SURREALISM AND THE AVANT-GARDE
M-W 3:30 – 5:20, LOW 102
Instructor: Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen
Office hours: Remote, by appointment
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.
Background readings and other materials will be provided on the course website on Canvas.
Assignments: One in-class midterm exam and one in-class final.
Schedule of meetings and readings:
M Jan 9: General introduction + History of surrealism – Dada.
Background reading: David Hopkins on the history of Dada and
surrealism.
W Jan 11: History of surrealism – Dreams, hypnosis, and everyday life.
Background reading: Sonu Shamdasani on spiritism and mediums.
M Jan 16: Martin Luther King Day – No class.
W Jan 18: History of surrealism – The surrealist group and the politics of surrealism.
Background readings: André Breton, 2nd Manifesto + Political Position of
Surrealism (Extracts), in Manifestoes of Surrealism.
M Jan 23: Collage and the object.
Background reading: Louis Aragon, “Challenge to painting” + Max Ernst
on collage.
W Jan 25: Collage and the object – Screening of René Clair’s Entr’acte
M Jan 30: Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant.
Background reading: Walter Benjamin on surrealism.
W Feb 1: Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant.
M Feb 6: General review.
W Feb 8: Mid-term exam.
M Feb 13: André Breton, First Manifesto of Surrealism.
Background reading: Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny” + Poems by André
Breton, Paul Eluard and Robert Desnos.
W Feb 15: André Breton, First Manifesto of Surrealism. – Screening of Antonin
Artaud’s The Seashell and the Clergyman.
Background reading: Jean Goudal, “Surrealism and cinema”
M Feb 20: Presidents’ Day -- No class.
W Feb 22: André Breton, Communicating Vessels.
M Feb 27: André Breton, Nadja.
W Mar 1: Documents: André Breton, Salvador Dalí and Georges Bataille.
Readings: Georges Bataille in Documents and on Dalí.
M Mar 6: General review and screening of Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien
Andalou.
W Mar 8: Final exam.