Introduction:
Surrealism is an art movement of the 20th century. Surrealism means a tendency towards the transcendent or superior reality. When Dadaism was on the decline, its followers gathered around André Breton, who was himself a Dadaist, and founded a new school. This style officially began in France in 1922 and was called Surrealism. This school reflects the disorders and turmoil of the 20th century. Surrealism can be considered an anti-foundationalist artistic-social movement. The desire to bring about transformation in everyday life by revealing the surprising and objective randomness hidden in the apparent order of reality.
This movement began in practice with the publication of the Surrealist Revolution magazine by Breton. Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, and Louis Aragon are among the famous Surrealists. The great painters who joined this movement (such as Ernst, Dali, Ray, Arp, Miro, Duchamp, Tanguy, etc.) focused on the precise depiction of imaginary and illogical scenes, and on giving life to everyday objects and transforming them into strange beings. Their attempt was to provide a psychological field for their unconscious to manifest in painting.
Abstraction is one of the activities of the mind. This means that our mind abstracts some concepts from real concepts that exist outside our minds and in the real world. The concepts that are abstracted in this way do not have any external counterpart. For example, the concept of man is an abstract concept that the mind has abstracted from putting together the commonalities of individual people, each of whom exists in the real world and outside our minds.
According to the founding statement of the school, written by André Breton, one of its goals was to reconcile reality and fantasy in order to achieve an absolute reality or transcendental reality. Breton had served as a psychologist in a war hospital during World War I and was familiar with Freud’s psychoanalytic views on dream analysis and the hidden layers of the unconscious. André Breton and Louis Aragon, both psychiatrists, were inspired by Freud’s research and based their new school on the activity of the unconscious.
The first person to introduce Surrealist painting to Iran was a man named Aminollah Rezaei, whose most famous works can be found and viewed in the publications of the Iranian Writers' Association. Aminollah Rezaei is remembered as the father of Surrealist painting in Iran.
In the context of Iranian fiction, the book The Blind Owl by author Sadeq Hedayat is the best example of surreal literature in Persian.
Poetry has a special place in surrealism, and the followers of this school have tried to convey their worldview through poetry. In fact, they consider poetry to be the foundation of life because they believe that poetry should and can solve the problems of life. The social philosophy of surrealism has the slogan of human happiness and wants to save man from the bondage of the current profit-seeking civilization, while not accepting a return to the past. In fact, it can be clearly seen from the principles of this school that the founders of this school are thinking of liberation from all kinds of captivity and their goal was to put an end to war in the first place.
Surrealism is a demanding problem that only accepts strict membership and complete adherence. This movement has adopted the following approaches in various philosophical fields:
- Scientific philosophy, which is Freud’s approach to psychoanalysis.
- Ethical philosophy, which opposes any kind of convention.
- Social philosophy, which seeks to liberate humanity by creating a surrealist revolution.
Surrealists are the best people to greet you when you feel like you’ve come from another world. If you’ve fallen in love and are feeling confused, surrealists have your back. They understand you. If your dream last night seemed too crazy, rest your head on the shoulder of a surrealist. If your patience is running out with the mystery of life, read a surrealist work and be sure that the author will help you. We all get confused at times and the world seems surreal to us. So what could be better than to empathize and speak the same language as surrealists? Put eyes and mustaches on your lemons and drink surreal lemonade, and if you don’t want to drink this strange lemonade, set it on fire and write about your experience!
Conclusion:
Surrealism reminds us that unconscious domination is everywhere in our lives. Half the time (or more) we are dominated by things we are not aware of; that is, we do not know exactly what our true needs or desires are.
