Surrealism and beyond
Detested or admired, Surrealism is one of the key concepts in 20th century history. Difficult to define, it is transversal to different periods and subjects, and cannot be circumscribed to a specific literary or artistic movement, or even a group of artists and writers. It is important to continuously remind people of the political dimension assumed by surrealism in the 1920s and 1930s. This is namely illustrated by the Manifests (the two first of 1924 and 1930, with André Breton as the chief editor) and magazines such as The Surrealist Revolution and Surrealism at the Service of the Revolution.
In 1919, Freud wrote a fundamental text for approaching the work of art, Das Unheimlisch (The disturbing strangeness). The disturbing strangeness expresses a sense of awe associated to long-known, familiar concepts, which become disturbing under certain conditions.
This approach will entrance surrealists. Automatism represents the birth of surrealism.
"The will to burst all the locks will remain, without a doubt, the idea that originated surrealism" (André Breton, 1933). Surrealist painters quickly adopted automatism. Max Ernst used the methods of frottage and grattage. But André Masson was the first to resort to this expression of the unconscious.
Another path carved by surrealists what that of the object. Since 1924, André Breton, in its Introduction au discours sur le peu de réalité, proposed the manufacturing of "certain objects, seen only in dreams". Surrealists, both artists and writers, passionately embraced this practice. In 1930, Salvador Dali built and defined objects with symbolic functions: this artist placed a lobster on a telephone or fused a lobster with a telephone. Readymades, objects chosen or composed from 1914 onwards by Marcel Duchamp, constituted another attempt, within a surrealist perspective, of redefining the very concept of artistic creation.
Finally, one of the most noteworthy characteristics of this movement is its international dimension. The Berardo collection also includes a very important work by the Chilean artist Roberto Matta, one of the most notable artists that followed the surrealist trend after the Second World War. In Portugal, surrealism emerged in 1948, with the work of poets like Mário Cesariny and Alexandre O’Neill (1924 - 1986). Mário Cesariny held his first individual exhibition in 1956. "Painting was what helped me displace and deconstruct language", he affirmed. By occasion of its opening and thanks to the works loaned by the Gulbenkian Foundation, Museu do Chiado and Fundação Cupertino de Miranda, the Berardo museum pays homage to this artist.
