Surrealist Manifesto

At the time of the publication of the manifesto, Europe was still reeling from World War I and art was very much political. Breton and other surrealists wanted to break free from the conventional art of the times and express the imagination as revealed in dreams. Thus, the Manifesto of Surrealism came about, in which Breton discusses the importance of merging dream and reality. Though at its inception the movement itself was not political in nature, Breton incorporated Sigmund Freud’s theories on dreams as well as the communist ideals of Karl Marx into his definition of surrealism. He so loved Freud’s psychoanalytic theory that he even presented a four part defense of dreams in his manifesto, asserting that although dreams and reality seem contradictory, the two can come together to form an “absolute reality,” or a…

with Breton’s original manifesto and Anais Nin’s more recent novel, House of Incest, where there is a similarity in content but a separation in structure. Nonetheless, this progress is undermined by an inherent failure to express the ideas in surrealist thinking efficiently by both Nin and Breton. Within Breton’s manifesto and Nin’s novel, there are a number of similarities…

A key component of surrealism was automatism. Automatism is the free flowing of impossible thoughts into words. Imagination played a huge role in surrealism. Parisian critic and poet André Breton jumpstarted the surrealist movement by his publication of Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924. Andre Breton is known as the Pope of Surrealism. During the surrealism movement, the private mind suddenly became available to readers. Writers were encouraged to share their crazy ideas. Surrealists believed they…

Wanderlust The work of art titled “The Tilled Field” by Joan Miró is an excellent example of a work that is part of the Surrealist movement. An oil painting on canvas completed in 1924, the work is possibly the most important and well-known work by the Spanish born artist. After being his career painting working on mare traditional still-lifes and landscapes he later transitioned into more contemporary styles of art. Never openly affiliated with a specific school of art, he produced pieces that…

Constructivism, written by Russian artist and designer, Aleksei Gan, and The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism 1909 written by Italian poet, Filippo Marinetti, both have written an extensive manifesto of their movements. Aleksei Gan believed that since most people are joined through labor, technologies’ of individual branches of production would form a united social technology, accurately and concretely. Constructivism took artists and architects, and turned them into Constructors. This caused…

ASSIGNMENT Q. Dario Fo’s play, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, is an epistemological critique of modern society. Discuss. A. The basic entities of the modern society, be it the judiciary or the state, media or religion, or the common man himself, are susceptible to being constructed in many ways, which could be contradictory to each other. Dario Fo, in Accidental Death of an Anarchist, sets out to critique one of the constructions of the modern society, constructions built upon lies, deceit,…

Engels and Marx believed that the fight between the classes is the base for all history and social conflicts. The wealthy class, known as the bourgeoisie, were those who owned the factories and the means of production. Marx and Engels believed that the bourgeoisie made their money off of their employees, the working class, what they termed as the proletariat. The rich got richer while the poor got poorer. The Communist Manifesto also stated that the working class will rebel against the rich to…

his/her status and class in this world. Although the intentions of Marxism seem to be for the greater good, Condorcet is far more realistic; therefore Condorcet’s program is more likely to succeed. Antoine Nicolas de Condorcet’s The Progress of the Human Mind is a general overview of the drastic, yet beneficial changes during the Enlightenment: “the human race was avenged by the swift triumph of liberty and reason” (187). In Condorcet’s tenth and final step of The Progress of the Human Mind he…

An Inspector Calls is a play written by Dramatist J.B Priestley in 1945. Priestley was a left-wing socialist and this was one of the factors which influenced him to write this play. Even though the play was written in 1945, it was actually set in 1912, right before the start of the First World War. It is set in the spring of 1912 at the Brumley home of the Birlings, a prosperous industrial family in the North Midlands, getting involved in the death of a woman named Eva Smith. The Inspector uses…

Different “Ways of Seeing” In the essay, “Ways of Seeing,” John Berger applies Marxism to art history. Marxism is the social, economic and political theory formed by Karl Marx. It deals with class struggle and the oppression of the lower classes by the upper classes. In the essay, Berger focuses on using Marxist methodology, when he analyzes and explains an artist named Frans Hal. Berger uses Hals paintings to demonstrate the structure of social classes, and their struggles to give an idea of…