History of Art

Aims
The aim of the course is to study the relation between Surrealism and the plastic arts in France during the inter-war period (1919-1939). On completion of the course students will be able to identify the key moments in this history, and relate them to their historical and intellectual contexts. They will be able to analyze a range of works by the movement's most important artists, and demonstrate an understanding of the ideas and debates that informed their practice. Finally, students will be able to discuss and evaluate some of the key issues and approaches of recent scholarship on Surrealism and the plastic arts.

Content
Unlike other art movements in the twentieth century, Surrealism's engagement with the plastic arts lacked stylistic unity. The course will therefore begin by asking what makes a work of art Surrealist. The movement was initially defined by the principle of psychic automatism and the practice of automatic writing, and we will start by looking at the problems faced by Surrealist artists in the 1920s in translating these terms into a visual register. Later we will go on to assess the claim that painting in Surrealism came to be split between this visual form of automatism and the fixing of dream images, and examine the legacy of this division in the 1930s.

The course is divided into three parts, successively focusing on the aesthetic, political and ethical dimension of Surrealism. Part one: 'Psychic Automatism' (1919-1928) will focus on the definition of Surrealism in the first Manifesto and the initial attempts by the Surrealist painters to create a corresponding art practice. Part two: 'Dialectical Materialism' (1927-1933) will look at the period of movement's engagement with the French communist Party, when the Surrealist artists turned away from automatism to create work based on the principle of collage. Part three: 'Convulsive Beauty' (1931-1939) will follow Surrealism's attempts to reconcile Marx and Freud in the face of the rise of fascism in Europe. In the final two classes we will look at the circumstances of Surrealism's decline into an art movement between 1937-1947. Individual classes will focus on the key figures in Surrealism's artistic practice, including Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, André Masson, Man Ray, René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Marcel Duchamp Hans Bellmer, and Claude Cahun. Through this study of individual artists, we will address the movement's attempts in both practice and theory to formulate a new definition of the origin and function of the work of art.

The course reading is divided into two types of texts: on the one hand, contemporary texts by the leading theorists of Surrealism (André Breton, Louis Aragon) and their most important critics (Georges Bataille, Jean-Paul Sartre); and, on the other, some of the key texts in studies in Surrealism in art history over the past twenty years (Daun Ades, Rosalind Krauss, Hal Foster, David Lomas). One of the main themes of the course is the changing points of reference from which to study the movement. Although it has traditionally been viewed through the eyes of its leader, André Breton, over the past twenty years Surrealism has undergone a re-evaluation in the light of writings of Georges Bataille. Through studying some of the key texts in this revised history, we will address to what extent Surrealist painting, sculpture and photography was torn between these two figures, and come to some conclusions about how this determines our current view of the movement's legacy. (Elmer)