GALLERY OF MODERN ART BRISBANE- SURREALISM
The exhibition presents a historical overview of Surrealism, charting its evolution from Dada experiments in painting, photography and film, through the metaphysical questioning and exploration of the subconscious in the paintings of Giorgio De Chirico and Max Ernst; to the readymade objects of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray’s photographs.
Gaining traction in the early 1920s, the movement's development is explored through the writings of Surrealism’s founder André Breton and key early works by André Masson. Also included is a remarkable selection of paintings and sculptures by surrealists Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Victor Brauner, Joan Miró, Alberto Giacometti, Max Ernst and Paul Delvaux.
Film and photography are also represented throughout the exhibition, including films by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, René Clair and Man Ray. Important photographic works by Hans Bellmer, Brassaï, Claude Cahun, Dora Maar, Eli Lotar and Jacques-André Boiffard also feature. The exhibition is rounded out with late works that show the breadth of Surrealism’s influence, and includes major works by Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky and Joseph Cornell.
The surrealist group was formed in the spirit of revolt that characterised the European avant-garde of the 1920s. Just like the Dada movement, in which some of them had participated, these poets and artists denounced the rationalist arrogance of the late nineteenth century, which had been halted in its tracks by the First World War. However, perceiving Dadaism’s incapacity to build new positive values, the surrealists broke away from it to proclaim the official existence of their own movement in 1924.
Dominated by André Breton, Surrealism was, at first, essentially a literary movement. Its field of inquiry was experimentation with language, free from conscious control. This way of thinking was soon extended to the plastic arts, photography and cinema — not only by virtue of Breton's inclinations, though he himself was a collector and art lover, but also by the involvement of artists from all over Europe and the United States who had moved to Paris, which was widely considered the world’s arts capital at the time.
The surrealist artists introduced the theory of the liberation of desire through the invention of techniques that aimed to reproduce the mechanisms of dreams. Taking their inspiration from the work of Giorgio de Chirico, who was unanimously acknowledged as the founder of the surrealist aesthetic, they strove to reduce the role of consciousness and the intervention of the will.
The techniques of frottage and collage used by Max Ernst, the automatic drawings made by André Masson and Man Ray's rayographs are the first examples of this. Shortly after, Joan Miró, René Magritte and Salvador Dalí produced dreamlike images by bringing about a juxtaposition of disparate elements.
Their first group exhibition was held in Paris in 1925. The movement subsequently spread abroad, achieving international renown with the 1936 exhibitions in London and New York, then in Tokyo in 1937 and in Paris in 1938. This fame was enhanced by most of the group’s wartime departure for the United States. Thus, Surrealism profoundly inspired North American art: for example, the practice of automatism is one basis for Jackson Pollock's work and for ‘action painting’, while the surrealists’ interest in objects prefigures Pop art.
Surrealism developed over more than 40 years, from the historic avant-gardes of the early twentieth century to the emergence of new currents in the 1960s. Besides North American painting and Pop art, surrealist art lay behind the appearance of a second avant-garde wave in Europe in the 1960s, its foremost representative being New Realism.
This was the best exhibition i visited whilst away, it was quite overwhelming though as there is so much information to take in and understand when it comes to surrealism.
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