Sidra Stich

Surrealism is a thought-provoking art form related to an emotionally wrenching period in history, the era between World Wars I and II (1920s–1930s).

In Suzanne Anker's statement about this symposium, she used terms like man/animal conjunctions, collage (the cut and paste process), humans that fuse with machines as robotic extensions, humans that meld with animal, mythic beasts, the coupling of avant-garde with technological progress. I think it's important to think about these terms with reference to Surrealism in order to see differences and similarities with current cyborg ideas and imagery.

Surrealism is typically defined using terms like super real, beyond reality, the bringing together of opposites. Exemplifying surrealist imagery is the vision evoked by the poet Lautréamont, of the chance meeting of an umbrella and sewing machine on a dissecting table. This conveys notions of the coupling of irreconcilable realities or the inexplicable presence of polarities. André Breton, the leading theorist and kingmaker of Surrealism, specifically spoke about a resolution of opposites, determining this "sublime point" to be the moment where opposites were no longer perceived as contradictions. This suggests the concept of a union. However, it is critical to recognize that this union was not harmonious or absolute.

What makes Surrealism distinctive (and extraordinary) is the dynamic character of the unions. Images contain polar opposites that are juxtaposed and interconnected in such a way to spark new possibilities. In other words, the synthesis is not an absolute fusion or stable conjunction but a stimulus to the further, continual production of new images and ideas. It functions as a provocation, an explosive force that sets off a multi-faceted (non-linear) chain- reaction geared to disturb logical, ordered visions of reality and to stimulate the imagination and unconscious. Perpetual mobility as images and ideas ignite endless possibilities of transformation, reformation and deformation. The most riveting surrealist work is disturbing in large part because of this dynamic aspect. Images aren't fixed, settled or stable. They instead keep refueling alternative images.

Another of the surrealist theorists, Georges Bataille, emphasized the collapse or erosion of difference. He proposed that oppositional unions were not inflected with transcendence but were routed to a base,unformed state. Here again, focus is on configurations and ideas thatare visually and conceptually disjunctive. Conventional hierarchical assumptions, stable couplings and traditional polarities no longer dominate. Imagery is impacted with discontinuity, discordance, displacement, dissociation, dislocation, etc.

Defying the modernist sense of progress, surrealist imagery is not premised on an ideal, ultimate state. In his paintings of decaying and sumptuous landscapes often peopled by bird-human creatures, Max Ernst repeatedly evoked visions of transitory, hybrid and non-paradisial, primordial states of being. Salvador Dalí, in turn, developed scenarios where a sense of constant violation, relentless obstruction and unfettered eroticism prevail. And in René Magritte's paintings, blank passages and unexpected interruptions prevent resolution and disrupt signification.

A sense of potency and growth holds sway even in the most barren of surrealist environments—like those in the paintings of Yves Tanguy. Here, birth and death coexist in a continuum without beginning or end. Thus, the suggestion of embryonic imagery is infused with, and simultaneously has the semblance of dessication and decay.

Although the surrealists often spoke about birth, growth and evolution, which suggests a rational concept of development, they didn't view life in terms of linear, Darwinian, Cartesian paths. For them, movement through time and space was indeterminate, enigmatic, frenzied, eruptive, inexplicable. It was often subject to blockages and unimaginable cross-fertilizations. The term "convulsive beauty" was coined. This phenomenon is notable in many of André Masson's battle and confrontation scenes that convey extreme strife, transgression, anguish—and ecstacy. The volatile temperament is, moreover, not only inter- figurational but intra-figurational since aggressive attack, entrapment and seduction occurs between the body parts of a single being. Indeed, various artists commonly envisioned bodies with internal/external forms possessing fragmentary, partite anatomies with incongruous structures.

Surrealism was an anti-rational movement premised on a perpetual sense of revolt. This attitude had strong historical roots in the post-World War I and pre-World War II years—an era when utter devastation in the environment was a reality and all sorts of belief structures were torn asunder or subject to questioning. For the surrealists, the issue was not just political revolt, or revolt against constraints and outmoded beliefs associated with state, church and society. In a far more sweeping attitude, Surrealism sought to upset conventional ways or seeing and thinking, including a freedom from restrictive definitions, exclusionary naming and fixed categorizations. It was a multi- faceted, intentionally disruptive approach to the worlds of fact and fiction, conscious and unconscious realities.