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Surrealism at 100: does it still have the power to disrupt? (archive.ph)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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In 1916, a trainee doctor befriended a wounded young soldier in a hospital in Nantes. André Breton was working in the neurological ward and reading Freud. Jacques Vaché was a war interpreter, moving across the front between the Allied positions and disrupting where he could; he once collected cast-off uniforms from different armies, including enemy forces, and sewed them together to make his own “neutral” costume. He sent Breton letters describing his “comatose apathy” and indifference to the conflict, though, he wrote, “I object to dying in wartime”.

Weeks after the Armistice, Vaché killed himself in a hotel room. Breton hailed him “the deserter from within” and one of the key inspirations for “The Surrealist Manifesto”, published in Paris in 1924.

This slim volume turned out to be the most influential artistic pronouncement of the century. Breton argued that rational realpolitik had created the catastrophe of the first world war. Championing the irrational, the subconscious, dream states — “pure psychic automatism” — he called for a revolution of the mind: “thought dictated in the absence of all control exercised by reason.”

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Art in general doesn't have to disrupt anything. It can be as conventional and anodyne as you like, but surrealist art - as per the Surrealist Manifesto - was specifically intended to depart from the usual concerns of art - at least at the time:

Dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.

My emphasis. Conventionally, art does give some consideration to aesthetics.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

As much as I like a lot of surrealist art, they really were up their own ass. The real disruptors were the Dadaists. They were the final word on disruption, and the contemporary art world has been trying to out-do them with increasingly infantile and outrageous stunts passed off as serious art. Dada laughed at it all and mocked the art world.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Ce n'est pas une critique

i'll assume what you're referring to here is likely the entirety of post-modernism (or some of its constituent elements), and while i'll be the first to praise Dadaism, it's a little irresponsible (edit: lazy?) to hand-wave away an entire art movement like that-- especially post-modernism. it may not be your cup of tea (I’m not the biggest fan, myself), but reducing post-modernism (or any art movement) to "increasingly infantile and outrageous stunts passed off as serious art" is... well... more of an infantile and outrageously reductionist insult passed off as serious critique.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Who said I wasn't insulting all post-modernism? You can call that infantile, I don't care. I'm far past critique and anyway, I'm a nobody with an incomplete art history education. Dismiss me if you wish. But note, I won't say post-modernism isn't art. It's just largely trash art. I maintain Dada was the first and last word on what post-modernism continues to do, just without any of the self-awareness. They took the joke seriously.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You weren’t kidding about that incomplete art education of yours. It shows.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Now you're just being a jerk.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that your comments don’t evince a great knowledge on the subject.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Dadaists explored the limits of what can and can not be called "art", with a bunch of their works falling squarely on the "not art" side. Surrealism doesn't claim that, it stays firmly on the art side and explores the messages that can be transmitted through the contrast between realism and fantasy. Some dada works can be surrealist though, but more by mistake than by design.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I wasn't saying Dada was surrealist, I was comparing them and being dismissive of the surrealist manifesto. It's pretentious and tied to Freudian baloney.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Yes, and I disagree with half of that.

Freud was a tormented kid who took his own perceptions way too far, but at the same time he was spot on about the existence of a subconscious possibility space with its own thought patterns, that can differ from the filtered conscious output. Nowadays we call that "hidden layers" in neural networks; in people, over the years, it has been explored through psychotropic drugs, hallucinations, free associations, pareidolias, and others, all of which have served as a source of artistic inspiration, with no need to call them "divine visions" anymore.

The surrealist manifesto —as far as I recall— other than being written in a pompous self entitled tone, only takes from Freud the existence of the subconscious, and explores its potential to be used for the creation of art.

Dada on the other hand, is not art half (or more) of the time, sometimes using the same techniques of the surrealists, other times being simple trash.

I wouldn't call neither more or less "disruptive" than the other. They share a common space, while exploring different aspects of it... and if there is anything to compare, I'd say surrealism actually uses techniques better attuned to achieve its goals, rather than the "spray and pray" of dada which lands it all over the place.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Is a departure a disruption? One can depart the norms of art without disrupting the norms of art as the latter would seem to require some exertion of force or participation in. If you have no concerns, aesthetic or moral, it doesn’t really seem like you’re participating.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Disruption is a term that is in vogue at the moment and so appeals to headline writers. The same question could be asked In most of the situations in which it is used today, IMHO.

I would very much expect that if it had been an 'in' term at the time, it would have been applied to the movement by contemporary copywriters.

However, in bringing the unconscious to the fore in one form or another, I would say that surrealism was at the very least part of a wider movement that did very much disrupt and transform the arts permanently, though it was probably Freud and Jung who were the key disruptors in that regard.