Surrealism Across Centuries, from 1920's Painting to 2000's Graphic Arts

Surrealism is an early 1920’s art movement which influenced visual arts, literature, film, music and philosophy. Surrealism can be easily enjoyed in the field of visual arts. The Surrealist art movement was lead by Andre Breton. Prior to Breton’s leadership to Surrealism, he used Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic methods on treating soldiers with “combat stress reaction”. Dr. Freud’s free association, dream analysis, and untapping the unconscious are the psychoanalytic methods are the core essentials of Surrealism.

There are two types of Surrealism, the organic and narrative. Organic surrealism is characterized as non-representational, amorphous, and organic in forms. Narrative Surrealism is delusional and representational but absolutely defying rationality.

Among the famous surreal painters are Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, Jean Arp, Andre Masson, Joan Miro, Rene Magritte, Marc Chagall and Yves Tanguy.

Surrealism is more than an art concept but a revolution. It has gone through lots of research and published journals. The Surrealist Manifestos, the first was written by Andre Breton contains their theoretical stand. The second was managed by Breton and the third was not released to the public.

Though surrealism in visual arts lasted until 1930’s, surrealism as modern art movement, seems to be timeless. Just one more decade away and Surrealism will be a century old but its artistry is still highly appreciated today. The 1920's surreal visual arts are portrayed by surrealists’ paintings while now, they are depicted by graphic software. This graphic design technique is known as “surreal photo manipulation”.

Photoshop’s ability to edit images makes it widely used for surreal photo manipulation. Common narrative themes are distorted body parts, metamorphoses, fantasy, torture, dream, destruction, and death. Most of the deformed body parts themes resembles like that of Magritte and Dali’s paintings.

Compared before, surreal photo manipulation is easier than surreal painting. The former can be edited without damaging other areas because of the layers used in Photoshop and the availability photos lessens the effort. Surrealist painters had tedious works to perfect their masterpiece since they are the pioneers and paints are the popular medium used back then. They even have to induce hallucinations in order to create an idea for their painting.

The advent of computers especially in the field of graphic design revives numerous classic concepts like surrealism. But regardless of the medium used, surrealism will last as long as humans make their way to royal to the unconscious - dream.






Max Ernst, The Phases of the Night (1946)

Salvador Dali,  The Persistence of Memory (1931)

Man Ray, Observatory Time – The Lovers (1936)

Jean Arp, Plastron et fourchette  (1922)

Andre Masson, Ibdes in Aragon (1935)

Joan Miro, The Two Philosophers (1936)

Rene Magritte, The Sirens (1952)

Marc Chagall, Liebende in Vence

Yves Tanguy, The Ribbon of Excess (1932)



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