SURREALISM AND THE AVANT-GARDE
M-W 8:30 – 10:20 am -- Remote: https://washington.zoom.us/j/92391136574
Instructor: Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen
Office hours (remote): Fri 8:30 – 10:00 am. Please send instructor an email beforehand to receive an individual invitation to join the meeting.
Email: mbj@uw.edu
Description: Surrealism, which emerged in Paris in the early 1920s from the social upheaval of post-WWI Europe and more especially from Dadaism, is arguably the most influential avant-garde movement of the 20th century. It rejected social, moral and logical conventions and sought to revolutionize art, literature, politics and life in the name of freedom, desire and the unconscious. Surrealist art, which was viewed by the surrealists as a means of liberation beyond purely aesthetic considerations, is characterized by a diversity of forms of expression: writing, painting, drawing, photography, film, collage, found objects, sculpture, theater; and of practices: automatic writing, hypnosis, and somnambulic strolling in the streets of Paris. We will study all these forms of expression and examine the challenges surrealism poses to traditional notions of art, literature and politics.
Readings: André Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism; Nadja; Communicating Vessels; Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant. All titles are available from UW Book Store.
The readings will also include essays and other materials provided on the course website on Canvas.
Assignments: One midterm exam and one final.
Schedule of meetings and readings:
M Jan 4: General introduction + History of surrealism – Dada.
Background reading: David Hopkins on the history of Dada and
surrealism.
W Jan 6: History of surrealism – Dreams, hypnosis and everyday life.
Background reading: Sonu Shamdasani on spiritism and mediums.
M Jan 11: History of surrealism -- The surrealist group.
Background reading: Maurice Blanchot on surrealism.
W Jan 13: History of surrealism – The politics of surrealism.
Readings: André Breton, 2nd Manifesto + Political Position of Surrealism
(Extracts), in Manifestoes of Surrealism.
M Jan 18: Martin Luther King Day – No class.
W Jan 20: Collage and the object.
Background reading: Louis Aragon, “Challenge to painting” + Max Ernst
on collage.
M Jan 25: Collage and the object – Screening of René Clair’s Entr’acte
W Jan 27: Guest lecture: Douglas Collins, “The found object”.
Reading: André Breton, “Surrealist situation of the object”, in Manifestoes
of Surrealism.
M Feb 1: Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant.
Background reading: Walter Benjamin on surrealism.
W Feb 3: Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant.
M Feb 8: General review.
W Feb 10: Mid-term exam (remote).
M Feb 15: Presidents’ Day -- No class.
W Feb 17: André Breton, First Manifesto of Surrealism.
Background reading: Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny” + Poems by André
Breton, Paul Eluard and Robert Desnos.
M Feb 22: André Breton, First Manifesto of Surrealism. – Screening of Antonin Artaud’s The Seashell and the Clergyman.
Background reading: Jean Goudal, “Surrealism and cinema”
W Feb 24: André Breton, Communicating Vessels.
M Mar 1: André Breton, Nadja.
W Mar 3: Documents: André Breton, Salvador Dalí and Georges Bataille.
Readings: Georges Bataille in Documents and on Dalí.
M Mar 8: General review and screening of Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel’s Un chien andalou.
W Mar 10: Final exam (remote)