The Universities of Essex and Manchester, together with Tate, collaborate on the Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacies. This module emerges form the research culture of the Centre, drawing upon the work not only of the module director but also a team of current PhD students. In the spirit of the collective investigation indicated by the creation of The Bureau for Surrealist Research in 1924, the idea is to develop multiple readings of Surrealism in a series of themed seminars. A further aim of the module team is to initiate a discourse on Surrealism not only as an historical artifact, but as a practice which continues to be provocative and influential today.
The impact of Surrealism, not only on the history of the avant-garde, but on twentieth-century thought and popular culture, cannot be underestimated. Its celebration of love, the feminine, the subconscious and the irrational ran counter to European intellectual patrimony, making it a radical and provocative current, which manifested itself not only in a rich artistic and literary output, but also in violent and political anti-social expressions. This module grapples with the amorphous and provocative nature of Surrealism by taking a thematic and theoretical approach, giving an overview of Surrealism, its ancestry, and its legacies for the contemporary arts.
The module commences with an examination of the radical, anarchic and nihilistic anti-art practice of Dada, which sought to undermine and critically attack European culture following the humanitarian crisis of the First World War. From the Barres trial of 1921, Surrealism succeeded from Dada as a regenerative force, seeking to fill the void left by Dada destruction, and looking to offer answers to the questions Dada raised by looking at love and fraternity as ways to ameliorate society. Assessing the manifestos of Dada and Surrealism will initiate a debate on the impact the manifesto format had on challenging the conventions of artistic expression, before moving to consider the literary and artistic movements that influenced and shaped the development of Surrealism and how the surrealists appropriated subjects and material from art and literature.
The ambiguous relationship of a radical artistic movement with formal political expression will be explained by examining Surrealism's involvement with Communism, before probing how this radical, political and literary movement came to find expression within the tradition of painting, and how the conventions of art making were challenged through various mediums including the use of film, photography and the object. A discussion of Surrealism's interest in primitivism and non-western cultures will be uncovered further by looking at the international spread of Surrealism, and its manifestations in places such as Czechoslovakia, Martinique, England, Belgium and Japan. The use of eroticism and same-sex desire will be examined as an intersection between the personal and the political, looking at feminist and queer reassessments of surrealist practice, ideas which will be further developed in a subsequent session focussing on female practitioners and the representation of the female form in surrealist work. 'Postwar Regeneration' assesses the activities of surrealists during and after the Second World War, examining censorship, the impact of the death of Breton, and the linking of Surrealism with student activism during the summer of 68. The module culminates in a reflection on the legacies of Surrealism, looking at contemporary surrealist groups and identifying surrealist impulses in contemporary art.
The impact of Surrealism, not only on the history of the avant-garde, but on twentieth-century thought and popular culture, cannot be underestimated. Its celebration of love, the feminine, the subconscious and the irrational ran counter to European intellectual patrimony, making it a radical and provocative current, which manifested itself not only in a rich artistic and literary output, but also in violent and political anti-social expressions. This module grapples with the amorphous and provocative nature of Surrealism by taking a thematic and theoretical approach, giving an overview of Surrealism, its ancestry, and its legacies for the contemporary arts.
The module commences with an examination of the radical, anarchic and nihilistic anti-art practice of Dada, which sought to undermine and critically attack European culture following the humanitarian crisis of the First World War. From the Barres trial of 1921, Surrealism succeeded from Dada as a regenerative force, seeking to fill the void left by Dada destruction, and looking to offer answers to the questions Dada raised by looking at love and fraternity as ways to ameliorate society. Assessing the manifestos of Dada and Surrealism will initiate a debate on the impact the manifesto format had on challenging the conventions of artistic expression, before moving to consider the literary and artistic movements that influenced and shaped the development of Surrealism and how the surrealists appropriated subjects and material from art and literature.
The ambiguous relationship of a radical artistic movement with formal political expression will be explained by examining Surrealism's involvement with Communism, before probing how this radical, political and literary movement came to find expression within the tradition of painting, and how the conventions of art making were challenged through various mediums including the use of film, photography and the object. A discussion of Surrealism's interest in primitivism and non-western cultures will be uncovered further by looking at the international spread of Surrealism, and its manifestations in places such as Czechoslovakia, Martinique, England, Belgium and Japan. The use of eroticism and same-sex desire will be examined as an intersection between the personal and the political, looking at feminist and queer reassessments of surrealist practice, ideas which will be further developed in a subsequent session focussing on female practitioners and the representation of the female form in surrealist work. 'Postwar Regeneration' assesses the activities of surrealists during and after the Second World War, examining censorship, the impact of the death of Breton, and the linking of Surrealism with student activism during the summer of 68. The module culminates in a reflection on the legacies of Surrealism, looking at contemporary surrealist groups and identifying surrealist impulses in contemporary art.