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Surrealism
Surrealism as a literary and artistic movement flourished in the interwar years, growing out of the Dadaism of the early 20th century. However, surrealism focused on positive expression, whereas the Dada movement had been negative and anti-art.
Surrealism was a reaction against the horrors that rationalism had wrought — specifically World War I. Its spokesman was André Breton, a French poet who was heavily influenced by Freud and who believed that, by uniting the world of dreams with the outer, 'real' world, one could create 'surreality', an absolute reality.
In the poetry of surrealists such as Breton and Paul Eluard, words were juxtaposed for psychological, rather than rational, reasons. The resulting poems read like startling streams of consciousness.
In visual art, the surrealist movement embraced a varied range of painters, from Salvador Dali to René Magritte and Joán Miró. In the works of Max Ernst and Miró, images were usually indefinite, not clearly recognisable, provoking an unconscious association. In Dali's work, by contrast, images are painted realistically but taken out of context. What we see is a world turned upside down or inside out.
Comedian Dom Joly believes that all that separates surrealism from madness is intent: 'Surrealism is something you actively seek. You strive to do something surreal. Madness is something that is just imposed on you.'
Find out more …
!Surrealisme!
www.madsci.org/~lynn/juju/surr/surrealism.html
The surrealism server, with links to writers and other sites celebrating the movement.
Sex, Surrealism, Dali and Me: The memoirs of Carlos Lozano by Clifford Thurlow (Razor Books, 2000) £20.
Sexy, eye-witness account of life with Dali.
Therapy
Therapy is the modern religion of the West. Not so long ago, priests claimed to hold the key to happiness. Now we have therapists to tell us how to live.
The benefits — or lack thereof — of therapy remain a hotly contested issue. There are those who believe that, far from improving our mental health, therapists simply manufacture victims. Once upon a time, only serious drug users, smokers and alcoholics could be said to have an addiction. Now, everyone is addicted to something, be it sex, chocolate or the wrong kind of men. Once upon a time, 'trauma' referred to a serious physical injury. Now it is used to cover any and every upsetting event in a person's life.
Trendy therapies today range from the Hollywood must-do — pre-marital couples therapy — through Alexander technique to colonic hydrotherapy, a favourite of the late Princess Diana.
Find out more …
British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy
www.bac.co.uk/
Official website. For information, conferences, research and links.
Handbook of Individual Therapy, edited by Windy Dryden (Sage Publications, 1996) £19.99.
Principles and methods of 12 different approaches to individual therapy.
Art brut
Art Brut ('raw art') refers to the artistic movement that began in the 1950s when Austrian psychiatrist Leo Navratil of the Maria Gugging Psychiatric Clinic asked his patients to producing drawings for experimental purposes. Finding many of them to be artistically talented, Navratil wrote a book about their work, which drew many Viennese artists to the clinic to see the patients' works.
In 1981, Navratil founded a House of Artists. He invited some of his more talented patients to live in the house, which they could use as a living space, studio and gallery. The Gugging House is now run by Johann Feilacher, who describes the artists' work as quite singular, in the sense that 'this kind of art is not influenced by art'. The artists, he explains, are 'not interested in art pictures. They are interested in their own pictures.'
Find out more …
Gugging: Living in art
www.gugging.org/
Official website of the Gugging House of Artists.
Raw Vision Magazine
http://rawvision.com/mainmenu.php
Excellent site from Raw Vision magazine. Links to books, artworks and an analysis of 'outsider art' and its origins in art brut.
Outsider Art by Colin Rhodes (Thames & Hudson, 2000) £7.95.
Work from outside the mainstream by visionaries, spiritualists, eccentric recluses, folk artists, psychiatric patients, criminals and others.