Surrealism was an art and literally movement that started in the 1910s and early 20s. Surrealism was officially found in Paris in 1924 During the 1930s, the Surrealist idea spread from Europe to North America, South America (founding of the Mandrágora group in Chile in 1938), Central America, the Caribbean, and throughout Asia, as both an artistic idea and as an ideology of political change. With the publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism by the poet and critic André Breton(1896–1966), Surrealism became an international intellectual and political movement. Three artists that were associated with the movement are André Breton, a trained psychiatrist, along with French poets Louis Aragon (1897–1982), Paul Éluard (1895–1952), who was influenced by the psychological theories and dream studies of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and the political ideas of Karl Marx (1818–1883).  

Describing the visual is what makes this eye-opening by Dream-like scenes and symbolic images, Unexpected, illogical juxtapositions, Automatism and a spirit of spontaneity and visual pun Surrealism, the movement's primary aim was 'to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality.' André Breton’s artistic style included him focusing on collage and printmaking, sometimes focusing on combining texts and images. His ideology was to combine the unconscious with symbols to express oneself. He was focusing more on automatism too, where once the tool is on the canvas, it would never leave the canvas until the work is done, it’s like writing in cursive, where once the pencil is on the paper, it would only leave the paper once a word is written. The strokes of the tool are controlled by the unconscious of the artist. 

Surrealism was an artistic, intellectual, and literary movement led by poet André Breton from 1924 through World War II. The Surrealists sought to overthrow the oppressive rules of modern society by demolishing its backbone of rational thought.  The Surrealists sought to channel the unconscious as a means to unlock the power of the imagination. Disdaining rationalism and literary realism, and powerfully influenced by psychoanalysis, the Surrealists believed the rational mind repressed the power of the imagination, weighing it down with taboos. 

Surrealism all started and originated in the late 1910s and early '20s it was a literary movement that experimented with a new mode of expression called automatic writing, or automatism, which sought to release the unbridled imagination of the subconscious. Before Surrealism, there were a few movements. A really good example is the Dada movements, which occurred around World War 1, and it defied reason, but unlike the Dada movement, Surrealism didn’t focus on negation but rather on positive expression. Surrealism was also an alternative to Cubism because it had more freedom in terms of shapes and forms. Modern art, also done by Salvador Dali, had occurred after surrealism, it focused on projecting the subjects into the world based on the artist’s own perspective. 

As Surrealism was being created During world war 2 World War II affected nearly every aspect of life in the United States, and America’s racial relationships were not immune. African Americans, Mexicans and Mexican Americans, Jews, and Japanese Americans were profoundly impacted there was a struggle huge roll for racial equality. Just like there is a problem with racism today in the United States when it comes to blacks Hispanic and Chinese about one hundred years later and it’s still a problem. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), an interracial organization founded to seek change through nonviolent means, conducted the first sit-ins to challenge the South’s Jim Crow laws.

During the time artist, André Breton wrote in a 1952 article commenting that “At that time, the surrealist refusal was total and absolutely incapable of allowing itself to be channeled at a political level. All the institutions upon which the modern world rested - and which had just shown their worth in the First World War - were considered aberrant and scandalous to us.”

This is a good example of surrealism because of the portrayal of this very unreal, raw and nightmarish landscape. The textures from the grattage give this surreal scene such a visceral and real feeling. It draws you in but is almost uncomfortable to look at. Time is meaningless, destruction could look the same in 1940 as it could today. 

This is a good example of surrealism because if you were to look only at some parts of this painting, it would look completely normal (ignoring the end of the man’s nose and pipe, and the bottom part of the candle). Looking at the entire painting at once gives it a dreamlike quality. The man smoking the pipe filled with his own nose implies cyclical, perhaps even circular reasoning, which could represent rationalism which the surrealist movement was against. 

This is a good example of surrealism because it gives a surreal and very external embodiment to Kahlo’s internal pain. The long column in the center of Kahlo’s body should be the strongest part of her and yet it is cracked and crumbling away. It is deteriorating like the landscape behind it  which is drab and monotonous. This could be a statement on how Kahlo’s pain made her world feel.

What makes this painting a good example of surrealism is the allegorical approach to Dali’s interpretation of memory. I interpret the melting clocks (which all seem to be stuck at the same time) as being the distortive effects of time on a memory, which would play into the title “The Persistence of Memory”. The landscape is barren, the tree has no leaves, and the water is still. To me this represents the detachment from reality we may feel about events as more and more time goes by.

This is a good example of surrealism because 

For how simple this painting seems, it's pretty perplexing. It is definitely a statement. The simplicity of the apple juxtaposed against the complexity of the man’s “face” is symbolic. If a face blocked an apple, it wouldn’t matter, as we all know what apples look like more or less. But an apple blocking a face leaves so much to the imagination. 

The most common trait found in Color Field Paintings is the wide variety of colors spread across the canvas. Sometimes it can be in the form of something familiar, such as a person, place, or thing, but more often than not; it's a 'field' of color. The goal of Color Field Painting was to find art that could be represented through abstract means. 

During the 1940s, The cold war began due to the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union which also includes their allies that developed after the events of World War II. In 1950 the Korean War began as a result of the conflict between North Korea and South Korea. Afterward, in 1960, the Soviet Union and China decided to break off their relationship due to political relations towards Marxism. 

Color Field Painting (1948 - 1968) by Google Arts and Culture, https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/color-field/m03hmqc?categoryId=art-movement

Acrylic on Canvas
116 x 215 inches

What drew me towards this piece was the number of bright colors used. I like how it's placed on the canvas; all being in a crosshatch-like pattern. It fits perfectly with Color Field's simplified compositions and its large formats.

The black, blue, and grey paint in this piece was the first thing to catch my attention. I like how it could easily belong to a storyboard grid and be a part of some short story. This sort of interpretation goes along with the basis of field painting.

During the 1950s, the world was recovering after the end of World War II. In this post-war period, the Cold War had begun between the US and the then Soviet Union as well as the beginning of the Korean War. It was at this time that the Minimalism movement as well as the development of conceptual art rebelled against art being restricted and only available to the wealthy or the privileged.

Source:
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/girl-with-a-cross/0wEE5wC-q7iu6g

The primary visual characteristics of surrealism consisted of dream-like scenes, some have more of an abstract style to them, while others have a bizarre assemblage of ordinary objects. Most of their art would consist of people’s faces but with a distortion of some sort or animals with unnatural body parts. This movement got started by Andre Brenton’s painting Surrealist manifesto of 1924, yet was inspired by various paintings as early as 1917. Especially the paintings of Giorgio De Chirico, who specialized in capturing street locations with a hallucinatory quality (The Met)

When surrealism was ascertained, the league of nations was established, World War I ended, and women gained the right to vote in America. This among other things pushed surrealism to fruition. In the end, surrealism came to an end towards the start of World War II. as well as most of the artists leaving Europe, dominantly France, and settling in New York, “Breton, Dalí, Ernst, Masson, and others, including the Chilean artist Matta (1911–2002), who first joined the Surrealists in 1937, left Europe for New York.” Yet it made a revival in the year 1940 when Brenton held the “International Surrealist Exhibition in Mexico City” (The Met).

The Met. “Surrealism.” Metmuseum.org, Oct. 2004, https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/surr/hd_surr.htm

History.com “Surrealism History.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 13 Sept. 2017, https://www.history.com/topics/art-history/surrealism-history

The collector. “The Impact of Sigmund Freud's Theories on Art.” TheCollector, 26 May 2020, https://www.thecollector.com/sigmund-freud-theories/

The Editors of Encyclopedia of Britannica. “Surrealism, Art and Literature.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 16 Aug. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/art/Surrealism

In the 1970s, New York City was the place to show your art. Very few women were able to show their art at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney. The two women got together to form art organizations to help protest and get women’s artwork into the museums. Artwork Workers Coalition, WAR: Women Artists in Revolution and the AIR Art Gallery were among the few organizations created. Within a year after protesting, it rose from 10 percent to 20 percent of women’s artwork being shown in the museums. 

In 1972, Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro were the co-founders of The California Institute of the Arts Feminist Art Program. They chose to start fresh in Los Angeles instead of fighting for their artwork to be seen in New York. Judy Chicago made a name for herself. She was a well known feminist artist and created the most iconic art piece later on in her career, “The Dinner Party” in 1979. It was a table she arranged in a triangle that had 39 place settings to represent symbolic women in history. 

In 1973, the Women’s Art History Collective was founded by two of England's Art critics, Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock. This was formed because women were still being omitted from showing their work. In 1976 the first international female only exhibition was organized, “Women Artists: 1550 to 1950”. This exhibition showcased 400 years of women’s art that had gone unrecognized over the years. 

The 1960’s and 1970’s Feminist artist made so much progress with the fight for their art to be seen, but they were still so far from being equal to the male afrtists. 

Feminist Art- History and Concepts

Feminism & Art

A Guide to the Feminist Art Movement’s History & Contemporary Impact by Rise Art

Street Photography was originally used to document Wars and scenes happening in the streets. It’s now used more to document our lives, the food we eat and the places we visit as we all love to post our lives on Social media. Street Photography is meant to be unposed but we all know we like to pose before our pictures nowadays. There are also some fantastic street art images on the walls or the trains that just really catch the eye, some are so vivid and mesmerizing. It can be found in some urban areas but it has really caught on and can be found in all parts of cities. It is not just in certain geographical areas but can be found in every corner in every Country World Wide. 

A few main artists would be Bansky, Shepard Fairey, Vhils, and Hyuro (Tamara Djuvocic) who passed away about eight years ago.and too many more to add here. 

The primary visual characteristics are too hard to describe because every artist is so different. You cannot just put it in a certain category, you can say some stand for certain political or economical stances but street art comes in all colors, shapes, sizes and different meanings which makes it so special to me. What I saw doing this assignment just left me in awe! It is just indescribable and just amazing how the can cover a whole part of a building or wall and turn it into a masterpiece work of art. 

“Truly impact of this subversive culture was extraordinarily felt in the 1970s and 1980s. These decades were a turning point in the history of street art; it was the time when young people, by responding to their social and political environment, started to create a movement, and took the ‘battle for meaning’ in their own hands.”

As I stated earlier, War was a big part of early Street Photography but it later trickled down to gangs in the 1920's and 1930's and “taggers'' in the 1960`s which led to graffiti art in the 70`s & 80`s from NYC which later led to Contemporary Street Art to this very day. The artist does paint and draw for social and political events not just for his or her name but  for all of society and all of the World.

The history of street photography

Street Art: Definition & History

What Is Street Art? Its History, Definition, Purpose, and Importance

Street and Graffiti Art

What Is Street Art and How Can We Define It?

What is Street Photography? – An Introductory, How-To Guide for Beginners and Intermediates

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Art Nouveau". Encyclopedia Britannica, 14 Mar. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/art/Art-Nouveau. Accessed 17 October 2021.

HEATHER, editor. “Gismonda” by Alphonse Mucha. 2018, https://www.myddoa.com/gismonda-alphonse-mucha/.

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/the-bride-unfinished-gustav-klimt/GwHvXvrSzFPuRQ?hl=en

Artist name: Pablo Picasso 

Year created: 1910

Media used: oil paint

Dimension of the pieces : 3′ 3″ x 2′ 5″

The art that I chose is cubism movement. The Cubism was found in Paris and Cubism art is principally created by the artist Pablo Picasso and Georges Barque between 1907 and 1914. This art was pioneered by Pablo Picasso, it’s a girl with a mandolin (Fanny Tellier). This art is painted in canvas and created in 1910. And this is the first example of what known today as analytical cubism painting. This art draw my attention because it’s very beautiful and unique. It shows how that lady loved playing mandolin. The cubism movement is a very good idea to show the reality of the world. 

Artist name: Georges Barque 

Year created: 1909

Media used:  Oil on painting 

Dimension of the pieces : 91.7 x 42.8 cm

Title: Bowl of fruit, violin and bottle 

Artist name: Pablo Picasso 

Year created: 1914

Media used: Oil paint in canvas 

Dimension of the pieces : 92x73cm

Title: Artillery

Artist name: Roger de la Fresnaye 

Year created: 1911

Media used: painting 

Dimension of the pieces : 130.2 × 159.4 cm

Title: Weeping Women

Artist name: Pablo Picasso 

Year created: 1937

Media used: Oil in painting 

Dimension of the pieces : 608 × 500 mm