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Modernisms 1900-1980
Course: Modernisms 1900-1980 > Unit 5
Lesson 2: Surrealism- Surrealism, an introduction
- The Case for Surrealism
- Surrealism: Origins and Precursors
- Surrealism and Psychoanalysis
- Surrealist Techniques: Automatism
- Surrealist Techniques: Subversive Realism
- Surrealist Techniques: Collage
- Surrealist Photography
- Surrealist Exhibitions
- Surrealism and Women
- Man Ray, The Gift
- Magritte, The Treachery of Images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe)
- Conservation | René Magritte, "The Portrait," 1935
- Dali, The Persistence of Memory
- Dali, Metamorphosis of Narcissus
- Giacometti, The Palace at 4am
- Meret Oppenheim, Object (Fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon)
- Meret Oppenheim, Object (Fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon)
- André Masson, Battle of Fishes
- Oppenheim, Object
- Giorgio de Chirico, "The Anxious Journey"
- Room: 1930s
- Surrealism
- Room: 1940s
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Giorgio de Chirico, "The Anxious Journey"
To learn more about how abstract artists became the radical thinkers of their time, take our online course, Modern Art, 1880-1945 or Pigment to Pixel: Color in Modern and Contemporary Art. Created by The Museum of Modern Art.
Want to join the conversation?
- Why is this painting in storage?(2 votes)
- Art museums have more stuff than they can display, so even great stuff rotates off of the walls of the galleries into storage from time to time. If MOMA had waited until this 1913 painting came out of storage onto display to do this series of programs commemorating 1913 in 2013, this painting may have had to wait until 2023 to be shown to us. As it is, the curator of these videos chose to show things from 1913, some of which were in storage, so took the camera down there.(3 votes)
- At aroundshe mentioned the term surrealist painter. 2:00
What is Surrealist Painter?(2 votes)- Surrealism was a genre in art that attempted to re-look at reality, and the artwork of the genre is typified by scenes that are illogical, disturbing, distorted, and illogical. Most of the time you can still see what is trying to be represented, but it is very distorted and misshapen. A Surrealist painter, then, would be one who uses those techniques in his or her artwork.(2 votes)
- Is it just me, or do those white column walls remind you of Cabrini?(2 votes)
- Maybe that's where the architects of our school got it from haha!(1 vote)
- Why is it that the columns lead to nothing but shadows?(1 vote)
- A lot of surrealists liked to depict impossible scenarios. De Chirico could also be adding to the anxious mood of the painting by not allowing the viewer to know.(1 vote)
- what is the meaning of the dark paintings?(1 vote)
- Some art doesn't have one true meaning. It can mean many things.(1 vote)
- Does " The Anxious journey . " Have a message of how the Artis feels, what about in his other paintings ? What made him make the paintings , curiostiy, 100% for fun? Was he board ? ( NOT counting the pantings that may make sense . ) Did he want to make paintings that were out of this wold and did not make any sense ?
I could say that would be interesting . : )(1 vote) - Does it seem like the walls could cause an optical illusion?(1 vote)
- I sort of believe that's the point of the painting. You're trying to make sense of the "unknown".(1 vote)
- what can anybody tell me about Giorgio De Chirico. Melancholy and Mystery of a Street.(1 vote)
- what is surrealist painter?(0 votes)
- The Surrealist movement was founded in Paris by a small group of writers and artists.Surrealism has come to be seen as the most influential movement in twentieth century art.(1 vote)
Video transcript
(music) - [Anna Umland] I'm here in storage with Giorgio deChirico's 1913 painting, The Anxious Journey. 1913 was a breakthrough
year for Giorgio deChirico. This work is probably
one that was included in a exhibition that
deChirico staged for himself in his studio in Paris,
and among the people who came to see that
show was the great poet and critic and champion
of Avent Garde art, Guillaume Apollinaire. In October of 1913,
Apollinaire wrote about his experience of deChirico's paintings, and he remarked on these
painting's absolutely modern quality and then on their strangely metaphysical character. deChirico makes you think
about how painting can be not about a reality perceived, but about a reality imagined. What you're looking at is a
series of architectural arcades arranged in a space that has ways, that since the Renaissance
artists had used to construct a plausible represenation of a believable negotiatable space. You have the orthogonals. You have recessive characters, but combined in a say that
really doesn't add up. These colonnades lead
nowhere, or you don't have the opportunity
to know where they lead because the pallet is so somber and shadows fill almost
very single one of them other than this one
little sliver of blue sky and brick wall, or that of course, this looming, puffing locomotive, which many people have
described as ominous or threatening, akin to a caged beast, and there definitely is something of that psychological, emotional tension by positioning this locomotive
behind this brick wall. Following Apollinaire's
lead, a number of the surrealist painters and
poets like Andre Breton, or Rene Magritte seized
upon deChirico's work as a key precursor for what
surrealist painting should be. Arrested movement, convulsive beauty of these strange dream
states, and I think that's one of the things that The Anxious Journey so beautifully exemplifies. 1913 remains as a year
where so many of his signature motifs are first seen.