Introduction to Surrealism — Transcript

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1. 0:00hi y'all so this video is your quick
2. 0:02introduction to
3. 0:04surrealism as a movement so the movement
4. 0:07of surrealism is actually
5. 0:08kind of hard to succinctly define
6. 0:12in just a few minutes for a video like
7. 0:14this and the reason for that is that
8. 0:17you know surrealism wasn't just one
9. 0:19particular style
10. 0:20but rather a set of shared concerns
11. 0:23a set of concerns that were held by a
12. 0:26group of artists
13. 0:28you know hundreds of them actually uh
14. 0:30you know most of the
15. 0:31groups that we've been talking about
16. 0:32thus far have been sort of small
17. 0:35right some of them only like two people
18. 0:37uh but in fact
19. 0:38for the surrealist movement we're
20. 0:40talking about dozens
21. 0:42even even hundreds of individuals who
22. 0:45are all sort of interested
23. 0:46in this same sort of again sort of set
24. 0:49of concerns in their art
25. 0:50and these artists writers etc were all
26. 0:53sort of working under the watchful eye
27. 0:56and
28. 0:56control of a man named andre breton
29. 0:59who was a french novelist and poet
30. 1:03who was the leader the sort of official
31. 1:05leader
32. 1:06of the surrealist movement breton
33. 1:09was really pretty bossy and controlling
34. 1:12uh
35. 1:13so there were lots of infights between
36. 1:15the surrealists
37. 1:16and you know even some expulsions
38. 1:19famously
39. 1:20dali who is perhaps today the most
40. 1:22famous surrealist painter
41. 1:24was actually kicked out of surrealism by
42. 1:26breton
43. 1:27so again this is a sort of very official
44. 1:29sort of bureaucratic
45. 1:30group uh that was fairly organized
46. 1:34and we're all sort of working toward
47. 1:37again a sort of particular set
48. 1:39of ideas it through different stylistic
49. 1:42strategies all right so what were these
50. 1:45concerns
51. 1:46well the surrealists had lived through
52. 1:48the first world war
53. 1:50so similarly how we spoke about data
54. 1:53that dada
55. 1:54was interested in irrationality
56. 1:57given the belief that you know in
57. 1:59irrational people
58. 2:00if humans were truly at their core
59. 2:03rational
60. 2:04and enlightened how would these
61. 2:06individuals
62. 2:07you know walk into a war that led to
63. 2:10such
64. 2:11destruction the surrealists felt
65. 2:13similarly
66. 2:14and they were following a thinker named
67. 2:16sigmund freud
68. 2:18who was a psychoanalyst who believed
69. 2:20that
70. 2:21everyone uh had these sort of dark
71. 2:24churning
72. 2:24inner worlds that this unconscious
73. 2:28that was just sort of bubbling you know
74. 2:30beneath the surface
75. 2:32full of violent dark and oftentimes
76. 2:35darkly
77. 2:36sexual thoughts fears anxieties desires
78. 2:40and the surrealists were interested in
79. 2:43tapping into that
80. 2:44in his manifesto breton says you know
81. 2:47we're sort of at war with a
82. 2:49oppressive reign of logic so they wanted
83. 2:51to do away with logic with rationality
84. 2:54in their art
85. 2:55and instead wanted to embrace the
86. 2:58illogical
87. 2:59wanted to utilize strategies that
88. 3:02could enable artists to tap into their
89. 3:05unconscious minds that dark
90. 3:07bubbling inner world that is not easily
91. 3:10accessed
92. 3:11through conscious thought right that's
93. 3:13sort of the whole idea of the
94. 3:14unconscious is that
95. 3:15it's this inner world that's there
96. 3:17that's controlling us in ways that we
97. 3:18don't understand
98. 3:19but we can't through our awake thoughts
99. 3:23understand and access and process that
100. 3:26so the surrealists are sort of looking
101. 3:29for ways that they can tap
102. 3:30into that so they come up with a few
103. 3:32different strategies for doing so
104. 3:34so one of the strategies that we'll talk
105. 3:36about is automatic drawing
106. 3:38automatism trying to paint and draw
107. 3:42before thought not putting too much
108. 3:44awareness in their actions just sort of
109. 3:46doing it with a sort of clear
110. 3:48and unencumbered mind then the other way
111. 3:52that these surrealists try to tap into
112. 3:54their unconscious
113. 3:56is through exploring dreamscapes
114. 3:59and there aren't making worlds that
115. 4:02appear
116. 4:02like strange dream visions that are
117. 4:05meant to be
118. 4:06a sort of insight for viewers and
119. 4:09insight into the inner mechanisms of the
120. 4:12artist's mind
121. 4:13so they're meant to be a sort of
122. 4:14cathartic sort of spilling
123. 4:16of the artist's guts onto the canvas
124. 4:19right the sort of outpouring
125. 4:20of not just anyone's unconscious but the
126. 4:22artist unconscious
127. 4:24so is this political right so we've
128. 4:26talked a lot about different
129. 4:28movements and where they lie in terms of
130. 4:30politics i think that's an
131. 4:32important theme in this class with
132. 4:34surrealists it's a little trickier
133. 4:36so some of the surrealists were
134. 4:38communist but
135. 4:39it wasn't something that the entire
136. 4:41group was a part of
137. 4:43so they each sort of had their own
138. 4:45politics right so it wasn't
139. 4:47at its heart a movement about explicit
140. 4:50engagement with politics
141. 4:51but there is something sort of radical
142. 4:55just about the notion of the unconscious
143. 4:58right the notion that
144. 4:59we all have these dark inner worlds
145. 5:01right there's something sort of
146. 5:02leveling about that that we're all sort
147. 5:04of these dark sickos inside
148. 5:06even the people who look really sort of
149. 5:09buttoned up like they've got it all
150. 5:10together right we're
151. 5:11we're all messed up in our own sort of
152. 5:13weird unique ways
153. 5:15and so there is something sort of
154. 5:16radical about that
155. 5:18you know embrace of that particular
156. 5:21philosophy
157. 5:22and the rejection of enlightenment
158. 5:24philosophies which
159. 5:26had been by that time sort of reigning
160. 5:28in society
161. 5:29for a couple of centuries so
162. 5:34so what i don't really know how to so
163. 5:36political
164. 5:38radical yeah kind of so it's sort of a
165. 5:41tricky
166. 5:42question i think to answer when it comes
167. 5:44to the surrealists
168. 5:45all right uh so that probably is enough
169. 5:49for our quick intro to surrealism for
170. 5:53our lesson this week and we will dig in
171. 5:56a lot more to these themes in our videos
172. 5:59below
173. 6:00and i will see you there