As World War 1 came to an end, the Dada
period began to evolve into a new movement. Through the inspiration
and work of a French poet and critic, Andre Breton,
Surrealism was born.
As mentioned, Surrealism was a spawn of the movement known as Dadaism,
an "art and literary movement reflecting nihilistic
protests of all Western culture.
What Surrealism accomplished was to "ephasize
the role of the unconscious in creative captivity" and at the same
time "employed the psychic unconsious in a more
orderly and serious manner."
Surrealistic art requires great content and technique. In fine tuning
their talent, the artists of this movement researched and studied the works of
"Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung." Subsequently some artists chose to
express themselves in the abstract tradition, while others would express
themselves in the symbolic tradition.
Through these grew two forms of Surrealism. Michael S. Bell found one could be
catagorized as Automatism and the other Verisitic
Surrealism. Automatism was
referred by artists as a "suppression of
consciousness in favor of the subconscious." They believed their
images should not be burdened with meaning. True to this interpretation,
Automatists "saw the academic discipline of art as
intolerant of the free expression of feeling." They believed "form,
which had dominated the history of art, was a culprit in that intolerance."
Through this system Automatists felt they could bring "life
to their images of the subconscious level."
The Veristic Surrealists believed that images
must be faithfully represented "as a link between the abstract spiritual
realities, and the real forms of the material world." Reality was
simply a metaphor of their inner consception. Surrealists harnessed elements
that brought conscious and unconscious thought "into
one blinding vision of pure emotion." (Anthony
Oliver)