Surrealism is a special trend in cinema, painting, and literature. It was formed in France in 1924. Surrealism is believed to have ended in 1969.
This direction had a significant impact on the formation of human consciousness. Its main figures were Salvador Dali, Louis Aragon, Juan Miro, Andre Breton, Louis Bunuel.
Having emerged as a literary one, the current acquired the status of a certain movement in contemporary art as a whole. The followers of surrealism did not set out to form a school or direction. They strove to implement a "global revolutionary project" that applies to all areas of thought and activity. Surrealism was to become a new way of consciousness.
The direction survived several public crises, the Second World War. Penetrating into popular culture, surrealism became a component of postmodernism. Apollinaire (French poet) named his works in which incoherent human sensations were shown depicting something more than reality. Thus, he explained what surrealism is.
A little later, Andre Breton used this term. He published a magazine of surrealism in Paris, published his concept as a new direction in art.
The 1924th year is considered the moment from which surrealism in painting began to exist. Andre Masson and Max Ernst joined the followers of the current. In 1925, the first exhibition of surrealists took place. It exhibited paintings completely different from each other artists. Surrealism in painting was reflected in the canvases of such masters as Picasso, Miro, Henri, Ernst, Chirico, Klee and others.
According to Breton, the new direction was intended to reflect the secret desires and needs of man. And in order to comprehend surrealism in painting or in another sphere of culture, it was enough to have childish spontaneity and receptivity.
Visual art is mainly aimed at the most powerful of all physical senses - vision. That it allows you to control the world. Surrealists attached great importance to vision. Reality was valuable to them only in the sense in which they understood.
Surrealism in painting, as in other areas of culture, developed under the influence of Bergson's philosophy of intuitionism, as well as Freud's theory of psychoanalysis.
Followers of the direction were unhappy with the existing reality. They expressed their discontent in works of art. Surrealists declared reality the source of all evil, opposed the abstract world as a whole. They believed that no social revolution was needed . You can change things by abandoning logic, reason, the ordinary, traditional worldview, the absurd, unsatisfactory differentiation of things into beautiful and ugly, good and bad, false and truthful. Surrealists promoted the rejection of familiar notions that reflect the norms of human interactions.
Fine art was considered the main field of artistic practice of the followers of the movement. It should be noted that not only painting, but also sculpture was included in this area. Surrealistic art also includes collages, frottages, reiographs and other methods introduced by the Cubists. Frottage, for example, was created by transferring to the paper natural drawings of objects laid under it. The process was carried out by rubbing paper with a piece of lead. Thus, fantastic landscapes appeared, forms of ghostly animals, birds, appearing from objects specially laid under the paper.