Surrealism evolved out of Dadaism in the early 20th century, drawing on Freudian psychoanalysis to explore the unconscious and the world of dreams. It became a distinctive expression in painting and film through the work of artists such as Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel.
Surrealist style of expression
To put it simply, the surrealist style is an expression of something beyond reality. It is characterized by the exploration of surrealistic worlds such as the unconscious, dreams, and fantasy, free from the constraints of reality. Surrealism derives from the French avant-garde movement of the early 20th century, which traces its roots to Dadaism. Whereas Dadaism rejected traditional art forms and sought to create something new through destruction, Surrealism attempted to create a new reality through the world of the unconscious.
Surrealism began in earnest when a group of artists published the Surrealist Manifesto. Drawing on Freud’s psychoanalysis, they began to express a world of fantasy and dreams that existed beyond reason. Notable Surrealists include Salvador Dali and René Magritte, whose realistic yet bizarre renderings of images from the unconscious left a lasting impression on audiences.
Because surrealism goes beyond realistic notions or typical forms of representation, it is sometimes opposed to realism or abstract expression. Interestingly, however, despite this opposition, surrealism can also be closer to realism through its hyper-realistic details. This is especially evident in the work of Salvador Dali, whose works blur the lines between reality and fantasy, giving them a more profound realism. Surrealism can therefore be understood as a broad category of styles that includes realism and abstraction.
Surrealism originated in painting, but its expression has expanded into many different artistic genres. Surrealism moved away from the flat canvas and created new spatial compositions and concepts, and focused on representing the unconscious, unreal, and imaginary worlds, in contrast to cubism’s focus on flat, ideologized representation. With these new modes of expression, Surrealism gave flat painting greater autonomy.
Surrealism’s exploration of the invisible world of the unconscious rather than visible reality stemmed from Freud’s psychoanalytic theories, which were used as a tool to explore the human psyche and highlighted the unconscious and dream world as important subjects for artistic expression. The Surrealists abandoned religious notions and began to focus on the human inner world and self as the subject of expression. This shift expanded the subject matter of art from the religious and mythological to the personal and human, resulting in increasingly intangible and figurative works.
Surrealism became more than just an art form, it evolved into an ideological and philosophical movement, which was expressed not only in painting, but also in a variety of other artistic genres, including literature, film, and sculpture, and furthermore, it served to subvert political, ethical, and religious preconceptions. This was especially evident in its attempts to fuse with political ideologies, with some Surrealists even attempting to fuse with Communism. However, these attempts were ultimately unsuccessful, and Surrealism would go down a path of division. Nevertheless, Surrealism would later fuse with Freudian psychoanalysis to explore new artistic directions until World War II, when artists such as Salvador Dali would travel to the United States and spread throughout the world.
Expressive qualities of surrealist cinema
When discussing Surrealism’s cinematic forms of expression, it’s impossible not to mention Luis Buñuel’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, which marks the beginning of Surrealist cinema and is the cinematization of a traumatic dream story that Buñuel shared with his Spanish compatriot Salvador Dalí. The Dogs of Andalusia is less a narrative and more a series of visualizations of Surrealist paintings, and the film is filled with intense and disturbing images, including a woman’s eyes being slashed open with a razor blade, swarms of ants crawling out of her palm, and an attempted rapist pulling a piano carrying a donkey’s corpse.
At the time of its release, the film was interpreted and evaluated by many critics in terms of Marxist thought and Freudian psychology, among others. However, Bunuel insisted that the film was not made to convey any particular ideology or idea, but was simply a visualization of the kind of superego images that might be drawn unconsciously in a dream. It is significant as the first example of a surrealist form of expression that broke away from conventional, orthodox artistic thought and was expressed in the language of film.
After Dogs of Andalusia, Bnuel continued to develop his surrealist visual language through a variety of experiments. Leaving the non-narrative structure of his early films and gradually absorbing narrative, his later works established a distinctive style that combined narrative and surrealistic forms of expression. One of his signature expressive choices was to reveal unconscious human instincts and desires through the use of both figurative and conscious appearances.
In his later work, The Ambiguous Object of Desire, the character Conchita, played alternately by two actresses, has a dual personality, both saintly and femme fatale. This unconventional presentation was highly innovative at the time, and exemplifies Bündel’s unique cinematic sensibility. The film also features surrealistic devices that only Bündel could pull off, such as the explosion of an anti-government terrorist in the middle of the film, or a giant bag whose purpose and origin is unclear.
In another of his films, The Secret Charms of the Bourgeoisie, a group of wandering bourgeois gather in a restroom to eat. In this scene, the bourgeois eat in a restroom rather than a dining room, and they are depicted sitting on toilet seats. Scenes like this are classic examples of surrealist visual representation, striking the viewer with the irony inherent in the realistic setting.
Whereas surrealism in painting focused on expressing the superego and the unconscious, free from religious and ideological notions, surrealist cinema is equally focused on capturing the superego and unconscious inner expressions hidden within realistic images. This can be distinguished from painterly surrealism in that the irony of everyday life and the sometimes blatant and realistic representation of the inner self are the defining characteristics of cinematic surrealism.
