2004, Volume 2, Number 2
SCIENTIFIC SURREALISM
If one utters the word "Surrealism" outside the company of art historians, one can generally expect puzzled-faced responses, with occasional recognition of Salvador Dali, the token spokesperson of the Surrealist movement. While people are often familiar with the famous melting clocks featured in Dali's Persistence of Memory, most do not understand the cultural influences that Dali and other Surrealists strove to express. The art of the Dali and the Surrealists was not merely created for the simple purpose of looking or sounding absurd and hallucinogenic. Surrealism was a tribute to, as well as, an exploration of modern western ideology. Just as people throughout history have tried to capture the likeliness of Gods and Goddesses through art, so Surrealists, such as Salvador Dali, attempted to capture modern world-views by making manifest the abstract concepts of psychologists and physicists.The Surrealist art movement began in Paris in the early 1920's. The First Surrealist Exhibit was in 1925 and included works by Max Earnst, Arp, De Chiciro, Klee, Man Ray, Joan Miro, and Pablo Picasso. Surrealism developed from the art movement known as Dadaism. Dadaism was a reaction against people's complacency and the social ills of "modern life" following World War One. Many Dadaist works featured common objects arranged in absurd, often disturbing ways to provoke its viewer to question the stability of "everyday life". Former Dadaist (and medical school drop-out, who fancied himself an authority on psychology and art) Andre' Breton published the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924. Essentially, Surrealism was to be a more positive Dadaism. The intent of Surrealism was to preserve the imagination of the people against the tensions of contemporary life. It was a counter-attack against materialistic, mechanized society.
The emerging science of psychology was the greatest influence on the Surrealists and their works. Psychoanalysts and neurologists such as Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Jacques Lacan, Jean-Martin Chacot and Pierre Janet were sources of seemingly endless inspiration for the Surrealists. Enamored with psychological terminology and visions of the inner workings of the mind, Surrealists prized phenomenon such as hysteria, paranoia, and narcissism. In The Fiftieth Anniversary of Hysteria: 1878-1928, Louis Aragon and Andre' Breton proclaim' "We surrealists celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of hysteria, the greatest poetic discovery of the late Nineteenth Century!" (as quoted in Gamwell, 2002, p. 244). Surrealism was a new psychological approach to the inside of the neurotic mind.
Sigmund Freud's ideas were the foundation upon which the surrealist writers and painters created their symbolic vocabulary. Freud published his Interpretation of Dreams in 1900, which made an immense impact on Europe as a whole. According to Freud, the function of the unconscious mind was to continuously reorganize psychic material, making new symbolic connections below conscious awareness. Freud stated, "The unconscious is the true psychic reality, in its innermost nature it is as much unknown to us as the reality of the external world." (as quoted in Gamwell, 2002, p. 243). Thus the Surrealists took it upon themselves to make known the world of unconsciousness.
The world of dreams was of great interest to psychologists and Surrealists. The Surrealists used the bizarre juxtaposition of subject matter experienced in the dream state as a source of inspiration. Such illogical, random combinations of objects and phenomenon as found in dreams inspired visions such as those of Surrealist poet, Leuremont, who said, "Beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table" (as quoted in Beckett, 2000, p. 668). The Surrealists did not seek a way through the mire of the mind, but rather, a means by which to express it.
While his lucid descriptions of dream phenomenon fascinated Surrealists, Freud's intentions to unveil the dream were in stark contrast to those of the Surrealists. Using dream analysis, Freud sought to bring buried thoughts and associations from the unconscious mind, into consciousness. Freud was searching for the buried, hidden meanings of dreams, latent in the unconscious mind by means of analytical interpretation. Freud proclaimed in a letter to Andre' Breton, "A collection of dreams without the connected association, without knowledge of the circumstances under which it has been dreamt, does not have any meaning to me, and I can barely imagine what it would mean to others" (as quoted in Gamwell, 2002, p. 247). To Freud, uninterpreted dreams were merely arrangements of unrelated words and images, which by themselves were meaningless and therefore, valueless. While Freud strove to capture the message encoded in a dream, the Surrealists strove only to capture the miasma.
Undaunted by Freud's disapproval, Surrealists continued to express the irrationality of the unconscious mind, and to maintain the mystery of the dream. Dali proclaimed that he wanted to create what he called, "hand-painted dream photographs" (as quoted in Beckett, 2000, p. 674). He began painting unreality with meticulous realism; fantastic scenes took form on vast, desolate, landscapes. Aspiring to capture the bizarre ephemera of the mind, the Surrealists created an unprecedented genre of art.
Like dream interpretation, automated writing was another popular psychological tool that the Surrealists adopted. Using that technique, a person was to write the free flowing stream of ideas that passed before the mind, without conscious censorship, or attempts to rationalize the outpour. Underlying the technique was the principle that if one suspended conscious control of the mind, the stream of thoughts ensued would allow one access to the unconscious mind. This technique inspired the stream-of-consciousness poetry popularized by the Surrealists, and inspired painters to allow similar streams of visions and symbols to take form in their works.
"Paranoia" was a psychological "buzz-word" in the 1920's and became an exalted condition amongst artists of that time. In a nutshell, paranoia is said to be a misconception of reality that is an extreme version of everyday neurotic fantasies. French psychiatrist Jacques Lacan was the primary theorist on paranoid psychosis. He inspired Surrealists with his perspective on the paranoid state, and incorporated Dali's analysis of the paranoid's perception of the world as "a symbolic reordering of reality", to his own understanding of paranoia (as quoted in Gamwell, 2002, p. 248). Lacan visited Dali's studio, studying Dali's "paranoidcritical" method of combining unrelated images to form a new symbolic whole. Said method was applied in the painting Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1934) in which a crouching youth was combined metaphorically with a pile of rocks. Dali said it was "paranoid" because "just as the psychotic have delusions, so the artist creates a fantasy by forging a double image" (as quoted in Gamwell, 2002, p. 248).
The term "paranoid-critical" was coined by Dali, which he said he applied to his works with intent to understand and master "the forces and hidden laws of things" (as quoted in Moorhouse, 1990, p. 14). Dali defined his paranoid-critical method as, "a spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based upon the critical-interpretive association of delirious phenomena" (as quoted in Beckett, 2000, p. 134). Andre Breton stated in 1934 that the paranoid-critical method was an invaluable discovery for Surrealism, and that it was applicable to all forms of artistic expression (Moorhouse 1990, p.13). Essentially, Dali's technique was to allow one to cultivate the phenomenon of paranoia in the petri-dish of critical observation, whereby it could be synthesized and expressed in art.
Physics, like psychology, was gaining popular interest amongst scholars and artists during the 1930's. Einstein's theories on space and time inspired a new realm of thought for Surrealists, and a new perspective on the universe and reality, as it was understood. Dali said in 1935, that the soft watches in his Persistence of Memory (1931), Dali's best known painting, were a metaphor for Einstein's ideas being "nothing else than the tender extravagant and solitary paranoiac-critical camembert of time and space" (as quoted in Gamwell, 2002, p. 241). The Surrealists had already challenged perceptions of reality through psychological self-analysis. They then embarked to explore the illusions of perception through physics and metaphysics.
The theories of Einstein and Heisenburg became a new focal point for the subject matter of the Surrealists. Heisenburg's theory of quantum mechanics stated that within the model of physical structure, there is a principle of uncertainty, as to the location and velocity of subatomic particles, which limited the scope of classical physical ideas. The indeterminacy of science revived the principle of mystery upon which the Surrealists thrived. They had no ethical reservations in accepting these new ideas, and volunteered their world-view to be deconstructed. Dali stated "In the surrealist period I wanted to create the iconography of the interior world, the world of the marvelous, of my father Freud. I succeeded in doing it. Today the exterior world, that of physics, has transcended that of psychology. My father today is Dr. Heisenberg." (as quoted in Gamwell, 2002, p. 247). Themes of physics of anti-gravity and anti-matter, visions of the sub-atomic realm hovering within the apparent physical plane, later dominated much of the Surrealists works.
The art of the Surrealists was based on rapidly emerging `modern' sciences. Its shocking themes including such controversial subjects as masturbation, sadism, homosexuality, and Adolph Hitler were meant to do more than disturb viewers. They were artistic manifestations of contemporary scientific theories. One may observe the art of the Surrealists, noting the "cutting-edge" subject matter and immense artistic talents, which shaped the Surrealist movement. But in order to truly understand and appreciate the work of the Surrealists, one must understand the cultural climate in which it was created, and how the Surrealist movement was a reflection of the contemporary innovations of `modern' ideology.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is an informational essay that was written for English 100, Expository Writing.