Surrealism

**Surrealism** was an art and cultural movement which began in the late 1910s.

The name was first used in 1917. Guillaume Apollinaire wrote the program notes for the ballet _Parade_, which was created for the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev. This was a collaborative work by Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie, Pablo Picasso and Léonide Massine. The program notes ran:
- "From this new alliance... there has come about, in _Parade_, a kind of super-realism ('sur-réalisme'), in which I see the starting point of a series of manifestations of this new spirit".

The movement grew out of Dadaism. This was, amid the horrors of World War I, a protest at the meaninglessness of civilised life.

At the same time, the work of Sigmund Freud began to filter through, and affect the literary and art worlds. André Breton was trained in psychiatry, and during the war, he worked in a hospital where he used Freud's methods on shell-shock patients. Not surprisingly, Breton influenced many writers and artists after the war.

Freud's work placed emphasis on the subconscious mind, and its role in steering behaviour and emotion. His way of using free association, and dream analysis to get a clue to the subconscious was picked up by the surrealists. They painted dreamlike fantasies, and practised automatic drawing without sight: 'automatism'.

In 1924, Breton wrote a _Surrealist Manifesto_, which defined surrealism as:
- "Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express,  verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner -- the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern".

Breton discussed his first encounter with the surreal, in a description of a hypnagogic state, in which a strange phrase inexplicably appeared in his mind: _There is a man cut in two by the window_. This phrase illustrates Breton's view of Surrealism as two distant realities brought together to create a new, uncanny union.

Surrealist works have an element of surprise: unexpected items are placed next to each other for no clear reason. Many Surrealist artists and writers see their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost. The works are an artifact, and André Breton said that Surrealism was above all a revolutionary movement. From the 1920s in Paris it spread around the globe. It influenced films such as the _Angel's Egg_ and _El Topo_.

**TRANSCENDENTAL SURREALISM** Is a new artistic approach, that stands as  the evolution and redefinition of Surrealism in its classical form, as it became internationally known by **Andre Bretton's Manifest** in the early 20th century. **Transcendental Surrealism** in Visual Arts, presented in 2018 by the Greek visual artist - architect **Giorgios (Gio) Vassiliou** (b. 1970). It is based on a completely new theory and philosophy that is summarized in  three new foundamental  elements, that follow the evolution of ideas, that have emerged so far during the 21st century, in Visual Arts, Psychology, Physics, and the visual perception of the physical world. These three new foundamental elements are:

**a) Transcendental perception**

**b) Creative imagination**

**c) Slow current of thought**

## Artists

Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, André Masson, Joan Miró and Marcel Duchamp were some of the best-known surrealist artists.

## Books

- Baznani, Achraf. _History of Surrealism_. Edilivre, France 2018.
- Hughes, Robert.  _The shock of the new: art and the century of change_. London: Thames & Hudson. Chapter 5 The threshold of liberty.

## Surrealist films

Man Ray made the first surrealist film: _Return to reason_ (1923). Luis Buñuel and Dali made two well-known surrealist films: _Un chien andalou_ (1929) and _L'Âge d'or_ (1930). Jean Cocteau made three films, known as the _Orphic Trilogy_: _Le Sang d'un poète_ (1930), _Orphée_ (1950) and _Testament of Orpheus_ (1960), which includes a cameo appearance by Pablo Picasso.