Dream Surrealist vs. Automatist Surrealist Essay

Dream Surrealist vs. Automatist Surrealist - Essay ExampleThe essay Dream Surrealist vs. Automatist Surrealist discusses Automatist Surrealist and Dream Surrealist. From this era, artists and intellectuals two would increasingly spend modern methods to explore the psyche and express its contents, seeking new forms and modalities of expression to accomplish the goal. Where dada desire to embrace the irrational and elevate it to a de facto cosmic principle, this is also recognition of the final deterioration of medieval systems of thought and the birth of the modern individual in Europe and internationally. As the avante garde artists of this movement, Andr Masson and Salvador Dali represent two aspects of untimely Surrealism, differentiated by their methodology of inquiry into the content of the mind and its expression into two factions, the dream surrealists and the automatist surrealists. Massons Automatic Drawing of 1924 is paradigmatic of the automatist school which apply art istic methods based in illogic and chance to override the conscious aspects of both mind and artistic expression to search for self-discovery and universalism in the imagery of the subconscious mind and unconscious states of mind. To do so they often practiced automatic drawing in order to conjure these images out of the deeper states of consciousness by overriding the processes of the swelled head and the senses. In this manner, the surrealists based their art on an earlier form of Western depth psychology. The dream surrealists shared Freuds infatuation with the symbolism of dreams and dream interpretation. and sought to express the imagery of dreams in their artwork. Yet, unlike the automatists, the dream surrealists did not seek to overcome the traditional utilize of the ego in painting, but rather to use the ego to express the language of dreams, a subtle difference that can be seen through comparing Massons work to one of Salvador Dalis number 1 dream surrealist paintings , Inaugural Goose Flesh (1928). In 1924, Salvador Dalis artwork was still very much exhibiting the influences of Cubism and of the Greek-Italian surrealist Giorgio de Chirico. Dalis Still Life (1924) and Port Alguer (1924) both show the influence of Picasso and early Cubism, as well as Dalis early experimentation with different styles such as Impressionism, reflected in the waters of the sea in contrast to the cubist architecture. (ArtMight, 2011) Yet, in Still Life (1924), the metaphysical plane introduced by de Chirico is beginning to be shown in his painting, fully evident quaternion years later when Dali paints, Inaugural Goose Flesh (1928). This metaphysical plane is different than the traditional perspective of portrait, still life, or natural painting. What it does is replace the aspect and relation between earth and sky which dominates representational painting with an infinite horizon upon which anything can arise, representing the plane of mind and the world of dreams. I n de Chiricos early work, the viewer has the unspoken understanding through the use of light on an artificial, imaginary, and infinite horizon, that the events or scene depicted is a dream image. Salvador Dali would become recognize by developing this aspect of the imaginary or metaphysical plane into his artwork over a long career, but it is in