"Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision."—Salvador Dali
Born at the famous Café Voltaire in Zurich in 1916 from the avant-garde Dada movement, Surrealism aimed to free the creative act from rational thought. As the editor, Mary Ann Caws, says, “Essential to Surrealist behavior is a constant state of openness, of readiness for whatever occurs, whatever marvelous object we might come across, manifesting itself against the already thought, the already lived.”
With all the photographer as artist discussion as philosophy 101 hashes and rehashed the question, I personally am drawn to the little reminder flags, such as the quote above, suggesting I take an open minded peak at the wrists and ankles of my mind/ feelings/ soul~
(with apologies to those fatigued by my smoke addled brain)
Surrealism raises several questions, not the least being why it's considered a recent concept. Perhaps its definition, as such, may be relatively recent, but does that imply that no such imagery, or conversational concept of idea exchange, was extant before the definition arrived to claim it? Chickens and their pesky eggs, of course, but nevertheless...
In fact, visual/graphic imagery is perhaps just one visible manifestation of surrealism; as concept, the juxtapositon of things that really have no highly logical business sharing spiritual space has existed for a very much longer time in politics, where the differences in what is said and what is believed
by the same people and party are usually on glaring, open display, but the game goes on thanks to belief in both (or many) disparate truths so easily accommodated within jaded minds where anything becomes a new norm... Perhaps that is very noticeable today, across the western world, but take a peep at the mystic east and consider the conflict between various religious beliefs and the quotidian reality: when was the last time anyone held an audience with a multi-armed goddess? But it doesn't matter: belief rolls on regardless, and with it, acceptance of anything as belonging in unholy alliance with absolutely anything else...
HC-B claimed he was a surrealist, a mantle shared by others at the time, but were they, too, just playing at status games within the arts, carving out niches,
Appellations d'Origine, by which to legitimise themselves and their brand of "art"? About twenty years later the indigenous wine industry thought it a brilliant idea too!
You neglected to mention by which smoke the mind was being addled... I like it when that occurs, Patricia; makes for interesting departures for LuLa's thousands of writers and fellow thinkers!
Of course Canikon et al. will never forgive such diversions from the house menu.
;-)
Rob
