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this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
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Humanities & Cultures
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Art in general doesn't have to disrupt anything. It can be as conventional and anodyne as you like, but surrealist art - as per the Surrealist Manifesto - was specifically intended to depart from the usual concerns of art - at least at the time:
My emphasis. Conventionally, art does give some consideration to aesthetics.
As much as I like a lot of surrealist art, they really were up their own ass. The real disruptors were the Dadaists. They were the final word on disruption, and the contemporary art world has been trying to out-do them with increasingly infantile and outrageous stunts passed off as serious art. Dada laughed at it all and mocked the art world.
Ce n'est pas une critique
i'll assume what you're referring to here is likely the entirety of post-modernism (or some of its constituent elements), and while i'll be the first to praise Dadaism, it's a little irresponsible (edit: lazy?) to hand-wave away an entire art movement like that-- especially post-modernism. it may not be your cup of tea (I’m not the biggest fan, myself), but reducing post-modernism (or any art movement) to "increasingly infantile and outrageous stunts passed off as serious art" is... well... more of an infantile and outrageously reductionist insult passed off as serious critique.
Who said I wasn't insulting all post-modernism? You can call that infantile, I don't care. I'm far past critique and anyway, I'm a nobody with an incomplete art history education. Dismiss me if you wish. But note, I won't say post-modernism isn't art. It's just largely trash art. I maintain Dada was the first and last word on what post-modernism continues to do, just without any of the self-awareness. They took the joke seriously.
You weren’t kidding about that incomplete art education of yours. It shows.
Now you're just being a jerk.
I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that your comments don’t evince a great knowledge on the subject.
Dadaists explored the limits of what can and can not be called "art", with a bunch of their works falling squarely on the "not art" side. Surrealism doesn't claim that, it stays firmly on the art side and explores the messages that can be transmitted through the contrast between realism and fantasy. Some dada works can be surrealist though, but more by mistake than by design.
I wasn't saying Dada was surrealist, I was comparing them and being dismissive of the surrealist manifesto. It's pretentious and tied to Freudian baloney.
Yes, and I disagree with half of that.
Freud was a tormented kid who took his own perceptions way too far, but at the same time he was spot on about the existence of a subconscious possibility space with its own thought patterns, that can differ from the filtered conscious output. Nowadays we call that "hidden layers" in neural networks; in people, over the years, it has been explored through psychotropic drugs, hallucinations, free associations, pareidolias, and others, all of which have served as a source of artistic inspiration, with no need to call them "divine visions" anymore.
The surrealist manifesto —as far as I recall— other than being written in a pompous self entitled tone, only takes from Freud the existence of the subconscious, and explores its potential to be used for the creation of art.
Dada on the other hand, is not art half (or more) of the time, sometimes using the same techniques of the surrealists, other times being simple trash.
I wouldn't call neither more or less "disruptive" than the other. They share a common space, while exploring different aspects of it... and if there is anything to compare, I'd say surrealism actually uses techniques better attuned to achieve its goals, rather than the "spray and pray" of dada which lands it all over the place.
Is a departure a disruption? One can depart the norms of art without disrupting the norms of art as the latter would seem to require some exertion of force or participation in. If you have no concerns, aesthetic or moral, it doesn’t really seem like you’re participating.
Disruption is a term that is in vogue at the moment and so appeals to headline writers. The same question could be asked In most of the situations in which it is used today, IMHO.
I would very much expect that if it had been an 'in' term at the time, it would have been applied to the movement by contemporary copywriters.
However, in bringing the unconscious to the fore in one form or another, I would say that surrealism was at the very least part of a wider movement that did very much disrupt and transform the arts permanently, though it was probably Freud and Jung who were the key disruptors in that regard.