DADA AND SURREALISM

C.1915-1950 Playing with Reality

Dada, a movement without governing principles, appeared around 1915 as a revolt against the civilization
that had engulfed the world in war. The Dadaists sought to embody the absurd art reflects an absurd
society. its leading exponents included Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, and George Grosz.

Dada was short-lived though, and during the 1920s, its ideas were absorbed into Surrealism, a linked
movement that also questioned the status quo and the accepted notions of reality, as Magritte
demonstrated in The Human Condition. Surrealism concentrated less on random absurdity than Dada, and
more on the fertility of the unconscious mind and its ability to forge a superior, or "sur" reality. Margaritte
was a leading artist of the movement, along with Man Ray, Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, and later exponents
including Frida Kahlo.

L.H.O.O.Q.
Marcel DUchamp 1919
Private Collection

The Two Fridas

Frida Kahlo 1939
Mexico

Here Kahlo has painted a double self- portrait: two Fridas are seated on a bench
holding hands in front of a stormy graey sky. To the left, she is dressed in a white
Victorian style dress and to the right she wears a traditional Tehuana dress. The Frida
to the right holds a miniature portrait of Diego Rivera and to the left she holds a pair
of forceps which cut into a vein, spilling blood onto her white dress. This vein winds
around the two Fridas and connects their two hearts which are visible over their
clothes. Both the Fridas stare blankly out at the viewer and this lack of emotion makes
it hard to discern meanings contained in this self- portrait.

This double self-portrait is one of Kahlo's most recognized compositions and is symbolic of the
artist's emotional pain experienced during her divorce from Rivera. On the left, the artist is
shown in modern European attire, wearing the costume from her marriage to Rivera.

It is said that Frida Kahlo also claimed that the painting references the memory of a
childhood imaginary friend, bringing an element of fantasy to the painting that was
central to her style.
The Persistence of Memory
Salvador Dali 1931
US

in Dali's Persistence of Memory (1931) a mysterious human-like white figure sleeps in an otherwise

deserted landscape. A clock covers the sleeping figure's back, almost the way a blanket might cover a
sleeping child. Another clock is hung over a limb like a wet piece of laundry hung out to dry. Unlike the
clocks we use and are surrounded with everyday, Dali's clocks are not flat and hard, but are bent out of
shape and seem to be soft, melting away in the desert sun.

If Persistence of Memory depicts a dream state, the melting and distorted clocks symbolize the erratic
and unreliable passage of time that we experience while dreaming. Have you ever woken up and
expected it to still be the middle of the night and are surprised to find that it is already morning? The
distorted clocks don't have any power or importance in the dream world and because of that are
melting away.

In Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali illustrates how useless, irrelevant, and arbitrary our obsession
with time is, inside and outside of the dream state. During our daily lives, we're always rushed and busy,
trying to get all of our work and errands done on time.

For Dali, these 'soft watches' represent what he called the 'camembert of time', suggesting that the
concept of time had lost all meaning in the unconscious world.
Surrealism

- absorbed the ideas of dada [Building upon the anti-rationalism of Dada 1920s, the
Surrealists made powerful art and offered a new direction for exploration]
- movement that questioned the status quo and the accepted notions of reality, as Magritte
demonstrated in The Human Condition [where a canvas sits on an easel before a curtained
window and reproduces exactly the scene outside the window that would be behind the
canvas, thus the image on the easel in a sense becomes the scene, not just a
reproduction of the landscape, so there is no difference between the two as both are
fabrications of the artist
- concentrated less on random absurdity than Dada
- more on fertility of the unconscious mind [
- to forge a superior, or “sur” reality [because surrealists believed that revelations could be found
on the street and in everyday life]
- Magritte was a leading artist of the movement, along with Man Ray, Max Ernst [obsessed with
birds and had a bird alter ego], Salvador Dali [subjects include ants or eggs], and later exponents
including Frida Kahlo

The Surrealists sought to channel the unconscious as a means to unlock the power of the
imagination. Disdaining rationalism and literary realism, and powerfully influenced by
psychoanalysis, the Surrealists believed the rational mind repressed the power of the
imagination, weighing it down with taboos.
they believed that revelations could be found on the street and in everyday life. The Surrealist
impulse to tap the unconscious mind, and their interests in myth and primitivism, went on to
shape many later movements, and the style remains influential to this today.
https://www.theartstory.org/movement/surrealism/