This blog post examines how Surrealism began with Dadaism and expanded into the realms of the unconscious and dreams.
Surrealist Expression
To briefly describe Surrealist expression, it can be defined as a style that expresses what transcends reality. This style is characterized by exploring the surreal world—the unconscious, dreams, and fantasies—free from the constraints of reality. Surrealism emerged from the avant-garde movements in early 20th-century France, with its roots firmly planted in Dadaism. While Dadaism rejected traditional artistic forms and aimed for new creation through destruction, Surrealism attempted to create a new reality through the world of the unconscious.
Surrealism truly began when several artists published the Surrealist Manifesto. Based on Freud’s psychoanalysis, they started expressing a world of fantasy and dreams that transcended reason. Salvador Dalí and René Magritte are among the most prominent Surrealist artists. They depicted images from the unconscious in a realistic yet grotesque manner, leaving a powerful impression on viewers.
Because Surrealism transcends conventional notions of reality and typical modes of expression, it sometimes stands in opposition to both Realism and Abstract expression. However, it is intriguing that even within this opposition, Surrealism can sometimes approach realism through hyper-realistic, meticulous depictions. This is particularly evident in the works of Salvador Dalí, whose pieces blur the boundaries between reality and fantasy, revealing a deeper realism. Therefore, Surrealism can be understood as a broad category encompassing both realism and abstraction.
Surrealism originated in painting but expanded its expressive methods into various art genres. It moved beyond the flat picture plane to create new spatial compositions and concepts, focusing on expressing the unconscious, the unreal, and the world of imagination. This contrasts with Cubism, which concentrated solely on flat, ideologically driven expression. Through these new modes of expression, Surrealism granted greater autonomy to two-dimensional painting.
The impetus for Surrealism to explore the unseen world of the unconscious rather than visible reality stemmed from Freud’s psychoanalytic theories. These theories served as tools for probing the human psyche, elevating the unconscious and the world of dreams to central themes in artistic expression. Surrealists abandoned religious concepts and began making the human inner self and ego the subject of expression. This shift expanded the themes of art from the religious and mythical to the personal and human, resulting in the gradual emergence of intangible and non-figurative works.
Surrealism evolved beyond a mere artistic style into a kind of ideological and philosophical movement. Consequently, Surrealism found expression not only in painting but also in literature, film, sculpture, and various other art genres. Furthermore, it came to play a role in overturning established political, ethical, and religious conventions. This was particularly evident in attempts to fuse with political ideologies, with some Surrealists even attempting to merge with Communism. However, these attempts ultimately failed, and Surrealism embarked on a path of fragmentation. Nevertheless, Surrealism continued to seek new artistic directions by merging with Freud’s psychoanalysis until World War II, and it spread widely across the globe as artists like Salvador Dalí made their way to America.
Expressive Characteristics of Surrealist Cinema
When discussing the cinematic expression of Surrealism, one cannot overlook Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou. This film marks the beginning of Surrealist cinema, adapted from a shocking dream narrative Buñuel shared with his Spanish compatriot Salvador Dalí. Un Chien Andalou is closer to a sequence of visualizations of surrealist paintings than a narrative. The film is filled with intense and shocking images: a woman’s eye being sliced open with a razor blade, ants crawling out of a palm, and a piano carrying a donkey carcass being pulled by a man who attempted rape.
Upon its release, many critics reinterpreted and evaluated the film through the lenses of Marxist thought and Freudian psychology. However, Buñuel insisted the film was not made to convey specific ideologies or philosophies, but simply to visualize the superego images that might unconsciously emerge in dreams. This holds significant importance as the first instance of expressing surrealist expression—breaking away from conventional, formulaic artistic trends—through cinematic language.
After Un Chien Andalou, Buñuel continued developing surrealist visual language through various experiments. Moving beyond the initial non-narrative structure, his later works gradually absorbed narrative elements, establishing a unique style that combined narrative with surrealistic expression. One of his signature approaches was revealing unconscious human instincts and desires through conceptual, conscious forms.
In his later work, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, the character Conchita, played alternately by two actors, possesses a dual nature that is both saintly and femme fatale. This unconventional expression was highly innovative for its time and exemplifies Buñuel’s unique cinematic sensibility. Furthermore, elements like the intermittent explosions of anti-government terrorists or the enormous bundles of unknown purpose and origin, which appear throughout the film, are surrealistic devices only Buñuel could realize, captivating the audience.
In Buñuel’s other work, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, a scene appears where aimlessly wandering bourgeoisie gather in a bathroom to eat. In this scene, the bourgeoisie eat in the bathroom instead of the dining room, depicted sitting on the toilet. This scene is a prime example of surrealist visual expression, leaving a deep impression on the audience through the irony inherent in the realistic setting.
While surrealism in painting focused on expressing super-ego and unconscious images, free from religious or ideological concepts, surrealist cinema places equal emphasis on capturing the expression of the super-ego and unconscious inner self hidden within realistic imagery. This distinguishes cinematic surrealism from its painterly counterpart, as the former’s defining characteristics are the irony of everyday life and the sometimes explicit, realistic expression of the inner self.
