Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/05/13

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Subject: [Leica] Surrealism ?]
From: DouglasMSharp at netscape.net (Douglas M. Sharp)
Date: Thu May 13 02:42:38 2004
References: <40A2BA26.70204@netscape.net> <D0FA6952-A483-11D8-A3DF-0050E42E6E0B@shaw.ca>

John,
I just looked it up, if anyone's interested , Breton (1924) started the 
ball rolling in France.

Dadaism and Merz appear to have fought shy of wanting to be associated 
with surrealism, and Kurt Schwitters (the founder of Merz) hated being 
lumped in with the Dadaists. All in all these movements kicked the 
establishment right in the middle of its complacency and gave the most 
important impulses for what we now
generalise under the definition "Modern Art".

On the political side, the European anarchist movement seems to have 
tried to do much the same with politics.
Planting bombs was one of their prime weapons against society, and 
probably the reason for their demise.Their aim, to create a chaos from which
new ideas might emerge. I dread to think what would have happened if 
they had succeeded.
BTW,there is a wonderfully funny book about conspirators,conspiracies 
and anarchism, GK Chestertons "The man who was Tuesday"
Douglas


John Collier schrieb:

>  I think Surrealism is best defined by what it tries to do. It is a 
> reaction to Rationalism which Surrealists blamed for WW1, capitalism 
> (ie: ills of the world, etc). The goal of the Surrealists was to 
> create art that broke the bonds of nationalism, family, religion and 
> race. Though built on the foundations of the Dada movement, it was 
> positive in expression and an expression of hope that humans could 
> change if freed from the constraints of tradition and convention.
>
> Fatally flawed perhaps but beautiful nonetheless.
>
> John Collier
>
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>

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In reply to: Message from DouglasMSharp at netscape.net (Douglas M. Sharp) ([Leica] Surrealism ?])
Message from jbcollier at shaw.ca (John Collier) ([Leica] Surrealism ?])