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CELEBRATING A CENTURY OF SURREALISM
In the summer of 1924, French poet André Breton published his famed “Manifeste du Surréalisme” and visual artists soon answered the call that codified the modernist movement that remains influential today.
The Surrealism movement conjures an array of images including Salvador Dalí’s melting clocks and high tea with the minotaur of Leonora Carrington’s dreams. Chance was key to the Surrealists, since they believed it probed mysteries of human subconscious. Surrealism was also influenced by Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis and its imagery was often characterized by unsettling subject matter. This aligns well with entropy since we live in a world where everything ages, deteriorates and breaks down. Like it or not.
Although anchored in the human psyche, Surrealism was born in the political and moral wreckage of World War I. Its acolytes denounced fascism, colonialism and authoritarianism.
By 1925, two rival Surrealist groups formed, led by Yvan Goll and André Breton. Breton's group grew to include writers and artists including Paul Éluard Benjamin Peret, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, Juan Miro, Marcel Duchamp and Yves Tanguy. Composers Erik Satie, Edgard Varese and Andre Souris were influenced by Surrealism. Varese’s work Arcana was drawn from a dream sequence and Souris had a long relationship with Rene Magritte. Surrealist principles are common in the music composed by Pierre Boulez, Gyorgy Ligeti, Thomas Ades and Olivier Messiaen.
Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Dada, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism and Post Modernism movements have sequentially enjoyed the spotlight during the past 100 years. Abstract Expressionism emerged in post-World War II New York and incorporated the Surrealist action without conscious thought or intention, characterized by brash, chaotic strokes and bold flings of color.
Surrealism and Cubism, owing to the phenomenon of imprecise time and space, have always been entangled, beyond concrete awareness, with the bizarre quantum realm – which began perplexing physicists attempting the analyze the now famous double slit experiment a century ago too.