Proto-Surrealism

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Proto-Surrealism is a term used for Surrealism avant-la-lettre. It is the study of various forms of art, literature, and other mediums that correspond to, reference, or share similarities to the 20th-century art movement known as Surrealism. This definition is considered a controversial topic, with many debating the suitability of the term surrealism to describe these bodies of work and instead opting to use the term Fantastique or Fantastic Art.

Contents

Definition

Salvador Dali, who admired Hieronymus Bosch's work, may have been inspired by the left panel of Bosch's triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights when painting The Great Masturbator. The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch High Resolution.jpg
Salvador Dalí, who admired Hieronymus Bosch's work, may have been inspired by the left panel of Bosch's triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights when painting The Great Masturbator .

Surrealism is a 20th-century art movement. André Breton, a French poet, known as one of the core founders of the Surrealist movement, wrote two manifestos that define surrealism. [2] Many current art critics and historians aim to identify characteristics which enable works of art to be categorized as surrealism. These identifying elements include automatism and a spirit of spontaneity, hyper-realistic dreamlike scenes, psychology and mythology as themes, a focus on dreams, psychoanalysis, fantastic imagery, a break from imagery, illogical juxtapositions, distorted figures, and personal iconography. [1] Proto-surrealism doesn't adhere to Breton's strict definition of surrealism and its guidelines.

Artists

During the Late Renaissance and Baroque era there was a prevalence of artwork and imagery created that shared aspects of surrealism. In particular, the work of artists like Hieronymus Bosch and Giuseppe Arcimboldo are credited by modern surrealists as being influential to the surrealist movement.

Hieronymus Bosch

The surrealist imagery used in much of Bosch's work, lead some historians to attribute him to be the grandfather of the surrealist art movement. Jheronimus Bosch 001.jpg
The surrealist imagery used in much of Bosch's work, lead some historians to attribute him to be the grandfather of the surrealist art movement.

A Dutch artist during the late 15th and early 16th century, Hieronymus Bosch began his career following the direction of his family of painters. [3] It was here that he acquired the skills of a painter and began to gain favor from court patrons. During his lifetime, Bosch created numerous paintings and drawings, and while much of his work has been lost to history, the paintings and drawings recovered and attributed to Bosch by art historians show scenes that contain very surreal and fantastic imagery. As German art historian Hans Belting writes, "Ever since research on Hieronymus Bosch began, his paintings have captivated the imagination, exerting a fascination that has spawned an insatiable demand for ever new interpretations, none of them quite satisfactory." [4]

Studies of Monsters by Hieronymus Bosch BoschStudiesOfMonsters.jpg
Studies of Monsters by Hieronymus Bosch

In Bosch's most famous work - the triptych "The Garden of Earthly Delights" - the three panels show scenes that depict Heaven, Earth, and Hell. [3] The far left panel showcases a scene from Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Here God stands between the two while an assortment of real and mythological creatures crawl out from a hole below. Above the trio, there is a building that sits in the middle of a lake while various other mythological creatures roam above and around the structure. In the midst, a fantastical landscape begins to melt into the background. The large middle panel shows a scene of numerous nude humans dancing, swimming, riding animals that are both real and mythical and suggestively cavorting.

Moving to back of the panel, there are many structures with fish-like creatures flying above them, humans and human-like beings in and around the structures, and other beings interacting around the space can be seen. Throughout this middle panel, there are gigantic birds, humans inside crustacean-like creatures, caves, and an assortment of other activities and objects in the scenes. However, the panel that Bosch is most likely remembered for is the far-right panel, depicting hell. This panel contains very detailed imagery; a large knife blade protrudes from between two massive ears of pig dressed in a nun's garments while attempting to kiss a man's cheek, a man's hollow body cavity merges with a tree, and a bird-like creature that appears to swallow humans whole while excreting its human waste into a pit of other fallen humans.

Behind all this action, there are crowds of naked bodies that disappear into an ominous red pool and cities that appear to be burning and melting into the dark and misty background. The vision is dark and violent. According to Dr. Nils Büttner, author of Hieronymus Bosch: Visions and Nightmares, this panel depicts a "prototype of everything we understand as Hell," and "Other people came up with images of Hell, but nothing so fantastic." [5] The erotic scenes, wild strange monsters, fantasy fruits, and illogical juxtapositions lead some art historians to credit Bosch as being the forefather of the surrealist movement. [6]

Bosch's Christ in Limbo, features another hell-like scene with a giant humanoid creature who guzzles humans whilst other mythological creatures roam about with various human interactions. to his drawing of The Listening Wood and the Seeing Field, an ink drawing which displays two ears in a forest and a field full of eyeballs as an owl sits in a hollow tree, [7] Bosch has a reputation of using fantastic imagery, mythology, and bizarre and hellish dreamlike scenes within his work. This theme that historians like Laurinda Dixon, have attributed to hallucinations caused by St. Anthony's Fire, a common disease of the time which occurred after consuming the parasitic ergot fungus sometimes found on rye bread. This eventually created a form of LSD. [8]

The surrealist qualities and elements found throughout much of Bosch's work have led some to title him as a proto-surrealist. In fact, in his first Surrealist Manifesto, Andre Breton dubbed Bosch as a forerunner to Surrealism, saying Bosch's work was "a strange marriage of fideism and revolt... the singer of the unconscious" and that his composition was "the example of automatic writing." [3]

Arguments against Hieronymus Bosch's title of Proto-Surrealist

Arguments against calling Bosch a proto-surrealist usually fall in line with art historian Walter Bosing's comments. Bosing writes in his book, Bosch, that "...the tendency to interpret Bosch's imagery in terms of modern Surrealism or Freudian psychology is anachronistic. We forget too often that Bosch never read Freud and that modern psychoanalysis would have been incomprehensible to the medieval mind... Modern psychology may explain the appeal Bosch's pictures have for us, but it cannot explain the meaning they had for Bosch and his contemporaries. Bosch did not intend to evoke the subconscious of the viewer, but to teach him certain moral and spiritual truths, and thus his images generally had a precise and premeditated significance." [9]

Arcimboldo's composite portraits utilize the surrealist element of illogical juxtapositions and a break from rationality. Vertumnus arstidernas gud malad av Giuseppe Arcimboldo 1591 - Skoklosters slott - 91503.jpg
Arcimboldo's composite portraits utilize the surrealist element of illogical juxtapositions and a break from rationality.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo

A 16th-century Italian court portraitist, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, has become the most famous in modern times for his composite portraits that utilize assortments of fruits, vegetables, animals, or every day objects to create personified portraits. His most famous painting, Vertumnus , utilizes an array of fruits and vegetables to create a portrait depicting Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor painted as Vertumnus, the Roman God of the seasons. Some art historians claim that much of Arcimboldo's composite portraiture, while comedic in some senses, was created in a larger sense to comment on various issues of the time. For example, in The Librarian, a composite portrait where a man's portrait is built out of books, historians argue this work was meant as a criticism of wealthy people who collected books only to own them, rather than to read them. [10] In other ways, art historian Benno Geiger, in his thorough analysis of Arcimboldo - I dipinti ghiribizzosi di Giuseppe Arcimboldi - writes that a line from a sonnet ("There's Neither Shape nor Form in it") reveals "the painter's secret intention, which was more that of a philosopher than a superficial glance might lead us to believe. His method was to cast a cloak of art over nature, that is, to present the truth by disguising it." [11] While his composite portraiture flourished under the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, his work was soon lost until the early 20th century when the Surrealist movement began to revive and take inspiration from his creations. [12] In fact during the 1930s, Alfred Barr, a famous American art historian, put him in a Museum of Modern Art exhibition, called Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism, in New York, and Salvador Dalí, a world-renowned surrealist painter, decided to honor Arcimboldo with the title of "father of Surrealism." [13]

Others

Below are a few examples of artists who produced work that could be labeled as proto-surrealist.

ArtistWork
Pieter Huys Follower of Hieronymus Boash - Temptation of St. Anthony 224N09003 6WH6P.jpg

The Temptation of St. Anthony [14]

Wenzel Jamnitzer Perspectiva Corporum Regularium 54.jpg

Etching from Perspectiva corporum regularium 1568 [15]

Giovanni Battista Braccelli Bizzarie di Varie Figure 44.jpg

Bizzare di Varie Figure 44 [16]

Pieter Breugel the Elder Pieter Bruegel (Temptation of St Antony).jpg

Temptation of Saint Anthony [17]

Hans Baldung Grien Hans Baldung - Three Ages of Man - WGA01195.jpg

The Ages of Woman and Death [18]

Joos de Momper Joos de Momper the Younger, Anthropomorphic Landscape c.1600-1635.jpg

From a series of four seasons in anthropomorphic landscapes: Allegory of Winter [19]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Surrealism</span> International cultural movement active from the 1920s to the 1950s

Surrealism is an art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike scenes and ideas. Its intention was, according to leader André Breton, to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality", or surreality. It produced works of painting, writing, theatre, filmmaking, photography, and other media as well.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hieronymus Bosch</span> Dutch painter (c. 1450–1516)

Hieronymus Bosch was a Dutch painter from Brabant. He is one of the most notable representatives of the Early Netherlandish painting school. His work, generally oil on oak wood, mainly contains fantastic illustrations of religious concepts and narratives. Within his lifetime his work was collected in the Netherlands, Austria, and Spain, and widely copied, especially his macabre and nightmarish depictions of hell.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">André Breton</span> French co-founder of Surrealism (1896–1966)

André Robert Breton was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism".

<i>The Persistence of Memory</i> 1931 painting by Salvador Dalí

The Persistence of Memory is a 1931 painting by artist Salvador Dalí and one of the most recognizable works of Surrealism. First shown at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1932, since 1934 the painting has been in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, which received it from an anonymous donor. It is widely recognized and frequently referred to in popular culture, and sometimes referred to by more descriptive titles, such as "Melting Clocks", "The Soft Watches" or "The Melting Watches".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Remedios Varo</span> Spanish artist (1908–1963)

María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga was a Spanish surrealist painter working in Spain, France, and Mexico.

<i>The Garden of Earthly Delights</i> Triptych painting by Hieronymus Bosch

The Garden of Earthly Delights is the modern title given to a triptych oil painting on oak panel painted by the Early Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch, between 1490 and 1510, when Bosch was between 40 and 60 years old. It has been housed in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain since 1939.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leonora Carrington</span> Mexican artist, surrealist painter and novelist (1917–2011)

Mary Leonora Carrington was a British-born surrealist painter and novelist. She lived most of her adult life in Mexico City and was one of the last surviving participants in the surrealist movement of the 1930s. Carrington was also a founding member of the women's liberation movement in Mexico during the 1970s.

<i>Ecce Homo</i> (Bosch, Frankfurt) Painting by Hieronymus Bosch

Ecce Homo is a painting of the episode in the Passion of Jesus by the Early Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch, painted between 1475 and 1485. The original version, with a provenance in collections in Ghent, is in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt; a copy is held the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The painting takes its title from the Latin words Ecce Homo, "Behold the Man" spoken by the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate when Jesus is paraded before a baying, angry mob in Jerusalem before he is sentenced to be crucified.

<i>The Hermit Saints</i> Triptych by Hieronymus Bosch

The Hermit Saints is a religious oil on panel painting displayed as a triptych, meaning it is one whole painting composed of three separate scenes. This artwork was made by the Renaissance artist Hieronymus Bosch, dating from 1493. The entirety of the triptych painting measures 86 by 60 centimetres. This artwork is currently being housed at the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice.

Surrealist cinema is a modernist approach to film theory, criticism, and production, with origins in Paris in the 1920s. The Surrealist movement used shocking, irrational, or absurd imagery and Freudian dream symbolism to challenge the traditional function of art to represent reality. Related to Dada cinema, Surrealist cinema is characterized by juxtapositions, the rejection of dramatic psychology, and a frequent use of shocking imagery. Philippe Soupault and André Breton’s 1920 book collaboration Les Champs magnétiques is often considered to be the first Surrealist work, but it was only once Breton had completed his Surrealist Manifesto in 1924 that ‘Surrealism drafted itself an official birth certificate.’

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Western painting</span> Art produced in the Western world

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hidden face</span> Perception or recognition of faces in something essentially different

People often see hidden faces in things. Depending on the circumstances, this is referred to as pareidolia, the perception or recognition of a specific pattern or form in something essentially different. It is thus also a kind of optical illusion. When an artist notices that two different things have a similar appearance, and draws or paints a picture making this similarity evident, they make images with double meanings. Many of these images are hidden faces or hidden skulls.

<i>The Last Judgment</i> (Bosch, Vienna) Triptych by Hieronymus Bosch, created after 1482

The Last Judgment is a triptych by Hieronymus Bosch, created after 1482.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women surrealists</span> Women involved with the Surrealist movement

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jan Mandijn</span> Dutch painter

Jan Mandijn or Jan Mandyn was a Renaissance painter of the Low Countries, who worked in Antwerp after 1530. He is known for his works with subject matter and style reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giuseppe Arcimboldo</span> 16th-century Italian painter of the late renaissance period

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, also spelled Arcimboldi, was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of objects such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish and books.

<i>The Fall of the Rebel Angels</i> Painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

The Fall of the Rebel Angels is an oil-on-panel painting of 1562 by the Netherlandish Renaissance artist, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The painting is 117cm x 162cm and is now in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, Belgium. The Fall of Rebel Angels depicts Lucifer along with the other fallen angels that have been banished from heaven. Angels are falling from the sun in a stacked manner along with ungodly creatures that Bruegel created. This piece by Bruegel was previously thought to be by Hieronymus Bosch. Bruegel was influenced by a variety of artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Frans Floris I, and Hieronymus Bosch. He also got ideas for the creation of his creatures in his previous works.

<i>Triptych of the Temptation of St. Anthony</i> 1501 painting by Hieronymus Bosch

The Triptych of Temptation of St. Anthony is an oil painting on wood panels by the Early Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch, dating from around 1501. The work portrays the mental and spiritual torments endured by Saint Anthony the Great, one of the most prominent of the Desert Fathers of Egypt in the late 3rd and early 4th centuries. The Temptation of St. Anthony was a popular subject in Medieval and Renaissance art. In common with many of Bosch's works, the triptych contains much fantastic imagery. The painting hangs in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon.

<i>What the Water Gave Me</i> (painting) Painting by Frida Kahlo

What the Water Gave Me is an oil painting by Frida Kahlo that was completed in 1938. It is sometimes referred to as What I Saw in the Water.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ichiro Fukuzawa</span> Japanese modernist painter

Ichiro Fukuzawa was a Japanese modernist painter credited with the establishment of Surrealism in Japan's artistic communities during the early 1930s.

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