Surrealism and Dada
Dada responded to the trauma of the First World War with anti-art provocation and chance, while Surrealism mined dreams and the unconscious to reveal a deeper reality.
Definition
Two interconnected interwar avant-garde movements: Dada, an anti-art response to the First World War, and Surrealism, which sought to liberate the unconscious and reconcile dream and reality.
Scope
This topic studies Dada in Zurich, Berlin, Paris, and New York, including the readymade and photomontage, and Surrealism's exploration of automatism, dreams, and the marvelous in the work of Ernst, Dalí, Magritte, and Miró, together with the movements' debts to Freud and their political engagements.
Core questions
- How did Dada use chance, provocation, and the readymade to attack art?
- How did Surrealism draw on Freud and the unconscious?
- What techniques, such as automatism and collage, did these movements develop?
- How did Dada and Surrealism relate to politics and revolution?
Key theories
- Automatism and the surrealist program
- André Breton's definition of Surrealism as pure psychic automatism expressing the real functioning of thought, freed from reason and aesthetic or moral control.
- The uncanny in Surrealism
- Hal Foster's rereading of Surrealism through Freud's concept of the uncanny, arguing that the movement is centrally concerned with repressed desire, repetition, and the death drive.
History
Dada arose around 1916 in neutral Zurich as a revolt against the values that produced the war, spreading internationally. Surrealism, formalized by Breton's 1924 manifesto, succeeded it in Paris and drew on psychoanalysis; later critics such as Hal Foster reinterpreted it through Freud's concept of the uncanny.
Debates
- Art versus anti-art
- Dada's anti-art gestures and the readymade raise the enduring question of whether deliberately anti-aesthetic provocations become art once embraced by museums and the market.
Key figures
- André Breton
- Hal Foster
Related topics
Seminal works
- breton1924
- foster1993
Frequently asked questions
- What is a readymade?
- A readymade is an ordinary manufactured object presented as art, a Dada strategy associated above all with Marcel Duchamp.
- How does Surrealism differ from Dada?
- Dada was largely destructive and anti-art, while Surrealism built a positive program around dreams, the unconscious, and automatism.