What is Surrealism Art?

Mention Salvador Dali and you will be transported to the world of Surrealism, a world which almost seems to mirror our universe but with parallel and different laws.

From surprise to shock, to comparisons that a layman (even one with an overactive imagination) would never think off, Surrealism was not just an art form but a cultural movement that affected every thought and practice in the world, from political thinking of people, to the way they expressed themselves in movies, poetry, literature and of course artwork.

Understanding what this movement is can be difficult, especially without understanding what brought about the movement, what its main characteristics were, and who its proponents were.

Towards the end of the First World War, many artists who had moved to different parts of the world from Paris became proponents of the Dadaism movement which held the belief that the war was a result of excessive rationalization, and an increase in bourgeois living.

The way in which Dadaists protested the war was with anti-art movements, different performances, art works, and literary works. History tells us that the first seeds of thought regarding the Surrealist movement were conceptualized from the remnants of the Dadaism movement.

The person who can be called the founder of the Surrealism movement was Andre Breton who regarded the movement a form of revolution.

The definition as given by him says that it is a "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."

Extremely influenced by Freudian theories, Surrealism is in a manner the expression of imagination as seen in one's dreams. The entire gamut of Freud's theories that dealt with free association, analysis of dreams, and of the unconscious, were extremely important to the artists who were a part of this movement.

Most artists of the movement laid their claim on eccentricity without an acceptance of being mad. As can be figured out from what Salvador Dali very famously said, "There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad."

Another important characteristic of the movement was the juxtaposition of elements that were rarely ever actually featured together. The aim behind combining two disparate elements was to create something that shocked and startled.

Most artists of the movement aimed at breaking the shackles that bound people to conventional, rational behavior, and customs and traditions.

One of the most famous painters on a Surrealist canvas was very obviously Salvador Dali, who helped popularizing this art movement. A lot has been said and written about the relation between the art movement and Dali and the effect that the artist had on the way people perceived this artistic movement.

But despite this, there was an attempt to appreciate what an untrained artist would see as art. This stemmed from the belief that free from rules, a mind tends to be more imaginative in the ideas it generates.

Most artists who painted in the Surrealist form, used free association and one of two methods of expression; Absolute Surrealism and Veristic Surrealism. While the former believed in the expression of ideas of the subconscious, the latter focused on creating a connection between the abstract and the real.

Salvador Dali worked in the Veristic school, often juxtaposing images from the real world with imaginary situations. It is believed that movements of the art world like Abstract Expressionism and Magic Realism were born from this movement. Lowbrow art is also a throwback from this art movement.

It is difficult to understand this movement completely without maybe taking a lesson. Paintings like Elle Loge La Folie, Indefinite Divisibility, or Woman with Her Throat Cut, are works that just give you an insight into the shock and awe that Surrealism art inspires.