Dream Surrealist vs. Automatist Surrealist - Essay Example

?Topic: Dream Surrealist vs. Automatist Surrealist Surrealism was born in the cafe culture of Paris in the 1920’s as an evolution of dada, one of thefirst attempts to go beyond the rational in Western art without pursuing the path of religious transcendentalism. Historically, this was also the era of Freud, Jung, and the birth of Western psychology. That the two are interrelated is certain when reading “The Surrealist Manifesto” composed by Andre Breton to represent the theory of the movement, who defines its ethos as: “SURREALISM, n. 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, 1924) From this era, artists and intellectuals both would increasingly use modern methods to explore the psyche and express its contents, seeking new forms and modalities of expression to accomplish the goal. Where dada sought to embrace the irrational and elevate it to a de facto cosmic principle, this is also recognition of the final deterioration of medieval systems of thought and the birth of the modern individual in Europe and internationally. As the avante garde artists of this movement, Andre Masson and Salvador Dali represent two aspects of early Surrealism, differentiated by their methodology of inquiry into the content of the mind and its expression into two factions, the dream surrealists and the automatist surrealists. Masson’s “Automatic Drawing” of 1924 is paradigmatic of the automatist school which used artistic methods based in illogic and chance to override the conscious aspects of both mind and artistic expression to search for self-discovery and universalism in the imagery of the subconscious and unconscious states of mind. To do so they often practiced automatic drawing in order to conjure these images out of the deeper states of consciousness by overriding the processes of the ego and the senses. In this manner, the surrealists based their art on an early form of Western depth psychology. The dream surrealists shared Freud’s infatuation with the symbolism of dreams and dream interpretation and sought to express the imagery of dreams in their artwork. Yet, unlike the automatists, the dream surrealists did not seek to overcome the traditional use of the ego in painting, but rather to use the ego to express the language of dreams, a subtle difference that can be seen through comparing Masson’s work to one of Salvador Dali’s first dream surrealist paintings, “Inaugural Goose Flesh” (1928). In 1924, Salvador Dali’s artwork was still very much exhibiting the influences of Cubism and of the Greek-Italian surrealist Giorgio de Chirico. Dali’s “Still Life” (1924) and “Port Alguer” (1924) both show the influence of Picasso and early Cubism, as well as Dali’s early experimentation with different styles such as Impressionism, reflected in the waters of the sea in contrast to the cubist architecture. (ArtMight, 2011) Yet, in “Still Life” (1924), the “metaphysical plane” introduced by de Chirico is beginning to be shown in his painting, fully evident four years later when Dali paints, “Inaugural Goose Flesh” (1928). This “metaphysical plane” is different than the traditional perspective of portrait, still life, or natural painting. What it does is replace the horizon and relation between earth and sky which dominates representational painting with an infinite horizon upon which anything can arise, representing the plane of mind and the world of dreams. In de Chirico’s early work, the viewer has the unspoken understanding through the use of light on an artificial, imaginary, and infinite horizon, that the events or scene depicted is a dream image. Salvador Dali would become recognized by developing this aspect of the imaginary or metaphysical plane into his artwork over a long career, but it is in “Inaugural Goose Flesh” (1928) where his work clearly becomes distinguished from early styles and experimentation and begins to truly express the dimensions of mind as represented in dream surrealism. To compare the automatists to this style of Dali and de Chirico is to relate the method in which the images themselves are created on the canvas. Masson attempted to use a number of techniques to override the conscious mind or ego aspect of artistic creation, and this led to a wide experimentation in style incorporating many methods not considered to be consistent with classical painting. Dali and de Chirico rarely stray into the deeper aspects of abstract expressionism and their work is the most vivid example in Western art of dream symbolism and the imaginary universes of dreams being depicted. Yet, Dali and de Chirico paint through their ego, not using anything other than classical techniques to express their view. They are precisionists who exactingly re-create the dream world by allowing the creative symbolism of the mind to express itself in a myriad of mythological and poetic images. Masson, on the other hand, seeks to abstain from classical painting techniques and override the ego, searching for new forms of expression and new patterns of configuration that represent the subconscious and unconscious realms. In “Automatic Drawing” (1924), the trance aspects of mind are woven together in abstraction, as if the artist has been able to discover a new letter of the alphabet or a new symbol of a language. The end result to perception is similar to the dream surrealists, but the technique is more akin to blinding or annihilating the ego, as in religious mysticism, rather than recognizing the two states and using the ego to paint the unconscious. Jennifer Gibson writes in “Surrealism before Freud: Dynamic Psychiatry's ‘Simple Recording Instrument,’” "Positing the essence of Surrealism in psychic automatism, Breton referred in the 1924 manifesto not to the 'unconscious' but rather to 'the depths of the mind'. Nevertheless, it was the unconscious, existing independently of the palpable realm and its critical apparatus, but equally real, that represented for Breton a newly discovered inner reality." (Gibson, 1987) Thus, both dream and automatist Surrealism can be seen as two ways of expressing the unconscious. The first involves re-creating dream symbolism and logic from memory, and the second involves attempting to enter unconscious or subconscious states while doing the actual act of creation. In automatism, the creative process is an actual search for truth or process of self-discovery that is found in the artwork itself. In Dali and de Chirico’s work in particular, the logic and symbolic imagery of the dream world can be seen most clearly illuminated and displayed. From analysis of the two paintings, Masson’s “Automatic Drawing” (1924) and Dali’s “Inaugural Goose Flesh” (1928), the distinction between the two methods can be seen as well as the individual aspects of the psychic content in the paintings. When personal psychology approaches the universal, it takes the form of mythology rather than poetry, and from the start this aspect can be seen in the work of both the dream surrealists and the automatist surrealists. Historically, both groups pioneer methods of Depth Psychology based in Freudian theory and the study of myth. Appendix: 1. Andre Masson (1924). Automatic Drawing. Ink on paper, 9 1/4 x 8 1/8" (23.5 x 20.6 cm). Museum of Modern Art, New York. 2. Salvador Dali (1928). Inaugural Goose Flesh. Salvador Dali, FUNDACIO GALA-SALVADOR DALI , DACS, London 2007. Sources Cited: Breton, Andre. Manifesto of Surrealism. Paris, 1924. http://www.tcf.ua.edu/Classes/Jbutler/T340/SurManifesto/ManifestoOfSurrealism.htm. Chip, Herschel B.. Theories of Modern Art - A Source Book by Artists and Critics. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1970. Dali, Salvador. Inaugural Goose Flesh 1928. FUNDACIO GALA-SALVADOR DALI , DACS, London 2007. http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/daliandfilm/roomguide.shtm. Dali, Salvador. Port Alguer 1924. ArtMight, 2011. http://artmight.com/Artists/Dali-Salvador/dali-1924-02-port-alguer-153319p.html. Dali, Salvador. Still Life 1924. ArtMight, 2011. http://artmight.com/Artists/Dali-Salvador/dali-1924-05-still-life-153320p.html. Gibson, Jennifer. Surrealism before Freud: Dynamic Psychiatry's "Simple Recording Instrument". Art Journal, Vol. 46, No. 1, Mysticism and Occultism in Modern Art (Spring, 1987), pp. 56-60. http://www.jstor.org/pss/776843. Lippard, Lucy. Surrealists on Art. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersy: Prentice Hall, 1970. Read More