Salvador Dali, Lobster Telephone, 1936
Surrealism and Buñuel
Introduction:
Surrealism: arose out of the artistic, social and political responses to World War One. Part of the “project” of Modernism - and its chief influences were the writings of Marx, and Freud. In those respects, therefore, it can be allied with Expressionism. Although there are many differences...
This lecture sketches the background to Surrealism, covers some key
aspects of Freudian dream analysis (the surrealists revere Freud), and
discusses Luis Buñuel.
Background to Surrealism
1) General: REACTION AGAINST THE WAR
“Art” - the traditional arts - are seen to be implicated in that corrupt
system. Surrealism would grow out of this profound dissatisfaction with
the status quo and the Establishment .
2) Dadaism - a precursor of Surrealism - lasted from around
1915 - 1923. Robert Short notes “Dada’s Twin Functions of Cultural desecration
and affirmation”. Significant Dada artists include: Max Ernst, Man Ray,
Marcel Duchamp, George Grosz.
Cabaret Voltaire (1916) (Hugo Ball) in Zurich - deeply subversive - very confrontational - attacking audience expectationsMarcel Duchamp: developed his series of “Ready Mades” - sculpture installations using existing objects - most famously, FOUNTAIN in 1917 - clearly wrecking the idea of high art / raising the ordinary to an aesthetic plane!!
George Grosz: Photo-montage pictures (thrown together from used matieral) and the Berlin sketches : vicious satirical sketch drawings.
3) POST WAR period - Surrealism
1919 - 1923: Paris: Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp : come from New
York; Tristan Tzara - leading Dadaist poet : from Zurich; Max Ernst: from
Cologne; and the young French poet Andre Breton is there: with a group
of writers who were all
attracted to Dada.
Andre Breton - author of the 1st Surrealist Manifesto:
“SURREALISM, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express, verbally, in writing, or by other means, the real processes of thought. Thought’s dictation, in the absence of all control exercised by the reason and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations... Surrealism rests in the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association neglected heretofore; in the omnipotence of the dream and in the disinterested play of thought.” (q. in Gascoyne, p. 61)“Under colour of civilisation, under pretext of progress, all that rightly or wrongly may be regarded as fantasy or superstition has been banished from the mind, all uncustomary searching after truth has been proscribed. It is only by what must seem sheer luck that there has recently been brought to light an aspect of mental life...with which it was supposed we no longer had any concern. All credit for these discoveries must go to Freud. Based on these discoveries a current of opinion is forming that will enable the explorer of the human mind to extend his investigations, justified as he will be in taking into account more than mere summary realities. The imagination is perhaps on the point of reclaiming its rights”. (q. in Gascoyne, p. 60)
Andre Breton: “Preoccupied as I still was at that time with Freud, ... I resolved to obtain from myself what one seeks to obtain from (psychiatric) patients, namely a monologue poured out as rapidly as possible, over which the subject’s critical faculty has no control... and which as much as possible represents spoken thought.” (q. In Gascoyne, p. 46)
1925: Un Chien Andalou (The Andalusian Dog) in 1928 with the artist Salvador Dali (we will watch it in seminars).
characteristics of work
• anti-clericalism: priests
mocked, exposed: savage attacks on Church and Establishment
• debunking middle class
habits
• sexual desire - either
fulfilled - or more often comically frustrated
• the gothic - interest
in the English romantic gothic canon (Monk Lewis, Wuthering Heights-
which he filmed)
• Interest in the pursuit
of freedom, the desire to transgress the claustrophobic respectability
of his upbringing
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Points to coinsider when watching it:
Rituals of food preparation
and eating - why?
The narrative structure
and dreams - why??
The recurring motif
of characters walking down a country road - why???
Peter William Evans writes on the semiotics of the Fernando Ray character in Thje Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie thus:
The order of the perfectly trimmed beard and moustache is undermined by unmistakable signs of carnal surrender, like the slightly overfed cheeks and the amused, ironized air of a man perhaps ultimately aware of the absurdities of elegant, formalized language and the repressive behaviour of which they are merely the outward expression.” (P18)
Bunuel said of thew dreams: in the film: “Dreams are a continuation
of reality, of waking life. In a film they are only valuable if you
don’t announce: ‘This is a dream.’ Because then the viewer will say:
‘Ah, this is a dream. Then it’s not important. The Public is
dissapointed, and the film loses its mystery, its power to disturb people.
(In Paul Lenti, ed., p. 212)
Luis Buñuel - Selected Filmography
1928: Un Chien Andalou (with Salvador Dali) *
1930: L’Age D’or
1932: Las Hurdes (Land without Bread)
1961: Viridiana*
1962: The Exterminating Angel*
1965: Simon of the Desert*
1967: Belle de Jour
1970: Tristana
1972: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie*
1974: The Phantom of Liberty*
1977: That Obscure Object of Desire
(* indicates copy held in the library)