SURREALISM

A twentieth-century literary, philosophical and artistic movement

that explored the workings of the mind, championing the
irrational, the poetic and the revolutionary.

Surrealism aimed to revolutionise human experience, rejecting a

rational vision of life in favour of one that asserted the value of
the unconscious and dreams. The movements poets and artists
found magic and strange beauty in the unexpected and the
uncanny, the disregarded and the unconventional.

The word surrealist (suggesting beyond reality) was coined by

the French avant-garde poet Guillaume Apollinaire in a play
written in 1903 and performed in 1917. But it was Andr Breton,
leader of a new grouping of poets and artists in Paris, who, in
his Surrealist Manifesto (1924), defined surrealism as:

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.

Many surrealist artists used automatic drawing or writing to

unlock ideas and images from their unconscious minds, and
others sought to depict dream worlds or hidden psychological
tensions.

Attractive to writers, artists, photographers and filmmakers from

around the world who shared this aggressive rejection of
conventional artistic and moral values, surrealism quickly
became an international movement. It exerted enormous impact
on the cultural life of many countries in the interwar years and
later.

Why Does Surrealism Matter?

Surrealism represents a crucible of avant-garde ideas and

techniques that contemporary artists are still using today,
including the introduction of chance elements into works of art.
These methods opened up a new mode of painterly practice
pursued by the Abstract Expressionists. The element of chance
has also proven integral to performance art, as in the
unscripted Happenings of the 1950s, and even to computer art

based on randomization. The Surrealist focus on dreams,

psychoanalysis, and fantastic imagery has provided fodder for a
number of artists working today, such as Glenn Brown, who has
also directly appropriated Dals art in his own painting.

Surrealisms desire to break free of reason led it to question the

most basic foundation of artistic production: the idea that art is
the product of a single artists creative imagination. As an antidote
to this, Breton promoted the cadavre exquis, or exquisite
corpse, as a technique for collectively creating art, one that is still
played as a game widely today. It involves starting a sentence,
sketch, or collage, and then giving it to another person to
continuewithout letting that person see what has already been
written, drawn, or placed. The term derived from a simple game
of creating collective prose that resulted in the sentence, The
exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine.

Given the methods embrace of chance and tendency to produce

humorous, absurd, or unsettling images, it soon became a viable
technique for creating exactly the type of unconscious, collective
work that the Surrealists sought. Exquisite Corpse 27 (ca. 2011), a
work completed by Ghada Amer, Will Cotton, and Carry
Leibowitz, is a contemporary example of the sort of stylistically
and thematically disconnected work that can arise from this
Surrealist method.

The historian and music critic Greil Marcus has gone so far as to
characterize Surrealism as one chapter in a series of revolutionary
attempts to liberate thought that stretches from the blasphemies
of medieval heretics up to the 1960s and beyond. In this light,
Surrealism can be understood as the progenitor of the later, Marx-
inspired art movement Situationism, 1960s countercultural
protests, and even punk: a project of breaking down the rational
order that society imposes on individuals.

Surrealism Art Techniques

Surrealism make use of several techniques to create the effect and
provide inspiration.

Collage assembling different elements to create a whole

(e.g. The Hat Makes the Man by Max Ernst)
Cubomania form of collage wherein an image is cut into
squares and reassembled randomly. This technique was
invented by Romanian Surrealist artist Gherasim Luca.
Decalcomania spreading thick paint on a canvas, and while
still wet, covering it with paper or foil. This is removed again,
while still wet, and the result of the pattern becomes the
base of the finished painting.
Eclaboussure the process of placing paints down and the
water or turpentine is splattered. The painting is then soaked
entirely, revealing random splats and dots once the media is
removed.
Frottage method of using the pencil rubbings over to a
texture surface.
Fumage art technique which made use of impressions by
smoke of a candle or lamp onto the blank canvas. Also
called sfumato.
Grattage the process of scraping paint off the canvas to
reveal the imprint placed beneath.

SURREALISM IN ADVERTISING
FMCG (fast moving consumer goods)

SURREALISM IN ADVERTISING
Automotive

SURREALISM IN ADVERTISING
Fashion

Sources:
https://1stwebdesigner.com/modern-surrealism/
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-what-is-surrealism
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/surrealism