Preparing for Your Visit
The Surrealist Movement

"Beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissection table."
- Comte de Lautréamont, Les chants de Maldoror

This bizarre and dream-like stream of words captures the essence of Surrealism. The ideas of the author, Comte de Lautréamont, a 19th-century French writer, were to have had a profound influence on the development of the Surrealist Movement.

André Breton, a poet and critic based in France, founded the Surrealist Movement and published "The Surrealist Manifesto" in 1924. The movement was a reaction to the horrors of The First World War, which was seen as a symbol of the failure of "rationalism".

Heavily influenced by the theories of Sigmund Freud, the inventor of psychoanalysis, Surrealism aimed to merge the dream world of the unconscious mind with the rational everyday nature of the conscious mind, so creating a complete reality. Breton saw the unconscious mind, of which we are not normally aware, as the driving force of the imagination. He suggested that the ability to tap into the unconscious world could lead to creative genius and, like Freud, believed in the importance of interpreting dreams to uncover hidden feelings.

The Surrealists used special techniques to try to reveal the fantasies and ideas locked in the unconscious. One of these was automatic writing which involved writing down as quickly as possible the random thoughts that flowed from the mind. This often produced bizarre imagery that could be applied to their creative work. The exploitation of chance meetings and unexpected juxtapositions was also important inspiration for Surrealist practice.

Roland Penrose, a close friend of Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar, was instrumental in organising the famous International Surrealist Exhibition held in London in 1936, in which both artists exhibited. The show attracted some 40,000 visitors over three weeks and included leading artists, such as René Magritte, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dali, whose eccentric behaviour in public often seemed to mirror the fantasies in his work. Famously, during the show, Dali delivered a lecture while wearing a deep-sea diving suit. Close to suffocation he had to be released from the diving helmet by a young poet who removed it with pliers!

Art, literature and cinema were profoundly influenced by Surrealism. Man Ray and Dora Maar were leading proponents in photography and Luis Bunuel in cinema. His film Un Chien Andalou (1928) included an image of an eye slit by a razor blade to expose a swarm of ants. André Breton and Paul Eluard were key figures in the field of Surrealist writing. Although Picasso was never a member, the evocative visual imagery suggested by his poetry was clearly influenced by the Surrealists.

In Australia, the Surrealist movement gathered momentum through the Angry Penguins magazine and group founded in 1940 by the literary critic Max Harris. The painters Albert Tucker, Sidney Nolan, Joy Hester and Arthur Boyd were heavily influenced by Surrealism, however, James Gleeson is generally regarded as Australia's most important Surrealist artist.

Questions for Further Discussion:

1. Find and discuss examples of Surrealism in contemporary pop culture, such as advertising, literature, comedy, performance and film. In each case, why is Surrealism used?
2. In what ways can Surrealism stimulate new ways of thinking and seeing?
3. Play the game of 'The Exquisite Corpse':
   1. Decide on a sentence structure such as:
      • Article, adjective
      • Noun
      • Verb
      • Article, adjective
      • Noun
   2. Provide everyone in a small group with pencil and paper.
   3. Each person in the group writes down the first words of the structure, folds over the paper and passes it on to the next person.
   4. The process continues until the structure is finished.The paper is unfolded to reveal a Surrealist sentence.
      Note: Depending on the verb used it may sometimes be necessary to add a preposition to ensure the sentence flows smoothly.
      The game gets its name from the sentence created when it was first played: The exquisite corpse will drink the young wine
      Use the results to create a Surreal poem or image. The game can also be played by substituting the words for drawings of parts of a human or animal body.
      
4. Research the Surrealist Object such as Salvador Dali's Lobster Telephone, 1936. Discuss how you might create a Surrealist object.

 Other References (Preparing for Your Visit)

• Dora Maar in her own Right
• The Genius of Picasso