gods whisper my everything

comfortably.Inside the dark, small demons scream your faults.

Conditionals

If your heart fails,Then you will get lice.

If sheep were purple,Then the sun won’t rise tomorrow morning.

If the heart protests your will,Then she will smile like she blew all the candles out.

If God is mad at you,Then the pages will read backwards and upside down.

If bees could count,Then people would see your true self.

If rain fell sideways,Then the monkeys would sing in Spanish.

If fishes drowned and people swam,Then everyone would believe the world is flat.