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57-410: The Mae West Lips Sofa is a surrealist sculpture in the form of a sofa by Salvador Dalí . The light red, 110 cm × 183 cm × 81.5 cm (43 in × 72 in × 32 in) sized seating furniture made of polyurethane foam coated with a red polidur coating was shaped after the lips of actress Mae West , whom Dalí apparently found fascinating. Dalí never intended for

114-463: A component in the visual arts (though it had been initially debated whether this was possible), and techniques from Dada, such as photomontage , were used. The following year, on March 26, 1926, Galerie Surréaliste opened with an exhibition by Man Ray. Breton published Surrealism and Painting in 1928 which summarized the movement to that point, though he continued to update the work until the 1960s. The first Surrealist work, according to leader Breton,

171-475: A mythological, archetypal, allegorical vision, closely related to the world of dreams. The Spanish playwright and director Federico García Lorca , also experimented with surrealism, particularly in his plays The Public (1930), When Five Years Pass (1931), and Play Without a Title (1935). Other surrealist plays include Aragon's Backs to the Wall (1925). Gertrude Stein 's opera Doctor Faustus Lights

228-456: A one-act scenario by Jean Cocteau and was performed with music by Erik Satie . Cocteau described the ballet as "realistic". Apollinaire went further, describing Parade as "surrealistic": This new alliance—I say new, because until now scenery and costumes were linked only by factitious bonds—has given rise, in Parade , to a kind of surrealism, which I consider to be the point of departure for

285-580: A rather more strenuous set of approaches. Thus, such elements as collage were introduced, arising partly from an ideal of startling juxtapositions as revealed in Pierre Reverdy 's poetry. And—as in Magritte's case (where there is no obvious recourse to either automatic techniques or collage)—the very notion of convulsive joining became a tool for revelation in and of itself. Surrealism was meant to be always in flux—to be more modern than modern—and so it

342-473: A revolution launched by Apollinaire. One group, led by Yvan Goll , consisted of Pierre Albert-Birot , Paul Dermée , Céline Arnauld , Francis Picabia , Tristan Tzara , Giuseppe Ungaretti , Pierre Reverdy , Marcel Arland , Joseph Delteil , Jean Painlevé and Robert Delaunay , among others. The other group, led by Breton, included Aragon, Desnos, Éluard, Baron, Crevel, Malkine, Jacques-André Boiffard and Jean Carrive, among others. Yvan Goll published

399-591: A schism between art and politics through his counter-surrealist art-magazine DYN and so prepared the ground for the abstract expressionists. Dalí supported capitalism and the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco but cannot be said to represent a trend in Surrealism in this respect; in fact, he was considered, by Breton and his associates, to have betrayed and left Surrealism. Benjamin Péret, Mary Low, Juan Breá, and Spanish-native Eugenio Fernández Granell joined

456-481: A whole series of manifestations of the New Spirit that is making itself felt today and that will certainly appeal to our best minds. We may expect it to bring about profound changes in our arts and manners through universal joyfulness, for it is only natural, after all, that they keep pace with scientific and industrial progress. (Apollinaire, 1917) The term was taken up again by Apollinaire, both as subtitle and in

513-434: Is Golden , later Surrealists, such as Paul Garon , have been interested in—and found parallels to—Surrealism in the improvisation of jazz and the blues . Jazz and blues musicians have occasionally reciprocated this interest. For example, the 1976 World Surrealist Exhibition included performances by David "Honeyboy" Edwards . Surrealism as a political force developed unevenly around the world: in some places more emphasis

570-434: Is a surrealist play by Guillaume Apollinaire . Written in 1903 , the play received its first production in a revised version subtitled Drame surréaliste in 1917 . With this subtitle and in the preface to the play, the poet invented the word " surrealism " to describe his new style of drama . The play has been adapted into an opera by Francis Poulenc . It also has been translated twice, first by Louis Simpson in

627-507: Is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life. The movement in the mid-1920s was characterized by meetings in cafes where the Surrealists played collaborative drawing games, discussed

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684-716: The Ballets Russes , would create a decorative form of Surrealism, and he would be an influence on the two artists who would be even more closely associated with Surrealism in the public mind: Dalí and Magritte. He would, however, leave the Surrealist group in 1928. In 1924, Miró and Masson applied Surrealism to painting. The first Surrealist exhibition, La Peinture Surrealiste , was held at Galerie Pierre in Paris in 1925. It displayed works by Masson, Man Ray , Paul Klee , Miró, and others. The show confirmed that Surrealism had

741-559: The Manifeste du surréalisme , 1 October 1924, in his first and only issue of Surréalisme two weeks prior to the release of Breton's Manifeste du surréalisme , published by Éditions du Sagittaire, 15 October 1924. Goll and Breton clashed openly, at one point literally fighting, at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées, over the rights to the term Surrealism. In the end, Breton won the battle through tactical and numerical superiority. Though

798-945: The Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam , the Dalí Theatre and Museum in Figueres , Catalonia , the Victoria and Albert Museum , the Brighton Museum , and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne , Australia. The sofa was reproduced in 1973 by Bocaccio Design, known also as BD Barcelona Design. [REDACTED] Media related to Mae West Lips Sofa at Wikimedia Commons Surrealism Works of Surrealism feature

855-664: The POUM during the Spanish Civil War . Breton's followers, along with the Communist Party , were working for the "liberation of man". However, Breton's group refused to prioritize the proletarian struggle over radical creation such that their struggles with the Party made the late 1920s a turbulent time for both. Many individuals closely associated with Breton, notably Aragon, left his group to work more closely with

912-612: The Surrealist Manifesto published by French poet and critic André Breton succeeded in claiming the term for his group over a rival faction led by Yvan Goll , who had published his own surrealist manifesto two weeks prior. The most important center of the movement was Paris , France. From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe, impacting the visual arts , literature, film, and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy, and social theory. The word surrealism

969-413: The element of surprise , unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur . However, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost (for instance, of the "pure psychic automatism " Breton speaks of in the first Surrealist Manifesto), with the works themselves being secondary, i.e., artifacts of surrealist experimentation. Leader Breton

1026-464: The second World War , Enrico Donati , Vinicius Pradella and Denis Fabbri became involved as well. Though Breton admired Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp and courted them to join the movement, they remained peripheral. More writers also joined, including former Dadaist Tristan Tzara , René Char , and Georges Sadoul . In 1925 an autonomous Surrealist group formed in Brussels. The group included

1083-460: The 1930s many Surrealists had strongly identified themselves with communism. The foremost document of this tendency within Surrealism is the Manifesto for a Free Revolutionary Art , published under the names of Breton and Diego Rivera , but actually co-authored by Breton and Leon Trotsky . However, in 1933 the Surrealists' assertion that a " proletarian literature " within a capitalist society

1140-413: The 1948 ballet Paris-Magie (scenario by Lise Deharme ), the operas La Petite Sirène (book by Philippe Soupault) and Le Maître (book by Eugène Ionesco). Tailleferre also wrote popular songs to texts by Claude Marci, the wife of Henri Jeanson, whose portrait had been painted by Magritte in the 1930s. Even though Breton by 1946 responded rather negatively to the subject of music with his essay Silence

1197-465: The 1960s and then by Maya Slater in 2009. In 2010, Eric "Wally" Wallach adapted and directed The Breasts of Tiresias: A Surrealist Musical in Paris. Inspired by the story of the Theban soothsayer Teiresias , the author inverted the myth to produce a provocative interpretation with feminist and pacifist elements. He tells the story of Thérèse, who changes her sex to obtain power among men, with

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1254-593: The Communists. Surrealists have often sought to link their efforts with political ideals and activities. In the Declaration of January 27, 1925 , for example, members of the Paris-based Bureau of Surrealist Research (including Breton, Aragon and Artaud, as well as some two dozen others) declared their affinity for revolutionary politics. While this was initially a somewhat vague formulation, by

1311-540: The Dutch surrealist photographer Emiel van Moerkerken came to Breton, he did not want to sign the manifesto because he was not a Trotskyist. For Breton being a communist was not enough. Breton denied Van Moerkerken's pictures for a publication afterwards. This caused a split in surrealism. Others fought for complete liberty from political ideologies, like Wolfgang Paalen , who, after Trotsky's assassination in Mexico, prepared

1368-731: The French Dora Maar , the American Man Ray , the French/Hungarian Brassaï , French Claude Cahun and the Dutch Emiel van Moerkerken . The word surrealist was first used by Apollinaire to describe his 1917 play Les Mamelles de Tirésias ("The Breasts of Tiresias"), which was later adapted into an opera by Francis Poulenc . Roger Vitrac 's The Mysteries of Love (1927) and Victor, or The Children Take Over (1928) are often considered

1425-491: The Lights (1938) has also been described as "American Surrealism", though it is also related to a theatrical form of cubism . In the 1920s several composers were influenced by Surrealism, or by individuals in the Surrealist movement. Among them were Bohuslav Martinů , André Souris , Erik Satie , Francis Poulenc , and Edgard Varèse , who stated that his work Arcana was drawn from a dream sequence. Souris in particular

1482-457: The Paris group announced: We Surrealists pronounced ourselves in favour of changing the imperialist war, in its chronic and colonial form, into a civil war. Thus we placed our energies at the disposal of the revolution, of the proletariat and its struggles, and defined our attitude towards the colonial problem, and hence towards the colour question. The Breasts of Tiresias The Breasts of Tiresias ( French : Les mamelles de Tirésias )

1539-438: The Surrealists in developing methods to liberate imagination. They embraced idiosyncrasy , while rejecting the idea of an underlying madness. As Dalí later proclaimed, "There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad." Beside the use of dream analysis, they emphasized that "one could combine inside the same frame, elements not normally found together to produce illogical and startling effects." Breton included

1596-584: The best examples of Surrealist theatre, despite his expulsion from the movement in 1926. The plays were staged at the Theatre Alfred Jarry , the theatre Vitrac co-founded with Antonin Artaud , another early Surrealist who was expelled from the movement. Following his collaboration with Vitrac, Artaud would extend Surrealist thought through his theory of the Theatre of Cruelty . Artaud rejected

1653-588: The idea of the startling juxtapositions in his 1924 manifesto, taking it in turn from a 1918 essay by poet Pierre Reverdy , which said: "a juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be−the greater its emotional power and poetic reality." The group aimed to revolutionize human experience, in its personal, cultural, social, and political aspects. They wanted to free people from false rationality, and restrictive customs and structures. Breton proclaimed that

1710-542: The idea that ordinary and depictive expressions are vital and important, but that the sense of their arrangement must be open to the full range of imagination according to the Hegelian Dialectic . They also looked to the Marxist dialectic and the work of such theorists as Walter Benjamin and Herbert Marcuse . Freud's work with free association, dream analysis, and the unconscious was of utmost importance to

1767-574: The influence of Miró and the drawing style of Picasso is visible with the use of fluid curving and intersecting lines and colour, whereas the first takes a directness that would later be influential in movements such as Pop art . Giorgio de Chirico, and his previous development of metaphysical art , was one of the important joining figures between the philosophical and visual aspects of Surrealism. Between 1911 and 1917, he adopted an unornamented depictional style whose surface would be adopted by others later. The Red Tower (La tour rouge) from 1913 shows

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1824-492: The influences on Surrealism, examples of Surrealist works, and discussion of Surrealist automatism. He provided the following definitions: Dictionary: Surrealism, n. 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. Encyclopedia: Surrealism. Philosophy. Surrealism

1881-458: The line used to divide Dada and Surrealism among art experts is the pairing of 1925's Little Machine Constructed by Minimax Dadamax in Person (Von minimax dadamax selbst konstruiertes maschinchen) with The Kiss (Le Baiser) from 1927 by Max Ernst. The first is generally held to have a distance, and erotic subtext, whereas the second presents an erotic act openly and directly. In the second

1938-452: The main route toward a higher reality. But—as in Breton's case—much of what is presented as purely automatic is actually edited and very "thought out". Breton himself later admitted that automatic writing's centrality had been overstated, and other elements were introduced, especially as the growing involvement of visual artists in the movement forced the issue, since automatic painting required

1995-415: The majority of Western theatre as a perversion of its original intent, which he felt should be a mystical, metaphysical experience. Instead, he envisioned a theatre that would be immediate and direct, linking the unconscious minds of performers and spectators in a sort of ritual event, Artaud created in which emotions, feelings, and the metaphysical were expressed not through language but physically, creating

2052-609: The musician, poet, and artist E. L. T. Mesens , painter and writer René Magritte , Paul Nougé , Marcel Lecomte , and André Souris . In 1927 they were joined by the writer Louis Scutenaire . They corresponded regularly with the Paris group, and in 1927 both Goemans and Magritte moved to Paris and frequented Breton's circle. The artists, with their roots in Dada and Cubism , the abstraction of Wassily Kandinsky , Expressionism , and Post-Impressionism , also reached to older "bloodlines" or proto-surrealists such as Hieronymus Bosch , and

2109-424: The poetic undercurrents, but also to the connotations and the overtones which "exist in ambiguous relationships to the visual images." Because Surrealist writers seldom, if ever, appear to organize their thoughts and the images they present, some people find much of their work difficult to parse. This notion however is a superficial comprehension, prompted no doubt by Breton's initial emphasis on automatic writing as

2166-799: The precursors of Surrealism. Examples of Surrealist literature are Artaud's Le Pèse-Nerfs (1926), Aragon's Irene's Cunt (1927), Péret's Death to the Pigs (1929), Crevel's Mr. Knife Miss Fork (1931), Sadegh Hedayat 's the Blind Owl (1937), and Breton's Sur la route de San Romano (1948). La Révolution surréaliste continued publication into 1929 with most pages densely packed with columns of text, but which also included reproductions of art, among them works by de Chirico, Ernst, Masson, and Man Ray. Other works included books, poems, pamphlets, automatic texts and theoretical tracts. Early films by Surrealists include: Famous Surrealist photographers are

2223-472: The preface to his play Les Mamelles de Tirésias: Drame surréaliste , which was written in 1903 and first performed in 1917. World War I scattered the writers and artists who had been based in Paris, and in the interim, many became involved with Dada, believing that excessive rational thought and bourgeois values had brought the conflict of the war upon the world. The Dadaists protested with anti-art gatherings, performances, writings and art works. After

2280-446: The quarrel over the anteriority of Surrealism concluded with the victory of Breton, the history of surrealism from that moment would remain marked by fractures, resignations, and resounding excommunications, with each surrealist having their own view of the issue and goals, and accepting more or less the definitions laid out by André Breton. Breton's 1924 Surrealist Manifesto defines the purposes of Surrealism. He included citations of

2337-416: The so-called primitive and naive arts. André Masson 's automatic drawings of 1923 are often used as the point of the acceptance of visual arts and the break from Dada, since they reflect the influence of the idea of the unconscious mind . Another example is Giacometti's 1925 Torso , which marked his movement to simplified forms and inspiration from preclassical sculpture. However, a striking example of

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2394-417: The sofa to serve a functional use. He also claimed that he partly based the design of the sofa on a pile of rocks near Cadaqués and Portlligat , where he stayed for many years with his wife, Gala Éluard Dalí . Edward James , a rich British patron of the Surrealists, originally commissioned the piece from Dalí. The original five versions were produced in 1937–38, which are now held in the art collections of

2451-575: The stark colour contrasts and illustrative style later adopted by Surrealist painters. His 1914 The Nostalgia of the Poet (La Nostalgie du poète) has the figure turned away from the viewer, and the juxtaposition of a bust with glasses and a fish as a relief defies conventional explanation. He was also a writer whose novel Hebdomeros presents a series of dreamscapes with an unusual use of punctuation, syntax, and grammar designed to create an atmosphere and frame its images. His images, including set designs for

2508-644: The theories of Surrealism, and developed a variety of techniques such as automatic drawing . Breton initially doubted that visual arts could even be useful in the Surrealist movement since they appeared to be less malleable and open to chance and automatism. This caution was overcome by the discovery of such techniques as frottage , grattage and decalcomania . Soon more visual artists became involved, including Giorgio de Chirico , Max Ernst , Joan Miró , Francis Picabia , Yves Tanguy , Salvador Dalí , Luis Buñuel , Alberto Giacometti , Valentine Hugo , Méret Oppenheim , Toyen , and Kansuke Yamamoto . Later, after

2565-548: The true aim of Surrealism was "long live the social revolution, and it alone!" To this goal, at various times Surrealists aligned with communism and anarchism . In 1924, two Surrealist factions declared their philosophy in two separate Surrealist Manifestos. That same year the Bureau of Surrealist Research was established and began publishing the journal La Révolution surréaliste . Leading up to 1924, two rival surrealist groups had formed. Each group claimed to be successors of

2622-483: The war, when they returned to Paris, the Dada activities continued. During the war, André Breton , who had trained in medicine and psychiatry, served in a neurological hospital where he used Sigmund Freud 's psychoanalytic methods with soldiers suffering from shell-shock . Meeting the young writer Jacques Vaché , Breton felt that Vaché was the spiritual son of writer and pataphysics founder Alfred Jarry . He admired

2679-670: The writings, as well as accounts of dreams, in the magazine. Breton and Soupault continued writing evolving their techniques of automatism and published The Magnetic Fields (1920). By October 1924, two rival Surrealist groups had formed to publish a Surrealist Manifesto . Each claimed to be successors of a revolution launched by Appolinaire. One group, led by Yvan Goll consisted of Pierre Albert-Birot , Paul Dermée , Céline Arnauld , Francis Picabia , Tristan Tzara , Giuseppe Ungaretti , Pierre Reverdy , Marcel Arland , Joseph Delteil , Jean Painlevé and Robert Delaunay , among others. The group led by André Breton claimed that automatism

2736-549: The young writer's anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition. Later Breton wrote, "In literature, I was successively taken with Rimbaud , with Jarry, with Apollinaire, with Nouveau , with Lautréamont , but it is Jacques Vaché to whom I owe the most." Back in Paris, Breton joined in Dada activities and started the literary journal Littérature along with Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault . They began experimenting with automatic writing —spontaneously writing without censoring their thoughts—and published

2793-420: Was Les Chants de Maldoror , and the first work written and published by his group of Surréalistes was Les Champs Magnétiques (May–June 1919). Littérature contained automatist works and accounts of dreams. The magazine and the portfolio both showed their disdain for literal meanings given to objects and focused rather on the undertones; the poetic undercurrents present. Not only did they give emphasis to

2850-476: Was Trotskyist , communist , or anarchist . The split from Dada has been characterised as a split between anarchists and communists, with the Surrealists as communist. Breton and his comrades supported Leon Trotsky and his International Left Opposition for a while, though there was an openness to anarchism that manifested more fully after World War II. Some Surrealists, such as Benjamin Péret , Mary Low, and Juan Breá, aligned with forms of left communism . When

2907-677: Was a better tactic for societal change than those of Dada, as led by Tzara, who was now among their rivals. Breton's group grew to include writers and artists from various media such as Paul Éluard , Benjamin Péret , René Crevel , Robert Desnos , Jacques Baron , Max Morise , Pierre Naville , Roger Vitrac , Gala Éluard , Max Ernst , Salvador Dalí , Luis Buñuel , Man Ray , Hans Arp , Georges Malkine , Michel Leiris , Georges Limbour , Antonin Artaud , Raymond Queneau , André Masson , Joan Miró , Marcel Duchamp , Jacques Prévert , and Yves Tanguy , Dora Maar As they developed their philosophy, they believed that Surrealism would advocate

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2964-534: Was associated with the movement: he had a long relationship with Magritte, and worked on Paul Nougé 's publication Adieu Marie . Music by composers from across the twentieth century have been associated with surrealist principles, including Pierre Boulez , György Ligeti , Mauricio Kagel , Olivier Messiaen , and Thomas Adès . Germaine Tailleferre of the French group Les Six wrote several works which could be considered to be inspired by Surrealism , including

3021-413: Was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a revolutionary movement. At the time, the movement was associated with political causes such as communism and anarchism . It was influenced by the Dada movement of the 1910s. The term "Surrealism" originated with Guillaume Apollinaire in 1917. However, the Surrealist movement was not officially established until after October 1924, when

3078-538: Was first coined in March 1917 by Guillaume Apollinaire . He wrote in a letter to Paul Dermée : "All things considered, I think in fact it is better to adopt surrealism than supernaturalism, which I first used" [ Tout bien examiné, je crois en effet qu'il vaut mieux adopter surréalisme que surnaturalisme que j'avais d'abord employé ]. Apollinaire used the term in his program notes for Sergei Diaghilev 's Ballets Russes , Parade , which premiered 18 May 1917. Parade had

3135-817: Was impossible led to their break with the Association des Ecrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires, and the expulsion of Breton, Éluard and Crevel from the Communist Party. In 1925, the Paris Surrealist group and the extreme left of the French Communist Party came together to support Abd-el-Krim , leader of the Rif uprising against French colonialism in Morocco . In an open letter to writer and French ambassador to Japan, Paul Claudel ,

3192-563: Was natural there should be a rapid shuffling of the philosophy as new challenges arose. Artists such as Max Ernst and his surrealist collages demonstrate this shift to a more modern art form that also comments on society. Surrealists revived interest in Isidore Ducasse, known by his pseudonym Comte de Lautréamont , and for the line "beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella", and Arthur Rimbaud , two late 19th-century writers believed to be

3249-621: Was on artistic practices, in other places on political practices, and in other places still, Surrealist praxis looked to supersede both the arts and politics. During the 1930s, the Surrealist idea spread from Europe to North America, South America (founding of the Mandrágora group in Chile in 1938), Central America , the Caribbean , and throughout Asia, as both an artistic idea and as an ideology of political change. Politically, Surrealism

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