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CUBISM (1906-1921)

CUBISM

• Movement initiated by Pablo Picasso and Georges Bracque

• Painters break down their subjects into patterns of geometric shapes – using not only traditional tools but also collage techniques

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907)

Georges Braque, Glass, Carafe and Newspapers (1914)

Georges Braque, Glass, Carafe and Newspapers (1914)

Pablo Picasso, Bottle of Vieux Marc, Glass, Guitar and Newspaper (1913)

Pablo Picasso, Still Life (1914)

Georges Braque, Bottle, Newspaper, Pipe, and Glass (1913)

Georges Braque, Glass, Carafe and Newspapers (1914)

DADA (1916-1923)

Dada

Rejection of rationalism and traditional values as the main causes of the Great War.

“Excessive rational thought and bourgeois values brought the conflict of the war upon the world.”

“Dada is not art, it is anti-art” Hans Richter

"For us, art is not an end in itself ... but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in” Hugo Ball

“Dada philosophy is the sickest, most paralyzing and most destructive thing that has ever originated from the brain of man” American Art News

Dada art techniques rely almost exclusively on pre-existing materials:

– Collage

– Photomontage

– Assemblages

– Readymades

In order to create “works of art that are not ‘of art’”, Dada artist and provocateur Marcel Duchamp discards the very foundations of traditional art: beauty and craftsmanship.

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain (1917)

“Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view — created a new thought for that object.” Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp, LHOOQ (1919)

SURREALISM

SURREALIST INFLUENCES

• Cubism

• Dadaism

• Modern Psychoanalysis (Freud) – Free association

– Dream analysis

– Unconscious

“A juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be -- the greater its emotional power and poetic reality".

One of Surrealism’s primary goals is to eliminate the “ordinary meaning of ordinary objects – in order to reveal a deeper truth”.

“One could combine inside the same frame elements not normally found together to produce illogical and startling effects.”

André Breton

• Father of Surrealism

• Exposed to Freudian theories while working with WWI veterans suffering from PTSD

“Long live the social revolution, and it alone!”

André Breton

• Dictionary: Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.

• Encyclopedia: Surrealism. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life.

Bureau of Surrealist Research

“The simplest surrealist act consists in going into the street with revolvers in your fists and shooting blindly into the crowd as much as possible. Anyone who has never felt the desire to deal thus with the current wretched principle of humiliation and stultification clearly belongs in this crowd himself with his belly at bullet height.” Second Manifesto of Surrealism

“There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.” Salvador Dali

René Magritte, The Treachery of Images (1928-29)

Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory (1931)

Salvador Dalí, Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) (1954)