Thinking Activity Trends and Movements

 This Blog is a response to the Thinking Activity on the Trends and Movements.This Blog is also about the 20th Century's Three movements Surrealism, Expressionism and Dadaism.

Surrealism:- 

Surrealism was an artistic, intellectual, and literary movement led by poet André Breton from 1924 through World War II. The Surrealists sought to overthrow the oppressive rules of modern society by demolishing its backbone of rational thought. To do so, they attempted to tap into the “superior reality” of the subconscious mind. “Completely against the tide,” said Breton, “in a violent reaction against the impoverishment and sterility of thought processes that resulted from centuries of rationalism, we turned toward the marvellous and advocated it unconditionally.

Surrealism is more than an artistic style—it’s an artistic movement.

Unlike other creative movements, which can be characterised by themes of imagery, colour choices, or techniques, defining Surrealist art is slightly harder to do.

Surrealist artists—like Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, or Michael Cheval, among many others—seek to explore the unconscious mind as a way of creating art, resulting in dreamlike, sometimes bizarre imagery across endless mediums. The core of Surrealism is a focus on illustrating the mind’s deepest thoughts automatically when they surface. This thought process for creating art is known as “automatism.”

"Lullaby of Uncle Magritte" (2016), Michael Cheval, Surrealism, Surrealist Art

“Lullaby of Uncle Magritte” (2016), Michael Cheval

Over the years, Surrealism has resulted in a fascinating collection of artwork ranging from mythical landscapes, to obscure sculpture arrangements, to intriguing depictions of people and animals.

Expressionism:-

Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas.

Expressionism, In the visual arts, artistic style in which the artist depicts not objective reality but the subjective emotions that objects or events arouse. This aim is accomplished through the distortion and exaggeration of shape and the vivid or violent application of colour.

Expressionism emerged simultaneously in various cities across Germany as a response to a widespread anxiety about humanity's increasingly discordant relationship with the world and accompanying lost feelings of authenticity and spirituality. In part a reaction against Impressionism and academic art, Expressionism was inspired most heavily by the Symbolist currents in late-19th-century art. Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and James Ensor proved particularly influential to the Expressionists, encouraging the distortion of form and the deployment of strong colours to convey a variety of anxieties and yearnings.

The classic phase of the Expressionist movement lasted from approximately 1905 to 1920 and spread throughout Europe. Its example would later powerfully inform many individuals, and groups such as: Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Expressionism, and The School of London.

Dadaism:-

Dada (or Dadaism) is an avant-garde literary and artistic movement of the 20th Century, developed between 1916 and 1922, as a revolutionary and critical rejection of the brutality of the First World War.

The origins of the term are still unclear and there are various interpretations under consideration: Dada could derive from the non-sense onomatopoeic expression ‘dada’, one of the first words used in children’s language, recalling the absurd and playful roots of the movement.