Surrealism

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that surrealism melded the visual, verbal, and historical aspects of art in its manifestations of out-of-reality conceptions. Like the Expressionist movement of the 19th century, it attempted to create an inner vision of the artist, rather than an outer vision of the world. The author points out that surrealism was not only a visual movement; even the poetical works contemporary to the surrealist period made use of Imagist conceptions designed to arouse reactions rather than intellectual activity, as in Lorca's "Somnambulist's Ballad" and the poetry of Ezra Pound. The paper explains that, unlike Veristic Surrealism, Automatist Surrealism, which gave birth to Cubism, Futurism, and Constructivism, did not have as a secure grounding in the "academy" of art because it embraced folkloric conceptions of representation.

From the Paper:

"Veristic Surrealists, such as Dali, "saw academic discipline and form as the means to represent the images of the subconscious with veracity; as a way to freeze images that, if unrecorded, would easily dissolve once again into the unknown." One way to better understand the distinction between the two is to compare Dali with the Automatist Picasso, who was later to spawn the Cubist movement in art, a movement full of the ugliness and primitive conceptions that distained the formalist turning around of earlier surrealists such as Bunuel and Dali. Veristic Surrealists took what was true and real to the eye, as seen in a film, and employed playfulness to disconcert the viewer's investiture in such objects" however the artist must render such objects realistically, to do this."

More papers on Surrealism:

• Analytical Essay # 123394 : "Impressionist & Surrealism"
• Comparison Essay # 148983 : "Cubism and Surrealism"
• Essay # 37807 : "Surrealism"
• Essay # 46833 : "Surrealism: From Symbolism to Psychedelia"

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