Actually Notes

Surrealism: Far from Reason

The Art History of the twentieth century is not a linear story, that is, currents and styles that emerged in the field of literature, painting, sculpture, etc.., In many cases, they are not going to each other, but coexisting at the same time. Going further, in most cases, the artistic styles and schools together, permeating each other. This is something that happened especially at the beginning of last century. It is, in those years, which starts forged a different way of tackling the art. First Manifesto.
André Breton signed the first manifesto of surrealism that is published in 1924. In what was out there trying to make to the way you see things in art. Textually said that surrealism was "pure psychic automatism by which it is trying to express, either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought." That is, surrealism comes to discover how to see things with the psyche and left to the best of the reason, something akin to decipher what the substance of the soul, we can say. Also, try to express their conception of the world without any aesthetic or moral concern.
The main idea of surrealism, dadaism like, is to change lives, but without anarchy and deviations that blamed the second, but not those who might not have existed.
The literature that was generated around the surrealism was huge, so establishing that this movement became aware of its existence and its strength, not as happens with other avant-garde, more spontaneous.
Surrealism was a current that tried to explain at the time. The members of the movement were careful to explain the reasons that moved her form of artistic expression, which is why in 1922 the magazine appears Littérature, which gives rise to what would be the first official body around which joined the surrealists, the Révolution Surreal, and that would be the breeding ground of many other publications where artists unload their innovative ideas.
The "automatic writing" was the first method to find the truth we were looking for the surrealists, that truth which is hidden or that is far from the reason of the manner in which the common thought is faced with life events. The "automatic writing" is exactly that, write what they thought dictates, although it may not be written in principle meaningless. "The Magnetic Fields" by André Breton and Philippe Soupault was the first piece of automatic writing, which states that although it lacks a common thread, his delirium produces a great literary beauty. It also created "automatic drawings", the latter concept that evolved, especially when the late twenties, he joined the group Salvador Dalí. The painting reflects perhaps better than any other artistic discipline which was surrealism, with works that contained a visual expression, very rational in the eyes and it seems from what dream, that is, the world of dreams.

International Movement

The surrealist movement was an international movement, without borders or boundaries. Although born in France, was extended to a large extent by the exile of many artists who were fleeing war or persecution because of their personal work or for their political positioning, as Buñuel, exponent of surreal cinema at its inception, with "An Andalusian Dog." In Chile, Pablo Neruda, shelter first symbolism, through surrealism, to the realism. In Argentina, Enrique Molina was also dragged by a late surrealism in her work. In Peru, Cesar Vallejo, considered an innovator of poetic language, incorporating elements of the avant-garde in particular its exploration of the human condition. In Cuba, Alejo Carpentier, who worked with the magazine Révolution Surreal, "a commission's own Breton, also participated in the surrealist movement, but distanced itself from the group to understand that poorly applied the theories behind them, so it created what it called "Marvel", a way of coping with the reality that, in the words of the novelist, only existed in America.
In Mexico, Octavio Paz, who in the decade of the forties moved away from Marxism at the same speed as he approached the Spanish surrealist painter or the Remedios Varo, approached the small circles thesis surrealists, who gained prominence in the journey of André Breton by the country accompanied by Diego Rivera.
In addition to the authors who embraced the ideas of surrealism, many others received their influence, either by ideological proximity, either personal or generational affinity. Federico García Lorca, without being surreal, it works as "Poet in New York" or "Comedy without title" marked traits of surreal. The same would happen with the poet Rafael Alberti, who with "On the Angels," also walk through their influences.
Other techniques.
A strange and innovative artistic technique created by a member of the surrealist group, also a precursor to the Dadaists, Max Ernst, was the "friction", which was to rub with a pencil on a paper that covers the object to portray. The result was the first image of an object in relief, which later the artist retouched at will and imagination. The idea of this technique arises from the desire to experiment with forms, but always the very object of observation.
By the same author, Ernst, is a novel attempt to totally surreal. He carried the title "A Week of Kindness." Ernst did not write a word or, simply editing a book with clippings novels of the nineteenth century and decorated with pictures and drawings. The novel had no argument, but not stories, of course. Some critics, even in our present time, enhances precisely this aspect, the absence of argument, as a virtue and a finding, because in this way the reader is immersed in an unreal universe, but fascinating.
The collage, another technique used by the surrealists was bonding material on the canvas. These materials were collected from nature: branches, feathers or wood, but were also used products, such as cardboard or newspaper. The collage was also used by the Dadaists and by Picasso and Braque, in its infancy. Curiously, in the sixties again be used, only with other decorative elements of the painting, such as vehicles or large pieces of metal parts.

In "Carnival of Harlequin" from 1925, a painting of surrealist Joan Miro, the artist explains the idea of his work as follows: "I tried to translate the hallucinations that I had the hunger was going on. Unable to paint what he saw in a dream but that hunger was causing me a kind of trance similar to that experienced by the East. So doing preparatory drawings of the general plan of the work, to know what site should put everything. Having meditated much that I intended to do and I began to paint on the motion introduced all the changes that he believed appropriate. "

Sigmud Freud, who had published in the first decade of the century his famous "Theory of Psychoanalysis," was the academic concerns that prompted the surrealist movement, always led by Breton. Psychoanalysis, the method which investigates the processes of the unconscious mind, was what they needed to implement his own theory, which is none other than seek the connection between the rational and the irrational, finding the actual functioning of thought and find the place which brings dreams and reality.
The change of the nineteenth century to XX had brought great changes in the design of things. By 1900, burst into the picture works a series of "revolutionary" physics, painting, music, philosophy: everything is at the heart of new analysis, aimed, almost always, to the subversion of the traditional. Is called into question the concept of an individual based on various assumptions. There is no longer necessary to represent the life, existence, with images that he understands the conscience and logical reason. It is no longer necessary.