Soft construction with boiled beans analysis

ART HISTORY 132

Surrealism

Surrealism
(c. 1925-45)

definition: Breton’s First Manifesto of Surrealism (1924)
“Surrealism rests in the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association neglected heretofore; in the omnipotence of the dream”
definition: Breton’s Second Manifesto of Surrealism (1930)
“… a certain state of mind from which life and death, the real and the imaginary, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, height and depth, are no longer perceived as contradictory”
André Breton
(1896-1966)

biography: petit-bourgeoisie
studied medicine and later psychiatry
met Freud in Vienna (1921)
WWI: served in neurological ward
attempted to use Freudian methods to psychoanalyze his patients
wartime meetings w/ Apollinaire
joined Paris Dada group (1916)
major periodicals:
La Révolution surréaliste (1924-30)
Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution (1930-33)
process: “pure psychic automatism”
high degree of immediate absurdity
“a monologue poured out as rapidly as possible, over which the subject's critical faculty has no control”
“The dictation of thought, in the absence of all control by reason, excluding any aesthetic or moral preoccupation”
Surrealism

context: Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)
Surrealists preoccupied w/ F’s methods of investigation
dreams:
“wish fulfillment”  attempts by unconscious to resolve a conflict, whether something recent or something from the recesses of the past
unconscious must distort and warp meaning of its information to make it through censorship of preconscious
images in dreams are often not what appear to be and need deeper interpretation if they are to inform on structures of unconscious
“phenomenon of condensation”  one symbol or image may have multiple meanings
Max Ernst
(1891-1976)

biography:
born near Cologne
son of amateur painter & teacher of deaf
training: self-taught while studying philosophy and psychiatry @ University of Bonn (1909-1914)
exhibited at first German Autumn Salon in 1913
in 1914, became acquainted w/ Arp and they began lifelong friendship
WWI: drafted into German military (1916 )
after war, settled in Cologne
founded Cologne Dada group w/ Arp
Dada:
exhibition of 1920 in Cologne closed by police on grounds of obscenity
Ernst exhibited w/ Paris Dada group and moved to Paris in 1922
leaves behind wife and son
enters illegally
settles into ménage à trois w/ Paul Éluard and wife, Gala, who eventually married Salvador Dalí in 1929
Ernst

Oedipus Rex (1922)
subject: Freudian
loving & hostile wishes children experience towards parents at height of phallic phase
theme: sadism
style: illusionistic
perspective: linear & aerial
scale: disjointed
architecture: dislocated
Ernst

Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale (1924)
theme: Freudian
subject: childhood fears & anxiety produced by dreams
technique: tromp l’oeil
scale: intimate
aesthetic: illusionistic
perspective: linear & aerial
Salvador Dalí
(1904-89)

biography: son of prosperous notary
training: Academy of Fine Arts (Madrid)
read Freud w/ enthusiasm
expelled for indiscipline (1923)
met Gala Eluard when she visited him w/ her husband, poet Paul Eluard (1929)
became Dali's lover, muse, business manager, and chief inspiration
WWII: clashed w/ Surrealists who were predominantly Marxist
fascination for Hitler
relations w/ Surrealist group became increasingly strained after 1934
break finally came when D declared support for Franco in 1939
Dali and Gala escaped from Europe, spending 1940-48 in the United States
Breton gave him nickname  Avida Dollars (anagram of his name) in 1940
DALI’s The Persistence of Memory
(1931)

Dalí

Premonition of Civil War (1936)
alternative title: “Soft Construction w/ Boiled Beans”
method: “paranoiac-critical”
aesthetic: illusionistic
narrative: allegorical
civil war  “delirium of auto-strangulation”
break w/ Surrealists came when Dali supported Spanish dictator, Franco, in 1936
figure: grotesque
dismembered & contorted
ecstatic grimace
petrifying fingers & toes
landscape: lifeless
(Left) Dalí’s Surrealist Premonition of Civil War (1936)
vs.
(right) Goya’s Romantic Saturn Devouring His Son (c. 1815)

Dalí

Crucifixion (1954)
relate to Renaissance:
figure along CVA
aerial & linear perspective
naturalistic drapery, shadows, musculature
variance from Renaissance
floating forms
misplaced nails & absence of wounds
figures’ scale reversed
viewer deprived of C’s human emotion
Rene Magritte
(1898-1967)

nationality: Belgian
biography: mother committed suicide
training: Académie Royale des Beaux Arts in Brussels (1916-18)
style: illusionistic; deliberate literalism
exhibition history:
first exhibition in Brussels in 1927; critics heaped abuse
depressed by failure, moved to Paris where he became friends w/ Breton
aim: to challenge pre-conditioned perceptions of reality
subject: “pre-consciousness”
state before /during waking up
did not draw on hallucinations, dreams, occult phenomena, etc.
method: disjunction between context, size, or juxtaposition of object
Magritte’s Surrealist False Mirror (1926)

Magritte’s Surrealist Lovers (1928)

Magritte’s Surrealist The Treachery of Images (1929)

Joan Miró
(1893-1983)

biography: Catalan
remained in Paris from 1936 to 1941
returned to Barcelona
moved to NYC after WWII
relation to Surrealism:
realm of dreams and fantasy
images evoke subconscious recognition gained through automatism
forms: schematized & whimsical
fanciful juxtapositions
human, animal & vegetation
iconography: myriad sources
Romanesque frescoes  flatness
ceramics  creatures
prehistoric cave paintings (Altamira)
Miro’s Surrealist Carnival of the Harlequin (1925)

Detail from MIRO’s Surrealist Carnival of Harlequin (1925)
vs.
detail from MATISSE’s Fauvist Harmony in Red (1910)

Miró

Painting (1933)
aim: unconscious mind
technique: “automatism”
freely drawing series of lines w/out considering what they might be or become
absence of all control exercised by the reason
outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations
consciously reworked
forms: abstract; weightless
spatial order: flattened
IMAGE INDEX

Slide 2: ERNST, Max. A Friends’ Reunion (1922), Oil on canvas, 130 x 195 cm, Museum Ludwig, Köln, Ger­many.
Slide 3: Image and photograph of Andre Breton.
Slide 4: Photograph of Sigmund FREUD.
Slide 5: Photograph of Max ERNST.
Slide 6: ERNST, Max. Oedipus Rex (1922), Oil on canvas, 93 x 102 cm., Private collection, Paris.
Slide 7: ERNST, Max. Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale (1924), Oilon wood with wood construction, 2’ 3 ½” x 1’ 10 ½” x 4 ½”, Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Slide 8: MAN RAY. Salvador Dali (1929), photograph.
Slide 9: DALI, Salvador. The Persistence of Memory (1931), Oil on canvas, 9 1/2” x 13”, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.
IMAGE INDEX

Slide 10: DALÍ, Salvador. Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: Premonition of Civil War (1936), Oil on canvas, 39 ¾ x 39 in., Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Slide 11: (Left) Dalí’s Surrealist Premonition of Civil War (1936); and (right) Goya’s Romantic Saturn Devouring His Son (c. 1815)
Slide 12: DALI. Crucifixion ('Hypercubic Body') (1954), Oil on canvas, 194.5 x 124 cm., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Slide 13: Photograph of René MAGRITTE.
Slide 14: MAGRITTE, René. The False Mirror (1926).
Slide 15: MAGRITTE, René. The Lovers (1928), Oil on canvas, 21 3/8 x 28 7/8 in., Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.
Slide 16: MAGRITTE. The Treachery of Images (1929), Oil on canvas, 23 1/2” x 37”, Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
IMAGE INDEX

Slide 17: MIRO, Joan. Self-Portrait.
Slide 18: MIRO. Carnival of Harlequin (1925), Oil on canvas, 66 x 93 cm, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y.
Slide 19: (Left) Detail from MIRO’s Carnival of Harlequin (1925); and (right) detail from MATISSE’s Harmony in Red (1910).
Slide 20: MIRO. Painting (1933), Oil on canvas, 4’ 3 ¼” x 5’ 3 ½”, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT.