GESM 110 "Surrealism in France, Spain and Mexico", Fall 2016 Material to be covered on the midterm:
Three short films:
La Coquille et le clergyman, Germaine Dulac, screenplay by Antonin Artaud, 1928.
Le Retour à la Raison, Man Ray, 1923.
L'Étoile de mer, Man Ray, 1928.
https://www.openculture.com/2011/07/the_seashell_and_the_clergyman_the_world s_first_surrealist_film.html
https://www.openculture.com/2012/04/man_ray_and_the_icinema_puri_four_surrea list_films_from_the_1920s.html
Breton, André. Manifesto of Surrealism, 1924. Breton, André. Soluble Fish, 1924.
Nadeau, Maurice. The History of Surrealism through Part Three, p172.
Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams, Chapters 1 & 2, posted on Bb.
You will write two essays, choosing from 4 options. Please bring blue books to the midterm. Plan to spend 30-35min per essay question, with 5-10min to read over your work. Organize your essays into an introduction, body of your argument and conclusion.
You will need to be able to define Surrealism, using your own words or quoting from the readings. Be prepared to discuss when and where the Surrealist movement took place, as well as the historical context. You may be asked to incorporate information from your presentation in a reflection-type question. (Which artist/writer did you study, why were they an important/significant part of the movement, some specific pieces they created, and lasting effects of their ideas/art/writing as well as the "limits" of Surrealism or Surrealist thought.)
First Manifesto of Surrealism- André Breton
Identify the following ideas in the text and explain their relationship to Surrealism/the Surrealist game: Childhood (p3-4, pp15-16)
Imagination (p4) Freedom (p4) To err (p5) Madness (p5) Indifference (p5)
Hallucinations, illusions (p5) Honesty (p5)
Realistic attitude (p6) Materialistic attitude (p6) Character, plot (p8) Readymade human type (p8) The reign of logic (p9) Experience (p10)
The dream (pp10-11) The marvelous (pp16-17)
What are your own sources of poetic inspiration? How do you access them?
Please be prepared to describe the three short films that we covered, who the film-makers were, if other artists/writers collaborated on them, when they were made and to discuss details about the images/plot and interpret them. Please also be able to compare the films to each other, to discuss similarities and differences and possible reasons for those differences.
Having read Soluble Fish, you should be able to explain why it is an important work, what Surrealist techniques it employs and to connect your own experience of reading it to Freud's theories as discussed in class. Please be prepared to discuss your own experience of automatic writing and compare/relate that to Soluble Fish, and to interpret selections of the writing based on your knowledge of Breton's First Manifesto of Surrealism and Freud's Interpretation of Dreams.
Maurice Nadeau, The History of Surrealism
Surrealism is still alive!
p35 "The surrealist state of mind, or, better still surrealist behavior, is eternal. Understood as a certain tendency, not to transcend but to penetrate reality, to ‘arrive at an ever more precise and at the same time ever more passionate apprehension of the tangible world,'* goal of all philosophies whose object is not merely the preservation of the world as it is, eternally unslaked thirst in the heart of man."
*André Breton, Qu'est-ce que le surréalism? (1934) Chapter 1, The War
Surrealism grew out of previously existing artistic movements as well as the "social, political, scientific and philosophic events" (p43) occurring between the two world wars.
While the movement was created in Paris, it attained international scope and influence. (Incorporate examples from class presentations.)
p44 "At the Armistice, the political and social situation of Europe was exceptional. Theoretically there were two camps: the victors and the vanquished, but the former found themselves facing a state of destitution hardly less severe than the latter's. Not only material destitution, but a total impoverishment that was already raising, after four years of slaughter and destruction of every kind, the question of confidence in the regime. Had it all come to nothing more than this?
Had it taken so many gigantic means to end in a rectification of borders, in the conquest of new ports for some and their loss for others, in the theft of colonies already stolen? It was in this disproportion between means and ends that the madness of the system appeared."
The system was "bankrupt".
Elites Science Art Literature
Civilization
How might these areas have been "bankrupt" after the First World War? How were questions of laws, morality and religion possibly affected?
After peace treaties were signed, the "machine, once certain gears have been repaired, begins grinding again. There are hitches, jams: revolutionary movements of all kinds; but the longed-for change still doesn't come. The masters have been able to stop in time, and even exchange favors in order to bring the ‘world underneath' into line. A tremendous revolution, already necessary years ago, is aborted" (p46).
"Prosperity", euphoria, autos, planes, railroads, scientific discoveries, movies, radios.
p47 "What has not changed at the same rate is man's knowledge- he has remained the savage using machines of which he knows only the approximate function.
Worse, he becomes prisoner of these machines he mass-produces...Reason, logic, categories, time, space, two-and-two-makes-four have ultimately come to seem only living realities, whereas they were nothing but convenient forms, practical and provisional means to his ends, infinitely superior to primitive empiricism and religious mysticism, but merely a state in the development of thought, a stage which must be transcended."
How might one "transcend" these "realities"?
p48 "Man, torn between his reason- discredited but still arrogant- and an unknown realm which he feels to be the true source of his acts, his thoughts, his life, and which has been revealed to him in the sleep that devours nearly half his existence, man dares turn his eyes upon it... A Viennese psychiatrist, armed with a dark lantern, seeks to penetrate the dim labyrinth. His discoveries are so horrifying that the bourgeoisie is scandalized."
Why? Private/public life, conscious/unconscious, dream/logic What is the poetic revolution?
How is language the intermediary?