Max Ernst (1891–1976)The Antipape, 1941–42, Oil on canvas, 63 1/4 × 50 in (160.8 × 127 cm)
MINING THE UNCONSCIOUS
Surrealism, a European art movement that developed in the years after World War I, promoted the idea that the unconscious, nonrational mind was the appropriate guiding force in art. The movement’s leader, André Breton (1896–1966), was inspired in part by his role as an army psychologist during the war where he used some of the ideas of Sigmund Freud in his work with shell-shock victims. Freud regarded the dream as a means of access to the subconscious mind. The Surrealists also found other ways to make the unconscious accessible. For the writers, this involved “automatic writing,” and for the visual artists, techniques such as frottage and decalcomania allowed for similar results.
Whether Surrealist artworks do actually reveal the subconscious mind is an open question. The movement did, however, expand the range of what is possible and acceptable in art and explored new vocabularies in visual production.
• Automatic writing and drawing
A technique in which the artist puts himself into a sort of passive trance and allows his hand to move without control on the paper. This was a practice first used by “spiritists” in the nineteenth century.
• Frottage
A technique in which the artist places a sheet of paper over a textured surface and makes a rubbing. She then looks at the image and allows it to suggest shapes and images which can then be worked up. The word “frottage” was appropriated by the Surrealists from its traditional use in French as a reference to sexual rubbing.
• Decalcomania
A technique in which paint films are built up on paper and then pressed onto canvas. Once the paper is pulled away the paint is left on the canvas in often surprising formations. The artist then works to discover images suggested by these chance formations of the paint.
• Juxtaposition
The idea that unlikely combinations of images can yield subversive and poetic meanings. André Breton described it in 1924 as “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.”
See also: Juxtaposition on page 96
Max Ernst (1891–1976)
The Antipape, 1941–42, Oil on canvas, 63 1/4 × 50 in (160.8 × 127 cm)
