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I appreciate Surrealism. It's an important insight. I revere many of the early surrealists. I have made several pilgrimages of slight deviation to see the origi

I appreciate Surrealism. It's an important insight. I revere many of the early surrealists. I have made several pilgrimages of slight deviation to see the original works. But it seems to be one of those revolutions based on a single idea. And when you see it, understand it, appreciate it, there is nothing more (original) to be said. It does not age well. There is not a semi-infinite 'fountain' of newly interesting surrealism (other than your own dreams). It can span the contextual artifact of Duchamp (you know the one), through the mild jarring of Magritte, to the impeccable fine art of Dalí, and the architecture of Gaudí, but not much more (okay maybe the magical realist writings of Gabriel García Márquez et al.). Perhaps that is the lifespan: the urinal (1917) to '100 Years of Solitude' (1967), exactly 50 years, no more. It's a one-trick-pony. In many cases, someone could describe a piece verbally, I would get the intention, the joke, and enjoy it, but never feel the need to see the work itself - what more could it possibly say? Most contemporary surrealism is just cashing in on a very good old idea. It is now a cliché. In some contexts, the more surrealist you claim to be, the more 'authentically' obscure you can make the connection to reality, the more impatiently some important gallery wants to show your work, the more big ignorant donors give to the gallery, and the higher the prices for the work. The three are connected, of course, in the boring vicious spiral of the artist-gallery-donor-speculator industrial complex (or virtuous circle if you are getting a cut). Luckily, AI is coming to the rescue, showing that even robots dream of electric sheep, and hallucination is a common artifact of the only two intelligences we know about. There is not more in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your human/AI philosophy. Surrealism can be generated in a mouse click, which will kick the stool out from under the fake surrealist modern art market. Good.

bookofjoe 3y ago
André Breton specified in his will that his body should be transported to the cemetery in a moving van.
- mikhailfranco 3y ago
  I did not recall directly, but Breton died in '66, which nicely aligns with my proposed dates.
pyb 3y ago
Surrealism had continued to evolve and exists to this day, but it's not labelled as such. For instance David Lynch, and Francis Bacon are to some extent, are some surrealists of recent times.
- ecoquant 3y ago
  Francis Bacon was born in 1909. Really don't know how you can say this is recent times.
sanderjd 3y ago
Couldn't you similarly say that realism is a one trick pony? > It does not age well. There is not a semi-infinite 'fountain' of newly interesting realism (other than your own reality). It can span the rough drawings of buffaloes (you know the ones), through the flat forms of hieroglyphics, to the impeccable fine art of Vermeer, and the architecture of Burnham, but not much more (okay maybe the spare documentarian writings of Ernest Hemingway et al.). I think in both cases, this is oddly reductive. The reality is that there is a huge continuum of different ideas from both "reality" and "surreality" and the mixture of the two, some of which have been fruitfully explored, but most of which haven't. I think maybe what you're responding to is the fundamental success of surrealism. Nobody argues any longer that the only "right" way to do art is to seek ever more verisimilitude. That's just the water we all swim in now, without needing to realize we're wet. But that's freeing, not limiting.
- mikhailfranco 3y ago
  I think photography dealt that blow. Surrealism was quite late to the grave-dancing ceremony, perhaps 80 years after the first photograph, so not much connection. Maybe there had to be an Impressionist interlude, with some transitional squinting at external reality, before art could become truly introspective. Surrealism was even a few decades after Freud, but hot on the heels of Cubism, other fin-de-siècle Modernisms, and roughly contemporary with stream-of-consciousness writing (Proust, Joyce, Woolf, also Kafka). [Also, the role of WWI cannot be underestimated. It cleared the landscape in many ways, destroyed old contexts (e.g. death of Futurism), launched desperate soul-searching, and was existentially challenging at every level - a long sidebar to be had there.] Culture seems rather slow to adapt to science. Interestingly, there is little traffic in the other direction, but math & physics also had their modern moments just before - Paris Math Congress 1900, Planck 1900, Einstein 1905... Perhaps sci-fi fiction prefigures future technology? But while there are a few famed prophets (H.G.Wells, W.Gibson), they are mostly hindisght/survivor bias. The genre has success in the same way that a shotgun kills a pigeon. Very little insight, lots of trajectories, few hits.
  - kurthr 3y ago
    I agree and it is interesting how long it took. I've heard arguments that it was the disillusionment of WWI that really kicked it off, but I wonder how much the photographic horror of war was part of that.

bookofjoe 3y ago

André Breton specified in his will that his body should be transported to the cemetery in a moving van.

mikhailfranco 3y ago
I did not recall directly, but Breton died in '66, which nicely aligns with my proposed dates.

pyb 3y ago

Surrealism had continued to evolve and exists to this day, but it's not labelled as such. For instance David Lynch, and Francis Bacon are to some extent, are some surrealists of recent times.

ecoquant 3y ago
Francis Bacon was born in 1909. Really don't know how you can say this is recent times.

sanderjd 3y ago

Couldn't you similarly say that realism is a one trick pony? > It does not age well. There is not a semi-infinite 'fountain' of newly interesting realism (other than your own reality). It can span the rough drawings of buffaloes (you know the ones), through the flat forms of hieroglyphics, to the impeccable fine art of Vermeer, and the architecture of Burnham, but not much more (okay maybe the spare documentarian writings of Ernest Hemingway et al.). I think in both cases, this is oddly reductive. The reality is that there is a huge continuum of different ideas from both "reality" and "surreality" and the mixture of the two, some of which have been fruitfully explored, but most of which haven't. I think maybe what you're responding to is the fundamental success of surrealism. Nobody argues any longer that the only "right" way to do art is to seek ever more verisimilitude. That's just the water we all swim in now, without needing to realize we're wet. But that's freeing, not limiting.

mikhailfranco 3y ago
I think photography dealt that blow. Surrealism was quite late to the grave-dancing ceremony, perhaps 80 years after the first photograph, so not much connection. Maybe there had to be an Impressionist interlude, with some transitional squinting at external reality, before art could become truly introspective. Surrealism was even a few decades after Freud, but hot on the heels of Cubism, other fin-de-siècle Modernisms, and roughly contemporary with stream-of-consciousness writing (Proust, Joyce, Woolf, also Kafka). [Also, the role of WWI cannot be underestimated. It cleared the landscape in many ways, destroyed old contexts (e.g. death of Futurism), launched desperate soul-searching, and was existentially challenging at every level - a long sidebar to be had there.] Culture seems rather slow to adapt to science. Interestingly, there is little traffic in the other direction, but math & physics also had their modern moments just before - Paris Math Congress 1900, Planck 1900, Einstein 1905... Perhaps sci-fi fiction prefigures future technology? But while there are a few famed prophets (H.G.Wells, W.Gibson), they are mostly hindisght/survivor bias. The genre has success in the same way that a shotgun kills a pigeon. Very little insight, lots of trajectories, few hits.
- kurthr 3y ago
  I agree and it is interesting how long it took. I've heard arguments that it was the disillusionment of WWI that really kicked it off, but I wonder how much the photographic horror of war was part of that.