1. Surrealism
A “natural” result of Freud’s work exploring the unconscious and dreams.
A “natural” progression from Symbolism—Moreau and Munch—even earlier from our friend, Fuseli—The Nightmare.
And perhaps…even Bosch…

2. The Hearing Forest and the Seeing Field
Hieronymus Bosch
pen drawing

3. John Henry Fuseli The Nightmare 1781 oil on canvas

4. Symbolism
According to Stokstad, Symbolism is an intellectual movement in late-nineteenth-century art and literature.
Symbolism seeks a deeper and more mysterious reality than the one we encounter in everyday life.
Symbolism originated in France but had a profound impact in the art of other European countries, where it often merged with expressionist tendencies.
Artists transformed appearances in order to give pictorial form to psychic experiences, and they often compared their works to dreams. 4 4

5. Gustave Moreau Oedipus and the Sphinx 1864 oil on canvas, 206 x 105 cm

6. Edvard Munch
The Scream
1893

7. Edvard Munch Vampire 7 7

8. Gustave Klimt
The Three Ages of Woman
1905

9. Henri Rousseau Le Reve

10. Surrealism
Is about a fascination with dreams and mystery and melancholy and fear. Surrealist images are constructed from the contradiction between reality and the irrational but seemingly possible. Even nightmarish images have an element of “the possible” about them. This quality of realism makes surrealist images compelling and, at times, extremely disturbing.

11. Giorgio de Chirico Melancholy and Mystery of a Street 1914
“yearning, melancholy, narcissism, historical nostalgia…”

12. Giorgio de Chirico The Disquieting Muses 1915

13. Max Ernst The Elephant Celebes 1921
“Ernst could compress a lot of psychic violence in a small space…icy derangement…”

14. Max Ernst Two Children Are Menaced by a Nightingale 1924

16. Meret Oppenheim Luncheon in Fur 1936

17. Salvador Dalí The Persistence of Memory 1931

18. Salvador Dalí Metamorphosis of Narcissus 1937

19. Dalí, Metamorphosis of Narcissus, 1937
Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory, 1931

20. Rene Magritte The Treachery of Images 1928-1929
“It is a picture of a pipe, but as a picture, an image, its reality is different from a pipe’s” (Hamilton, 409).

21. Rene Magritte Not to be Reproduced (Portrait of Edward James) 1937
In his work Magritte patiently insists that similarity does not imply identity and that relations between objects, their images, and their names need not conform to the laws of common sense causality. By refusing to mistake life for art, or art for nature, he contradicted nature with deadpan naturalism and affirmed the essential character of the work of art as superior to illusion. His visual logic is irrefutable and absurd.

22. Rene Magritte The Threshold of Liberty 1937

23. Rene Magritte Golconda 1953

24. Rene Magritte The Son of Man 1964

25. Joan Miro The Harlequin’s Carnival 1924-1925

26. Joan Miró's The Hope of a Condemned Man