Surrealism
on Oct 25 by alinquist55SURREALISM
For most of the 20th century, the march of the Modern art movements, one after another, suggested that the likes of Monet, Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso and Pollack would be the artistic ideas that would carry on into the 21st century but as our current times unraveled, the ironic cynicism of surrealism seems to have squashed the idea of artistic importance that bared down on so much of the past one hundred years.
The idea of cynical humor as art really didn’t take hold until the ideas of modern art, some of them rather questionable, were taken as gospel by the preachers of the new artistic styles. Even then, it took a horrendous war to give the idea full force. The ideas of surrealism were first spawned with the Dada movement.
The Dadaist movement started at about the same time as the beginning of the First World War and seemed to be both a protest against the politics that created the war and about society in general. The artists suggested that the war was the product of something inherently more corrupted, like the souls of Europeans in general. The artists split between Europe and New York, were a less war weary attitude created a more playful form of Dada.
By the end of the war, Dada was in full force and was splintering into more organized ideas and groups, among them Surrealism. Surrealism in its original conception was about dream painting and psychology. Sigmund Freud’s radical ideas about human psychology were still very new and fascinated those who were receptive to the idea. Psychoanalysis had become a major American fad and the idea of tapping into the subconscious to create art seemed like an avenue worth walking down.
The 1920’s and 1930’s saw the first great explosion of Surrealistic art. Giorgio De Chirico was painting his eerie landscapes drenched in premonition. Joan Miro was painting his charming, cartoon-like works and Salvador Dali was creating his hyper-detailed dreams filled with ants and dripping watches. Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy painted disturbing monsters that were deeply affected by the terrible politics of Europe.
As a movement, Surrealism disappeared under the guns of World War II and the rise of Abstract Expressionism. Not until the rise of Pop Art did irony return as an artistic vision. Even then, the artistic climate was too serious and puritanical to embrace the cynicism of Dada or the strange playfulness of Surrealism.
Nearing the end of the century, with the untimely death of Andy Warhol and the unleashing of legacy in the form of Contemporary Art, bizarre curiosity, perverse playfulness and sophisticated cynicism have become the new voices of art and Dadaism and Surrealism are recognized as their twin inspirations.
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