Surrealist Art And Psychoanalysis
Surrealism (surrealist art) is an artistic style that is well known and little understood. This style brought about a revolution in the arts. Its origins were in the literary world, although its best known expressions are in the work of some great masters, such as Salvador Dalí.
It is an illogical art, without apparent meaning and full of fantastic motifs. In addition, it tried to capture the world of dreams and the unconscious, which is why it was also known as the art of dreams.
It is the aesthetic movement that was most interested in making a representation of the human psyche and the unconscious. His works are intended to confront the individual with their most complex thoughts. In this way, surrealist art was much more than visual beauty. It aimed to free man from all that was rationally understood and lead him to fantastic worlds. Worlds full of symbols and meanings that connected him with his deepest self.
Surrealist art and psychoanalysis: Salvador Dalí
Dalí was one of those geniuses, deeply admired for his works and highly criticized for his eccentric and narcissistic nature. He was visionary and mystic. Where the genius ended and the madman began is difficult to know.
He wasn’t psychotic, but he had paranoid tendencies. And one of the most common defense mechanisms in this type of disorder is projection. That is, the fears and thoughts themselves are unconsciously attributed to someone or something. This genius of painting had the incredible ability to project his inner reality externally.
In the 1920s, Dalí read Freud’s work, ‘The interpretation of dreams’. A reading that deeply marked him and with which he entered a new artistic phase. He invented what he called the paranoid-critical method by which he intended to reach and shape information from the subconscious.
Techniques in common between surrealist art and psychoanalysis
The pictorial technique most used in surrealist art was automatism, probably inspired by psychoanalytic free association. Surrealists used automatism as the mirror of the interior, the reflection of the unconscious. Many argued that automatism was not a technique in itself, but an artistic movement.
two subjective realities
Within Dalí’s symbol-filled inner world, fetishes proliferated. Objects, sometimes impossible, those who liked to make room in their works and whose interpretation did not always reach a consensus among specialists.
Outstanding figures such as the lobster, which was one of Dali’s obsessions throughout his life and which seemed to be represented as a source of phobias. The drawers, symbol of the secrets of the mind that only psychoanalysis could open. Skulls as a symbol of the transience of life.
Butterflies as a symbol of metamorphosis and transformation; the flies, which seem to represent fear. The crutch, which for Dalí represented authority, magic and mystery. The eyes, which referred to the observer. Or the melted clocks, one of Dalí’s most recognizable symbols, represent the passage of time and its irrelevance.
An expression far from rational
The genius Dalí often invented his own terms to pictorially define (through painting) concepts of psychoanalysis such as the Dioscuri complex, which he called “Phenixology”, a symbolic process by which one of the brothers must die in order for the other to become become immortal. He tried to symbolize the oedipal desire or the father’s power.
Salvador Dalí sought in psychoanalysis an explanation for the obsessions that followed him throughout his life, and he did not find in his art only a way to analyze his own conflicts in the manner of psychoanalytic schools. He also invented an entire imaginary world to reflect it in his works.
