Surrealism Circa 1921

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Surrealism Circa 1921 1940

• "Beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing
  machine and an umbrella
• on a dissection table.
• - Lautréamont
• Les chants de Maldoror

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The Surrealist Revolution (left) Photomontage
for La Révolution Surréaliste, nº 12, 1929 by
René Magritte (Belgian, 1898-1967), Enquête sur
l'amour (Inquiry on Love)(bottom right)
Surrealist group, Paris, 1930, L-R Tristan
Tzara, Paul Eluard, André Breton, Hans Arp,
Salvador Dali, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, René
Crevel, Man Ray
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(left) The World in the Time of the Surrealists,
Brussels, 1929"We are determined to make a
Revolution." "We have joined the word surrealism
to the word revolution solely to show the
disinterested, detached and even entirely
desperate character of this revolution." -
André Breton

• (right) Easter Island, Polynesia, ceremonial
  dance paddle (rapa) from André Bretons
  collection of Oceanic art. It represents a highly
  stylized male figure with Janus-face head and
  phallic finial showing retracted foreskin.

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Precursors to Surrealism 19th Century
Romanticism and Symbolism (left) Arnold Bocklin,
The Isle of the Dead, 1880, oil on canvas,
Symbolism (right) Francisco Goya, Saturn c.
1821-1823, Oil on plaster remounted on canvas,
Romanticism
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Precursor to Surrealism Giorgio de Chirico,
(Greek-Italian,1888-1978) (left) The Melancholy
and Mystery of a Street, 1914, oil on canvas, 34
x 28 Metaphysical School (right) The Great
Metaphysician, 1917, oil on canvas, 41 x
27influence on De Chirico of Arnold Bocklin
(center)
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New York Times 2007 The Museo Carlo Bilotti is
Romes newest cultural gem, with extraordinary
art housed in a fastidiously restored
16th-century marble palazzo smack in the middle
of Villa Borghese. Bilotti, an Italian-American
perfume (Old Spice) executive from Palm Beach,
Fla., left his collection, including 22 de
Chirico paintings, to the city of Rome.
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Naturalist or Hand Painted Dream
SurrealismRené Magritte (Belgian, 1898-1967) The
Treachery of Images, 1928-29, oil on canvas, 23 x
31, LACMA, Deconstruction
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Magritte, The False Mirror, 1928, oil on canvas,
212 x 31, MoMA NYC
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Magritte, Les Valeurs personnelles (Personal
Values), 1952, 31 1/2 in. x 39 3/8 in., oil on
canvas, SFMOMA
John Baldessari at 2007 exhibition he designed
Treachery of Images René Magritte and
Contemporary Art. LACMA
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(left) Charles Ray (American, b. 1953), Fall '91,
1992, mixed media, 96 in. H(right) Robert Gober
(American, b.1954), Untitled, 1989-92, mixed media
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(left) Robert Gober, Untitled, 1990, beeswax,
human hair, pigment(right) Magritte, The Rape,
1935, oil on canvas
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• "The eye exists in its savage state. The marvels
  of the earth ... have as their sole witness the
  wild eye that traces all its colors back to the
  rainbow."
• - André Breton

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Surrealist magazine, La Révolution Surréaliste
The Surrealist Revolution, 12 issues, 1924-1929
was modeled on the conservative scientific
magazine, La Nature. In a mock scientific
manner, specimens of automatic writing and
records of dreams were illustrated with
photographs, mostly by the machine-poet Man Ray
(American,1890-1976). The review succeeded in
shocking everyone.
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Man Ray, Minotaur, 1933, for the Surrealist
magazine, Minotaur. Collapses human and animal
into a single (border) impossible category
bull-human, like the Greek mythical monster.
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Man Ray, Minotaur, 1933
Surrealist formlessness erasing categories of
sexuality
Brassai, Nudes, 1933 Phallus-female torso
Brancusi, Torso, 1924 1926
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Man Ray, Anatomies, c. 1930 phallus-neck
(double entendre)
The frame announces the cameras ability to find
and isolate what we could call the worlds
constant writing of erotic symbols, its ceaseless
automatism.
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(left) Lee Miller (American, 1907-1977), Nude
Bent Forward, Paris, 1931(right) Dora Maar
(French, 1907-1997), Le Pere Ubu, 1936
Surrealist defamiliarization becomes Formless
(Informe) of the subconscious and the dream
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AUTOMATONS and mannequins Hans Bellmer (Polish,
1902-75), La Poupée (Doll), 1935-49, hand colored
gelatin silver print(right) Bellmer, La Poupée,
1935-36 (center) La Poupée), 1934 gelatin
silver printsDolls are made of wood, metal,
papier-mâché and dressed with wigs, clothing,
etc. or not
The art object is not the sculpture it is the
photograph.
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SURREALIST PHOTOGRAPHY MANNIQUINS AND
DISTORTIONSEugène Atget (French 1857-1927),
Boulevard de Strasbourg, Corsets, 1912, albumen
silver printAndré Kertész (Hungarian,
1894-1985), Distortion 4, 1933, gelatin silver
print
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Luis Bunuel Salvador Dali, frames from Un Chien
Andalou (France) An Andalusian Dog, Surrealist
film, 1928. Eyes, insects, metamorphosis,
erotics, madness of the dream subconscious
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METAMOPHOSIS OF FORMSalvador Dali (Spanish,
1904-89) interpreted photograph, Paranoic Face,
1931 from Le Surrealisme au Service de la
Revolution, no.3. voluntary hallucination"
the "critical paranoic method"(right) Dali,
Apparition of a face and a Fruit Dish, 1930

• I think the time is rapidly coming when it will
  be possibleto systematize confusion thanks to a
  paranoiac and active process of thought, and so
  assist in discrediting completely the world of
  reality.
• - Dali

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Salvador Dali, The Lugubrious Game, 1929, oil on
canvas

• "Repugnance is the sentry standing right near the
  door to those things
• that we desire most. - Salvador Dali

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Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory,
1931oil on canvas, 9 x 13, MoMA NYC
The transcription of reveries. Hand-painted
dream photographs. Dalis morphological
aesthetics of the soft and hard and the search
for form un-form (Informe)
Cape Creus, Catalonia
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ANXIOUS VISIONS for Anxious Times social
contexts of Surrealist imagery(left) Salvador
Dali, Soft Construction with Boiled Beans
Premonitions of Civil War, 1936, oil on canvas,
39 x 39 (Spanish Civil War), Surrealism (right)
compare Francisco Goya, 1821 (Napoleonic wars in
Spain), Romanticism
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Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937, oil on canvas,
116 x 258, Madrid
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AUTOMATISM Surrealist exquisite corpse
drawings (left) by Yves Tanguy, Man Ray, Max
Morise, Joan Miró, c. 1926.(right) exquisite
corpse by Victor Brauner, André Breton, Jacques
Hérold and Yves Tanguy, 1935.
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AUTOMATISM and abstract biomorphic
SurrealismAndré Masson (French, 1896-1987) Quare
de vulva exuxiste me (Why didst thou bring me
forth from the womb?), 1923, pen ink on
paper(right) Battle of Fishes, 1926, sand,
gesso, oil, pencil, and charcoal on canvas, 14 x
28,
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Joan Miró (Spanish,1893-1983), Carnival of
Harlequin, 1924-5, oil on canvas, 26 x 36
Response to Cubism "I will break their guitar."
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BIOMORPHISM POPULAR CULTUREJoan Mirò,
Painting, 1933, oil on canvas, 58 x 65 MoMA,
NYC (right) source collage of clippings from
equipment catalogues
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DISJUNCTION / READYMADE /UNCANNY OBJECT(left)
Joan Miró, Object, assemblage stuffed parrot on
wood perch, stuffed silk stocking with velvet
garter and dolls paper shoe suspended in hollow
wood frame, derby hat, hanging cork ball,
celluloid fish, and engraved map, 32 x 12 x 10,
1936(right) Joseph Cornell (American, 1903-1972
) Medici Boy, 1942-52. mixed media assemblage
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(left) Exhibition of Surrealist Objects, Paris,
1936, mock-scientific display(right) Marcel
Duchamp, Surrealist Exhibition / Installation, 16
Miles of String, Peggy Guggenheim Gallery, NYC,
1942 the labyrinth of the Minotaur
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SURREALISM . DIASPORIC INDIGENISM / MAGIC
REALISMWilfredo Lam (Cuban, 1902-82), The
Jungle, 1943, gouache on paper mounted on canvas,
710 x 76, MoMA NYCSanterìa blend of African
and Catholic religious practices(left) Wilfredo
Lam in his Havana studio, 1947
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Matta (Roberto Matta Echaurren, Chilean,
1911-2002), Disasters of Mysticism, 1942oil on
canvas, 38 x 51
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Frida Kahlo (Mexican, 1907-1954) (right) What the
Water Yields Me, oil on canvas,1938
Imogen Cunningham, Frida Kahlo in San Francisco,
1931
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Kahlo, Self-Portrait on the Border Between Mexico
and the United States1932, oil on tin, 12 x 13
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Kahlo, Henry Ford Hospital, 1932, oil on metal,
12 x 15.5 in. (compare left) Mexican ex-voto
(retablo), oil on tin, 1878, 14" x 10"
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Aztec goddess Tlazolteotl in the act of giving
birth to a man.
Kahlo, My Birth, 1932, painted after a
miscarriage coinciding with the death of the
artists mother How I imagined I was born. (a
double death?)
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Kahlo, Marxism Will Bring Health to the Sick,
1954. One of the artists last paintings an
effort to create political art
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Leonora Carrington (British-born Mexican
Surrealist Painter and Writer, born in 1917)
Self-Portrait (The White Horse Inn), 1936-7, oil
on canvas, 25 x 32
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Dorothea Tanning (American, 1910 - ) (left) Ein
klein nachtmusik "A little night music,"
1946(right) Birthday, 1942, oil on canvas, 40.25
x 25.5 inches (center, below) with husband Max
Ernst, Sedona, Arizona, 1948
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Dorothea Tanning, Hôtel du Pavot, cloth and mixed
materials, permanent installation, Centre
Pompidou, Paris, 2000
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Alberto Giacometti (Swiss, 1901-66), Suspended
Ball, 1930-31 (1965 reconstruction), plaster and
metal, 24 x 14 x 13(right) Constantin Brancusi,
Torse (wood 1922 bronze 1926)
Sexual nudes undoing categories of male female
desire
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Alberto Giacometti, Woman with Her Throat Cut
(Femme égorgée), bronze, 8 x 34 x 25, MoMA, NYC
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Alberto Giacometti, Woman with Her Throat Cut
(Femme égorgée), bronze, 8x34 x 25, MoMA, NYC
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Giacometti, The Palace at 4 a.m., 1932-3,
construction in wood, glass, wire, and string, 25
x 28 x 16, MoMA NYC (top right)
1932 sketch indicates pre-conception
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Details of Giacomettis The Palace at 4 A.M.
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END OF THE AGE OF EUROPE AND EMERGENCE OF NEW
YORK SCHOOL(left) Hitler occupies Paris,
1940Photograph of the artists exhibiting in the
Artists in Exile show at the Pierre Matisse
Gallery, New York, March, 1942. Left to right,
first row Matta, Ossip Zadkine, Yves Tanguy, Max
Ernst, Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger second row
André Breton, Piet Mondrian, André Masson, Amédée
Ozenfant, Jacques Lipchitz, Pavel Tchelitchew,
Kurt Seligmann, Eugene Berman. Photograph by
George Platt Lynes
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END OF THE AGE OF EUROPE AND EMERGENCE OF NEW
YORK SCHOOLMax Ernst, Europe After the Rain,
1940-42, oil on canvas, 21 x 58
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Nina Leen, photograph captioned Irrasible Group
of Advanced Artists, printed in Life (15 January
1952), (top row) Willem de Kooning, Adoph
Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Hedda Stern (middle)
Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson
Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell,
Bradley Walker tomlin (bottom) Theodoros
Stamos, Jimmy Ernst, Barnett Newman, James
Brooks, Mark Rothko
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INFLUENCE OF SURREALISM ON ABSTRACT
EXPRESSIONISM(left top) André Masson (French,
18961987. In U.S.194145)Pasiphaë, oil and
tempera, 1943, and (left bottom) 1945, Pastel on
paper, 27x 38(right) Jackson Pollock (1912-56),
Pasiphaë, oil, 1943
Automatism and psycho-analytic theory
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AMERICAN INFLUENCES ON NEW YORK SCHOOL ABSTRACT
EXPRESSIONISTS(left) Jackson Pollock (American,
1912-56),Going West, 1934-35, 15 x 20, oil on
bd (right) Thomas Hart Benton (American
Regionalist, 1889-1975) The Ballad of the Jealous
Lover of Lone Green Valley, oil on masonite, 42 x
53, U of Kansas
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INFLUENCE OF MEXICAN MODERNISM on Abstract
Expressionism(left) Pollock, Flame, oil on
canvas, 1936 (center) David Siqueiros (Mexican,
1896-1974), Echo of a Scream, 1937 (RIGHT) José
Orozco (Mexican 1883-1949), The Epic of American
Civilization Modern Migration of the Spirit,
fresco mural 14th panel, Dartmouth College,
1932-34
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Pollock, Guardians of the Secret, 1943, oil on
canvas, 4 X63, SFMoMA
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Pollock, Mural, oil on canvas, c.20 ft wide, 1943
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Jackson Pollock, Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist),
oil, enamel, and aluminum on canvas, 74 x
911, National Gallery, Washington D.C.
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Photographs of Pollock painting by Hans Namuth,
1950 Action Painting"My opinion is that new
needs need new techniques. And the modern artists
have found new ways and new means of making their
statements." - Jackson Pollock
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Willem de Kooning (Dutch-American, 1904-1997)
(left) drawing Woman 1 New York, 1950 (right)
Woman 1, 1950-52
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Willem de Kooning, Pink Angels, c. 1945, oil and
charcoal on canvasPeter Paul Rubens (1577-1640),
The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, 1618
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De Kooning, Gotham News, 1955, oil on canvas, 69
x 79"
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De Kooning in studio painting, 1970s Action
Painting
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Elaine de Kooning (American, 1918-1989),
photoportrait, 1946Elaine de Kooning, Harold
Rosenberg 3, 1956, 68 x 410
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Lee Krasner (American, 1908 -1984) in New York
studio, mid-1930sBlue Painting, 1946, oil on
canvas, 28 x 36
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Mark Rothko (Russian-American 1903 -70) (left)
Encantation, 1944, mixed media/paper, 24 x 30
(right) Multiform 2 1948, oil on canvas, one of
a small group of untitled works collectively
known as 'Multiforms' that Rothko painted during
the years 1947-49 immediately preceding the
mature works for which he is best known.
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Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1949, oil on canvas, 69
x 56"The people who weep before my pictures
are having the same religious experience I had
when I painted them."
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Rothko, White and Greens in Blue, 1957, Oil on
canvas, 84 x 610 It is a widely accepted
notion among painters that it does not matter
what one paints as long as it is well painted.
This is the essence of academicism. There is no
such thing as a good painting about nothing.
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The Rothko Chapel, Houston, Texas, 1965-66,
opened in 1971I wanted to paint both the finite
and the infinite. I was always looking for
something more. Mark Rothko
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Isamu Noguchi (Japanese-American 1904-88) (left)
Kouros. 1944-45 (center) Constantin Brancusi,
Bird in Space, 1925 (right) Herodiade, stage set
designed by Isamu Noguchi for Martha Graham, 1944.
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(left top) Buson, by Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988).
Japan, Kita Kamakura, 1952. Unglazed Karatsu
stoneware, 8-1/4 x 6-1/2 x 3-3/8. (right) Great
Rock of Inner Seeking1974, basalt, H127 7/8
with stone commemorating poet Buson near Osaka
Japan (below left) Noguchi Garden Museum, Long
Island City with traditional garden in Japan.
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Louise Bourgeois (French-American, b.1911), (left
to right) Quarantania, 1947-53, painted wood on
wood base, 62 high photoportrait of Bourgeois
by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1982 Cumul I, 1968,
marble, 22 x 48
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David Smith (American, 1906-65), Bombing
Civilian Populations, 1939, cast bronze,10 x 10
7/8 (right) Cover Exhibition Catalogue "Medals
for Dishonor by David Smith,1940
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David Smith, Hudson River Landscape,1951, Welded
painted steel and stainless steel, 50 x 75 x 17,
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York,
photograph by David Smith
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(left to right) Julio Gonzalez (Spanish,
1876-1942) Monsieur Cactus I, 1939, bronze, 26
high Picasso, Head of a Woman, 1929-30 Vladimir
Tatlin, Corner Relief, 1915 Smith, Blackburn
Song of an Irish Blacksmith, 1949-50, steel and
broze, 45 x 49 x 24 Smith making a sculpture,
1951 (below left)
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(left to right) David Smith, Tanktotem IX, 1960,
steel, painted, 90 x 33 x 24 Picasso, Bulls
Head, bicycle seat and handlebars, 1943 Smith,
Cubi XVII, 1963, stainless steel,108 x 64 x 38