Visualizations and Extrapolations 5

Digitallly Manipulated Photo Collage in painterly style by Andrew Soria:

The Surreal has Become the New Real

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Today’s rumination is about how revolutionary founding tenets of the Surrealist artistic aesthetic from the early to mid- nineteenth century has become embedded in everyone’s everyday experience. Advances in technology have imposed an otherworldly and phantasmagorical quality upon common personal actions that have become habits. The unimaginable vastness of mass media influence from today’s mega-capitalistic corporate and consumer culture has transformed everyday reality to an illusory and hallucinatory experience.

When Andre Breton conjured up “The Surrealist Manifesto”, he included a small collection of rationalizations for the existence of a non institutional artistic aesthetic. These fundamental tenets were, for the most part, talking points for defense from critics. Breton would insist that surrealist foundations are based on a New Freedom conception of ideals like Love and Beauty, while ignoring the darker, Jungian, shadow self imagery which comprises a major theme of that aesthetic.

The rejection of Realist painting of the time along with any established Classicism and prevailing traditional artistic practices that were favored by that arch nemesis “the Bourgeois”. Especially reviled were Architectural forms, Greco-Roman sculpture and high art Portraiture which was stock in trade for artists fortunate enough to be employed by aristocracy. It is amusing to note that imagery from these traditions returns in fragmented and fractured ways within the oeuvre of Surrealist art.

Historically, Surrealism was a reaction to the atrocities of war and genocide that recurrently swept Europe in the nineteenth century. For the artists, Surrealism became an escape and a sanctuary whereby the perpetrators of death and destruction were rendered powerless and inconsequential by virtue of their own absurdity. The Surrealist aesthetic was a revolutionary movement not only for art and poetry, but a liberating force to be experienced by all of humanity.

According to Breton: “the human compulsion to find Beauty in everyday life” is the Surrealist Manifesto. For Surrealists, nothing is sacra-sanct. Fine Art, as found in Museums, Monuments, the Court of Kings and Mansions of the wealthy are just pathetic relics of a bourgeois and fascist civilization which must be overcome. This rejection of art history is a prominent dark theme which has the delightful flip side that anyone and everyone has the inspired capability to “be an artist”.

It should be considered that the ominous thematic imagery of De Chirico, perhaps the first true surrealist painter, should be heralded as foundational philosophy. Accordingly, the concepts of Nostalgia, Alienation and especially Melancholy would be fundamental precepts for Surrealism. De Chirico also pioneered the painterly expression of sensuality and sexuality as perceived in geometric shapes.

Surrealism as an art form evolved from the proto-Surrealist movement, Dada. One of the primal Dada methods was Automatic drawing, or its group participation counterpart, the Exquisite Corpse. Automatic drawing is, like the name implies, a method whereby production of a work of art is done instinctively and extemporaneously. The artist is revealing subconscious symbolic imagery elements that have been reduced to innate motor actions of the body. In this way the artist acts as a medium channeling a message that is formed spontaneously and by the chance concatenation of imagery.

The juxtaposition of disparate and incongruous objects is primary to the Surrealist aesthetic. This “juxtaposition conundrum” appears to be inexorably ensconced in the consciousness of society to this very day. From counterculture sounds and visualizations from the psychedelic Sixties to sci-fi movie audio/visual effects in the Nineties to animations made by artificial intelligence bots, juxtaposition is a powerful technique frequently utilized to create visually compelling images.

Fragmentation and Reconstruction are recurrent themes in Surrealism and other art “isms” of the era. Many of the Surrealist painters were active in or influenced by Cubism, which perfected multidimensional perspective on a plane surface. Fragmentation is also metaphorical for the rejection of certain aspects of historic art and social realities the Surrealists sought to Reconstruct and Re-create.

The expression of Mystic Symbolism and Symbolic Meaning inherent in everyday objects underlies the purpose and intent of most artists but is especially prominent in the Surrealist aesthetic. Surrealists reinstated the whole archive of symbolism from ancient mythology along with rejuvenating their own “myth of eternal return” by creating a new and uniquely personal symbolic language which is an expression of “zeitgeist”, the spirit of the times.

There is a sensuous overtone and a presentiment of sexuality inherent in Surrealist Art. This sublimation of eroticism comes from rejection of the bourgeois/fascist conception of the body, now held to be a patriarchy based problem. Rejecting what Freud would suggest, the sublimation of Love to a sex drive, contributed to the Surrealist notion that Love is an ephemeral meeting of spirits by chance, a transcendental experience. Sexuality was no longer a body function controlled by religion and social mores. However, along with the freedom of sexuality and loving in spirit comes the disconnect of alienation and essential emotional detachment. It should be noted that the Surrealist idea of Love and sexuality would resurface later in the tenets of Existentialism.

There is an element of pathological psychological phenomenon along with a foreboding sense of mania, hysteria or even schizophrenia inherent in Surrealist imagery. Artistic expression of hallucinatory and dreamlike fantasy coming from seeing the world from an altered state of consciousness still permeates theme and motif in today’s “post modern” era. However, Hieronymus Bosch painted the “Garden of Earthly Delights”, perhaps the most Surrealist painting of all times, around the year 1500.

So, the basic precept of Surrealism would be a Jungian dark shadow: subconscious rejection of “Bourgeois Society” and repeated attempts at world domination which result in cycles of war and revolution. As such it was a revolution unto itself, marking a return to Love, however through a paradoxical absurdity of circumstances: Love is emergent from abject, dire hatefulness.. Tragically, there is always an antithetical something that must be rebelled against, always a revolution to be waged, always a call to arms for the sake of Love. Today the quality of living and prospects for the future of mankind is being decimated by the post modern mega-capitalist technology consumer culture.

Is it long overdue to declare the decline and fall of Surrealism by observing that Surrealism depends on the very thing, the absurdity of the human condition, that it claims to be liberated from? Maybe not, for in the post modern world of consumption and capitalism, the Real has become very Surreal. The everyday experience of Reality has become so ambiguous, farcical and dystopian that the founding tenets of Surrealism are now common everyday experiences. These tenets of Dreams So Real and Beauty in the Ordinary break down the differentiation between waking and dreaming, between mundane reality and esoteric beauty.

Not only that, but every active participant in the today’s post modern version of surrealism is a sentient being with a sense of liberation, who has a newfound sense of freedom and enjoyment in the wondrous magnificence of phantasmagoria. However, for a passive participant, technological advances have brought Surrealism to its knees, Sure, thanks to technology, everyday experience now includes juxtaposition of disparate experiences, dreams that seem so real and detached feelings of sensuousness.

But at what cost? Has the Technological Utopia of Artificial intelligence been liberating, or has the personal computer enslaved more of the population than any totalitarian regime? Has the Consumer Marketplace and capitalism of technology become the New Bourgeois who own whatever you type into a laptop or create with an app? Are the freedoms that technology promises merely apparent and illusory? Does the never ending cycle of keeping up with the latest technology in order to survive not drive the spirit of mankind into a more primordial state rather than toward transcendent ecstasy?

The mechanization of artistic craft brought on by the use of technology may indeed hearken back to the Automatic drawing of an Exquisite Corpse. However, with that advanced technology there comes a destructiveness to “Real” artistic freedom, so by default, that creative effort becomes “Surreal”. Already in galleries across the land are surreal musical and artistic performances staged by cyborgs with laptops presenting to meta-language processing spectators responding with cell phones. With that scenario in mind, the liberation of artistic and creative spirit in today’s post modern society is merely a new resurgence of the Surrealist Manifesto: putting Beauty and Love where there was none into Action through Art is the New Reality.

Fred Jay Ross fredjayross@gmail.com

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The Surreal has Become the New Real