what does Surrealist Movement mean?

Question

helping out on a project about an artist on the surrealist movement but need to understand this. plz!!

Answer 1

Surrealism was developed by the 20th-century literary and artistic movement. The surrealist movement of visual art and literature, flourished in Europe between World Wars I and II. Surrealism grew principally out of the earlier Dada movement, which before World War I produced works of anti-art that deliberately defied reason; but Surrealism emphasis was not on negation but on positive expression. The movement represented a reaction against what its members saw as the destruction wrought by the "rationalism" that had guided European culture and politics in the past and had culminated in the horrors of World War I. According to the major spokesman of the movement, the poet and critic André Breton, who published "The Surrealist Manifesto" in 1924, Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely, that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in "an absolute reality, a surreality." Drawing heavily on theories adapted from Sigmund Freud, Breton saw the unconscious as the wellspring of the imagination. He defined genius in terms of accessibility to this normally untapped realm, which, he believed, could be attained by poets and painters alike.

Answer 2

Surrealism is an art movement from the twenties.Surrealist thoughts emerged around 1920, partly as an outgrowth of Dada, with French writer André Breton as its initial principal theorist. In Breton's Surrealist Manifesto of 1924 he defines Surrealism as:

Dictionary: Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.

When the concept of surrealism has been "applied" by associated groups of individuals, it has often been called a "surrealist movement," whether cultural (including artistic) or social.

Therefore the Surrealist Movement was a movement in the visual arts and literature that flourished in Europe between World Wars I and II. Surrealism grew principally out of the earlier Dada movement, which before World War I produced works of anti-art that deliberately defied reason; Surrealism developed in reaction against the “rationalism” that had led to World War I. The movement was founded in 1924 by André Breton as a means of joining dream and fantasy to everyday reality to form “an absolute reality, a surreality.” Drawing on the theories of Sigmund Freud, he concluded that the unconscious was the wellspring of the imagination. Breton was a poet, but Surrealism's major achievements were in painting. Some artists practiced organic, emblematic, or absolute Surrealism, expressing the unconscious through suggestive yet indefinite biomorphic images (e.g., Jean Arp, Max Ernst, André Masson, Joan Miró). Others created realistically painted images, removed from their context and reassembled within a paradoxical or shocking framework (Salvador Dalí, René Magritte). With its emphasis on content and free form, Surrealism provided a major alternative to the contemporary, highly formalistic Cubist movement and was largely responsible for perpetuating in modern painting the traditional emphasis on content.

[Sorry this is likely MUCH MORE than you ever wanted to know!]

Answer 3

the movement is just the time that that style of art existed which was from about 1926 to 1950's (i think) Surrealism style was linked to the unconcsious mind, what goes on in your dreams and in your subconcsious. (sorry cannot spell that). If you look at the artist salvador dali, he was a surrealist, you may get the idea.

Answer 4

Just a quick extra thought:

surrealism = super realism

It's meant to be more than real, depicting the images which we carry around inside our subconscious (dreams/visions) alongside the everyday world as we consciously experience it, and giving the two equal weight.

It's great as a visual art movement, but although it was for a time a revolutionary movement with pretensions beyond art, it was superceded as a viable doctrine (one with practical and political applications to the living of life) by existentialism towards the end of WW2.

Answer 5

it's exploring the subconcious to liberate the mind and self. The surrealist movement had a profound effect on visual arts (film photography, art, painting), literature, music, theater, political thought, theater, etc. Look it up on wikipedia.

Answer 6

Surrealism takes ordinary every day objects and places them out of context with themselves. This creates an odd, crazy looking picture (or play or novel) that at first glance seems un understandable and peculiar but at second glance often offers hidden meaning.

Answer 7

Try Salvador Dali.
Surrealist=half reality/dream.

Answer 8

DO SOME RESEARCH!!!!