Counterhistory of Surrealism & a New Taxonomy of Psychocentric Art

Guiding Framework

What

The central idea of this episode is that modern art movements, especially Surrealism, are difficult to define through the traditional “isms” model because modern artists were constantly experimenting with new ideas, visual languages, theories, symbols, and forms of expression. Instead of treating movements like fixed categories, this episode uses Surrealism as a case study for rethinking how art historians classify modern art.

Why

The reason for producing this episode is to question whether terms like “Surrealism,” “Cubism,” or “DADA” are always precise enough to explain what actually changed in modern art. This episode explores the paradox of modern art movements: they are useful historical labels, but they can also oversimplify artists whose work shifted across styles, theories, and personal concerns.

To respond to this problem, I introduce a new taxonomy of psychocentric art that moves from broad currents, such as Anticlassicism and Psychocentrism, to more specific movements, discourses, old “isms,” and individual personal mythologies. Through this framework, I reconsider Surrealism not as a single stable category, but as a loose and fragmented constellation of psychodynamic discourses, Freudian and Jungian logics, semiotic play, symbolic imagination, and personal mythmaking. This episode prepares the ground for case studies of Salvador Dalí, Remedios Varo, and Federico García Lorca by asking how their work both participates in and exceeds the category of Surrealism.

Introduction

Hello, welcome to Matthew Mythology: Stories by an Autistic Art Historian. This is your storyteller Matthew Mahoney.
This episode will be an introduction to Surrealism and Modern Art Part 2: Counterhistory of Surrealism and New Taxonomy of Psychocentric Art.
In my undergraduate college career, I have taken many courses that have trained me to be a good art historian. As an art historian, I have primarily been interested in how art participates in intellectual and cultural discourses of its time. I am particularly attached to how art participates in psychological-focused discourses in the 20th century. Surrealism and neo-Surrealisms are a significant component of psychocentric visual culture, the centering of the psyche and psychological phenomenon in the images around us. Surrealism may also show us the problems with trying to define such diverse artists and styles in the 20th century with isms.
Today’s podcast episode is edited from a special guest lecture I did for Dr. Abigail Susik’s introductionary modern art history course at Willamette. I plan to discuss Surrealism’s place in modern art history and more importantly, use Surrealism as a case study for rethinking modern art historiography. To do this, I will discuss the various problems in defining Surrealism and other modern art movements along with possible solutions. I have always enjoyed Surrealist art and plan to start this episode by discussing why I’m interested in the field of studying it.

1. Introduction to Myself and My Interest in Surrealism

During my first year of college, I was in a college colloquium course focused on Spanish and Latin American art and poetry. This is where my interest in Surrealism deepened beyond casual interest. I learned about Remedios Varo in this class. The women Surrealists are often neglected in high school art classes when discussing Surrealism. And honestly, I like her stuff better than the male Surrealists and will be doing my senior thesis on her work.

After I found a deeper interest in Surrealism, I decided to apply for a College Colloquium Research Grant and got it. With the funding, I went to Mexico City, Madrid, Barcelona, and Paris. I intended to go to Mexico City to see Remedios Varo’s work but during the weird years of COVID-19, the Museum of Modern Art, like other museums around the world, took the opportunity with smaller crowds to renovate their exhibition halls. I was not able to see her works.

In Madrid, Barcelona, and Paris, I saw, along with many other famous artworks, Salvador Dali’s work as well as personal belongings of the Surrealist founder Andre Breton. This experience was life-changing but also overwhelming. I saw in Surrealism such amazing creativity that it seemed to have no bounds. However, I also saw a problem with how we define Surrealism.

On one hand, we have Salvador Dali, who in public memory, saturates and dominates Surrealism, who ironically was kicked out of the Surrealist movement by Breton for his controversial positions including refusing to condemn the Spanish dictator Franscico Franco, having a fetish to “fuck” Adolf Hitler, and becoming increasingly commercial in a movement that despised the art market. Even, Andre Breton insulted him in later manifestos, rearranging his name to “Avida Dollars” to critique the commercial nature of his art and supposed lust for money and called him a “neo-Falangist”, essentially calling him “Fascist” as “Falangist” was a specific Fascist party in Spain.

On the other hand, you had the women Surrealists such as Remedios Varo and Leonara Carrington. Early on in the movement, their work was underappreciated, as they were seen as muses, inspirations for male artists to create works from, and lovers for the male artists, rather than legitimate artists on their own. Breton in his manifesto reinforced these ideas, inspired by the Symbolist movement’s idea of “women as symbol.” In the 1950s to the 1960s when multiple women Surrealists moved to Mexico, many to escape persecution from the Spanish Civil War, their work thrived and matured. Many feminist scholars have been debating if women “Surrealists” should be considered Surrealists when the ideological roots of the movement belittled and relegated women’s work. Scholar Whitney Chadwick came up with “Magic Realism” or “Neo-Romanticism” while scholar Marcel Brion suggested “Fantastical Realism” to describe the women Surrealists alternatively. I would argue their work should be considered potentially something separate from the male Surrealists, not just because they are women but because their mature work was decades after the initial Surrealist moment and because they were exploring different ideas.

My colloquium grant was my first endeavor into scholarly research and I had a hard time completing my paper for it. I was too ambitious, overwhelmed by my new experiences and ideas and as I told my professors during the time I submitted my project, “I played in the playground of theory too much.” I felt I failed. Nonetheless, I wrote 70 unorganized and unpolished pages of a research paper and 130 pages of appendices including daily logs from my travels.

I decided that my first research grant was a learning experience for me. The next research grant I did was the Carson research grant. For this grant, I wrote and recorded scripts for four podcast episodes: an overview of the podcast, an introduction to art history & Psychocentrism, an introduction to my other main research interest Autism and neurodiversity studies, and an episode on labyrinths & mazes. In this last episode, I explore how these symbols have been used in art and literature and also explored how my Autistic brain works using a personal metaphor of the labyrinth. This is this podcast. Since then, I have further edited and rerecorded these episodes along with writing and producing this episode.

To support my research interests in Surrealism and modern art history as well as Autism and neurodiversity studies, I have developed a background in communications theory, postmodernism, existentialism, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, feminism, and queer theory, which I consider all “psychocentric” thought movements. This were discussed in my episode on art history & psychocentrism. I use these theories to explore my personal experience with my Autistic psyche as well as study concepts in Surrealist art. My interests in both subjects are deeply connected to one another which is part of what I want toexplore in this podcast because of my interest in the psychological, the creative, and the imagination.

Now, I am doing a presidential scholarship, where I am still studying Surrealism which involves 4 components: This podcast episode, this time introducing Surrealism and psychodynamic art,; a paper on Salvador Dali as a theorist; documenting and creating catalogue books of the Hallie Ford Museum’s 5 Salvador Dali portfolios; and creating an either in-person or online exhibition selecting certain prints from these portfolios and analyzing them. My future career goal is to pursue a Ph.D. and become a professor.

My interest in Surrealism existed before I came to college. I loved the richness of internal worlds and non-conformity of ideas in Surrealism which related to my experiences as an Autistic person, a writer, and an artist. As an Autistic person trying to understand myself and learn how to adapt and thrive in life, I studied psychoanalysis starting in late middle school, using it as constructions to understand parts of my psyche and improve myself. I also have had a very vivid imagination and dreams that felt palpable, vibrant, and believable and wrote fiction stories ever since I was little. I was often engaged with my internal worlds, partly because the intense existence of them and partly to escape from the external world hostile to Autistic minds. Starting in late middle school, I also started documenting my rich dreams through poetry and visual art. I have joked in the past that my subconscious is a better poet and artist than me because of the vivid images and ideas my subconscious would show me. I always woke up frantic trying to document it all before it escaped me.

Surrealism appealed to me because it was psychodynamics and other psychocentric systems of thought manifested in visual art forms. It also reminded me of my own art and writing. The radical idea expressed by the Surrealists that one can liberate one’s self with knowledge of their psyche and their desire for uniqueness and non-normativity appealed to me as I considered my existence as an non-normative Autistic thinker and artist. Surrealists like me saw the subconscious as a valuable well of knowledge that informs us about ourselves and society.

Also, as an Autistic person, partly because I’m marginalized and feel the need to fight but also because I deviate from the norm without trying, also relate to Surrealism’s idea of getting in touch with our psychologies to liberate the self from modernism and to push political revolution. I’m naturally weird and want to be allowed to be weird and Surrealism’s acceptance of the weird was something I identified with. As I have become a campus activist, Surrealism’s political messages have become more interesting to me and have affected me more in the last few years. In summary, Surrealism fills my academic life as well as informs my personal life, creative practice, and activist practice. I felt it was good to give context to why I’m interested in Surrealism and my credibility to teach the subject.

Now, we will talk about the problem of defining Surrealism and modern art in general by discussing the bigger problem of periodization in art history.

2. The Problem of Periodization in Modern Art

As a review from the previous podcast episode on art history periodization and psychocentric thought, art history as a field has acted as a periodization practice since the Enlightenment, when historians began an obsession with categorizing, “scientif ying”, and metaphorically “conquering” knowledge as a finite and objective object. Art history in step with this thinking attempted to make the history of visual art a tangible, comprehendible and “conquerable” body of knowledge. In doing so, it became a periodization practice as there is no other way to make history with its millions of art objects tangible and conquerable.

There are different periodization models in art history with their own agendas, attempting to highlight some specific idea or trend in art and culture of a specific time period. Periodization practices are only problematic if they are seen as universal and the only true one amongst many. If art historians use periodization practices this way, then they are acting like Enlightenment-era and modernist thinkers, and in my opinion, ignoring the subjective and interpretive side of art history.

In modern art, because of our proximity to the 20th century, we have divided it into even more chunks, defining art movements or “isms” like Fauvism, Futurism, Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism, etc., you get the idea. While this periodization model may be helpful in some ways, we have to remember it is one construction of history and that it has an agenda and has its limitations. With this particular periodization model, it is hard to notice all the similarities or overlaps between art movements. We see each individual movement like its reinventing the wheel when these movements were in constant dialogue with one another. I also believe we also fail to see that art movements were reacting to movements in philosophy as well as discussed in the last episode. In attempting to always find the differences between movements, we lose these nuances. I would argue we miss macro and micro levels of understanding with a “isms” periodization model.

3. A Psychocentric-Philosophical Periodization Model

I would argue for a better periodization model pertaining to 19th century to present art which I call the “psychocentric-philosophical” periodization model. It emphasizes the individual movements but reimagines them a little bit and sees them as countering currents similar to Hocke’s broader model mentioned in the last episode. Seeing as how the entire 19th-20th centuries is “anti-classicist”, a more specific model can be useful to explaining the many unique contributions of 19th-20th-century artists. The 19th century and much of the 20th century are not only anti-classicist but also psychocentric, interested in the psychological. In the 1960s, art switched from focusing on the psychological to being focused on the conceptual and the philosophical, asking questions of society and culture, rather than exploring psychological stories. Psychocentrism, a concept I coined, is important to understand for this periodization model. I developed the idea of Psychocentrism to define art movements from Romanticism to Abstract Expressionism as well as thought movements including Existentialism and Phenomenology in Philosophy, Psychodynamics in Psychology, and Postmodernism in Cultural Studies. These movements have contributed to a centering of the psyche, the mind, or the self in our sense of reality, in Western culture, and in the arts & humanities fields. Psychocentrism is in reaction to modernism, and psychocentrism is closely tied to anti-classicism while modernism is closely tied to classicism.

4. The Three Imaginations: Optical, Emotional, Symbolic

To understand Psychocentrism in modern art, past the very abstract concept, I created the idea of the three imaginations which make up the countering currents in my periodization model. All avant garde art movements express these imaginations with one usually prevailing over the others.

The optical imagination is the prevailing imagination when a work contains new visual languages that challenge our psychological sense of reality, reflecting the optical through fragmented images and tricks. In early Cubism, the optical imagination prevails as they were focused on fragmenting space in various ways, to make multiple perspectives seeable at the same time. Futurism is similar but fragments time by showing multiple moments in one image. These movements were happening in reaction to new scientific theories on optics, the science of sight and light, and relativity, a new theory by Einstein about space and time. With the optical imagination, logos or logic prevails.

The emotional imagination is the prevailing imagination when a work focuses on exposing an artist’s emotional state and producing a strong psychological and emotional response in a spectator. German Expressionism is an example of this. German Expressionism’s primary goal is to expose the absurdity, fragility, and chaos of reality and produce an emotional response, oftentimes a feeling of distress, anxiety, fear, and insanity. With the emotional imagination, pathos or emotions, prevails.

The symbolic imagination is the prevailing imagination when the psychological is explored through symbols and narratives. In Surrealism, the symbolic imagination may prevail because they were focused on exploring the many possible meanings of symbols from dreams and the subconscious. Salvador Dali’s use of ants to suggest the subconscious or his reuse of Jean-François Millet’s Angelus to depict the Oedipus complex is an example of the symbolic imagination. The Surrealists were responding to ideas from Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung who saw connections between the worlds of the psyche and the symbols we use in art and literature. With the symbolic imagination, mythos or storytelling, prevails.

Oftentimes, scholars conflate pathos with mythos, following an Aristotelian logic that an emotional response necessitates contemplation on one’s own life, leading to one building a narrative. I would argue that while they are often coupled, it is possible to feel emotions in a raw, unprocessed way. German Expressionism often exposes and produces emotions without necessitating a contemplative response.

5. New Periods and the “Isms” They Replace

My periodization model starts with the Romantic period from 1800s-1850 which includes Romanticism and reflects the symbolic imagination; then the Naturalist period from 1860-1910 which includes Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Fauvism and reflects the optical imagination; the First Symbolic period from 1886-1930s which includes Symbolism and Art Nouveau and reflects the symbolic imagination, the Expressionist period from 1893-1933 which includes Edvard Munch and German Expressionism and reflects the emotional imagination; the Fragmentationist period from 1907-1914 which includes Analytical Cubism and Futurism and reflects the optical imagination; the Semioticist period from 1912 to 1940s which includes synthetic cubism, DADA, and early Surrealism and reflects quite equally the symbolic and optical imaginations with its play of semiotics; the Second Symbolic period includes the women “Surrealists” like Remedios Varo and reflects the symbolic imagination; and the Abstractionist from the 1950s-1960s which includes Abstract Expressionism and reflects the emotional imagination. The only period I identified after the 1960s is the conceptual/philosophical “Reaction to Consumerism” period from the 1960s-1970s which includes Pop Art and Minimalism that were on different sides of a spectrum: Pop Art representing the absurd maximum of consumerism, leaning into popular consumerism and emulating modern media and Minimalism representing the absurd minimum of consumerism, leaning away from popular consumerism and defying emulation of modern media. Both movements critique consumerism and media.

As you can see, I used categories we have already heard like “Romanticism”, “Symbolism”, and “Expressionism” but also created new categories such as “Fragmentationism” to define movements that fragment time and space as well as “Semioticism” to define movements that were playing with signs, playing with how we perceive systems of signs such as a face which includes eyes, ears, mouth, and nose.

In my model, Cubism is split into two separate movements because I think analytical and synthetic Cubism convey different ideas. Analytical Cubism is similar to Futurism in tendency and both are considered “Fragmentationism” while Synthetic Cubism is more similar to DADA and Surrealism in tendency and are all considered under “Semioticism.”

6. Semioticism: Picasso, Duchamp, and Dali

Synthetic Cubism, DADA, and Surrealism are all “Semioticism” through the use of what I call the “Semioticist” toolbox: concepts such as juxtaposition, putting objects together that don’t make sense together or look like two objects at once, and parody, imitation of something with deliberate exaggeration or ridicule which can be seen with images like L.H.O.O.Q. and mediums such as readymades, collage, and assemblage.

Even, “pure psychic automatism” which is Breton’s definition of Surrealism, is an approach that could be argued to be part of this toolbox as it emphasizes the vomiting of a random assortment of words and images, which are sign systems and often from subconscious dreams, onto a medium without conscious structuring or editing. Automatism shows semiotics can be psychological. All three movements were also attempting to expose the constructedness of sign systems as we often see them as real.

To illustrate my point about Semoticism, I want to talk about some examples of where I see this concept. In Picasso’s experiments in Synthetic Cubism, we see a departure from Fragmentationism, playing with optics to show various perspectives in space at once. Instead, we see semiotic playfulness, an alternative term for “Semioticism”, as he plays with sign systems.

My first example is Picasso’s guitar collages. Picasso would cut pieces out of newspapers, magazines, and musical compositions to create abstracted guitars. This expanded to three-dimensions with cardboard-constructed guitars. He wanted to emphasize the constructed nature of sign systems which try to emulate reality

We also see experiments with depicting bulls which is particularly interesting. Picasso would create various drawings of bulls drawing from the most mimetic and realistic to the most abstract and simplified signs of bulls. He was playing around with lines and shapes to try to reduce the sign of a bull to its most simplified form while still being recognizable as a bull. He would do other experiments where he reduce signs to the point they are unrecognizable and he enjoyed that ambiguity. But to talk about Picasso’s bulls, one day Picasso found a bicycle seat which he thought looked like the head of a bull. Picasso took this bicycle seat and displayed in the gallery and declared it a semiotic triumph, the ultimate success of his experiments with the sign of the bull. This was one of the first readymades, an artwork that was not created in the traditional sense but created as art through its revised presentation.

Another readymade made by DADA artist Marcel Duchamp was simply a wheel of a bike placed into a hole cut in a wooden chair and was simply called “Wheel of Bike.” It is interesting to consider in contrast to Picasso’s Bull Head.

Picasso’s Bull Head is referential, repositioned and presented in a way that renegotiates the meaning of the object. It is no longer a bicycle seat, it is an abstract bull’s head. The sign refers to a different referent. Duchamp’s work in contrast is self-referential, it is literal, it attempts to reference nothing other than what it is. Duchamp’s work is stable in its sign system, it is clear what it is. Picasso’s work is more unstable in its sign system, suggesting an alternative sign.

The third example I want to bring up is that Salvador Dali’s “Phantom Cart.” In this image, we see a cart going toward a city. The horse and the travelers’ bodies are also the buildings in the distance. This is a classic example of juxtaposition. We see two objects depicted at the same time. Juxtaposition also plays with semiotics by destabilizing sign systems by showing contradictory signs.

7. The Bias of “Movements” and Manifestos

To return to the issue of studying modern art, one problem I see is an inherent bias in what I call the old “isms” like Surrealism and Cubism. This bias is that “movement” or change in art is seen as personally driven, rather than historically determined. This means we don’t study modern art in terms of innovation and actual change but in terms provided to us by agents of history at that time such as artists and art critics. Avant garde artists writing manifestoes declaring a new movement such as German Expressionism, DADA, and Surrealism or critics coining terms to critique movements such as Fauvism and Cubism.

When looking at the Surrealist manifesto, Surrealism scholar Mary Ann Caws found that manifestoes function as their own genre, using inflammatory language and grandiose and revolutionary tones, presenting their ideas as new and innovative, like they are reinventing the wheel. Breton discusses Surrealism in such broad terms, almost as if the term is a catch-all for all these ideas he cares about.

To explore connections between them in novel ways, I came up with new “isms.”

Part of what inspired me to come with “Semioticism” is that I don’t see a major innovation between Synthetic Cubism, DADA, and Surrealism. Sure, DADA was more political and inflammatory than late Cubism and Surrealism was more psychological and philosophical than DADA but they all use similar tools and Cubism made many of those tools.

I will say my periodization model has a bias and limitations like any other periodization model and is one way to view modern art history. In my model, rather than exemplifying what artists identify with, what critics during their time called their work, or the grandiose statements of manifesto writers, I exemplify what I see as innovative tendencies.

I value looking at innovations because it gives a more realistic idea of what actually changed throughout modern art, rather than relying on how artists and critics at the time said their ideas were new and different. I think one of the problems with the typical “isms” model is artists grow and change their styles and the model groups artists into exclusive categories. An example is Salvador Dali who was expelled from the movement and delved into many other ideas and styles. One new idea and style was in his later years when he wrote a manifesto for a new movement that didn’t catch on which was inspired by the atomic bomb which I call “Atomicism” and saw figures and objects deconstructed into circles or bubbles which emulates “Fragmentationism” tendencies. I will talk about other ways Dali, the quintessential Surrealist, didn’t fit in with Surrealism especially later on. He shouldn’t be considered only Surrealist. Pablo Picasso is another example. He went from fragmenting space and time to playing with semiotics and creating works related to what the Surrealists were doing. Is he just Cubist? There is even literature discussing Picasso’s relationship with Surrealists and the influence they were having on his work. He never formally joined the Surrealists but nonetheless had association with them. In Barcelona, I visited the Joan Miro Museum where his early works play with simple shapes, geometries, lines, and colors, very “semioticist” and also very “Jungian”, trying to convey the simplest signs to emulate the collective unconscious. In his later work, he would burn and rip canvases which remind me of conceptual art and the violence of Abstract Expressionism.

8. A New Taxonomy of Modern Art

Another problem in studying modern art is that we try to oversimplify into “isms”, seeing them as reality when they are just constructions and not considering alternative and multiple levels of analysis. This is why I created a new taxonomy or classification system of modern art.

The broadest category in my taxonomy is “Currents” which are broader societal tendencies. Surrealism is part of the Anticlassical current and Psychocentric current, the latest manifestation of the anticlassical, unique in its strong focus on the psychological. We have already discussed this category.

I developed Psychocentrism partly in reaction to what I saw as one huge simplification of Surrealism, that Surrealism is essentially psychological art or art that is inspired by subconscious activity. Romanticism and Symbolism are classic examples of this not being true. While many art critics and historians including Roger Fry and our own Professor Santos primarily look at modern art as an innovation in language and metalanguage, as art doesn’t mimic nature anymore and shows new visual languages that emphasize form, emotions, and subjective meanings, I emphasize modern art as exploring the psychological, whether through optical tricks, playing with the meaning of different symbols, or through evoking emotional responses with colors and distortion. All modern art shows a new grammar, but this new grammar was made in response to Psychocentrism which is in response to the oppression of modernism. Surrealism is not the only movement to deal with the psychological or the subconscious.

The second category is movements which we already talked about as the new “isms.” Movements in my taxonomical model are not the old “isms” and constitute new innovative tendencies. Surrealism is part of the “Semoticism” movement. I would argue that Varo is part of a second “Symbolism” as the women “Surrealists” participated in mythical reinterpretation, as the first Symbolists did, taking symbols such as the Minotaur and reinterpreting them, and are brighter and more decorative in style.

The third category is discourses or collective ideas within “movements.” There is no one discourse in any movement and movements can share discourses. A strong example of a discourse in Surrealism is psychodynamic discourses. Argumentatively, Surrealism’s biggest accomplishment as a movement was Andre Breton bringing to consciousness ideas about psychodynamics in the art world. Psychodynamics refers to the multitude of theories regarding the modern conception of the subconscious put forth first by Sigmund Freud and his psychoanalytical theory and then the Neo-Freudians, students of Freud like Carl Jung and Alfred Alder who had similar ideas of the subconscious.

Most people confuse psychodynamics as psychoanalysis, the framework and collection of Sigmund Freud’s theories, however, this would be misleading as it doesn’t include the Neo-Freudians like Carl Jung and Alfred Alder who were inspired by Freud and psychoanalysis but intentionally distanced themselves and made and named their own approaches. The term psychodynamics was coined by Freud and inspired by the word and concept of thermodynamics. The term gets at the underlying premise of their different approaches which is the study of the interrelation of unconscious and conscious psychological energies (libido) and psychological forces in the mind.

Breton’s ideas that knowledge of the subconscious can lead to liberation of the individual and therefore, liberation of society is related to ideas from Sigmund Freud.

The fourth category is the old “isms.” I find one strength with old “isms” is that it gives us an idea of what groups of artists looked like but it is still limited in analysis because artist groups have a hard time staying together and individual artists break out all the time. With the old “isms”, I would encourage you to say for example, Salvador Dali participated in Surrealism, rather than is a Surrealist.

9. The Problem of Defining “Surrealism”

I would argue that designating a school or group is most difficult with Surrealism. I found three problems with trying to answer the question of who is Surrealist and whose not as the term group implies exclusivity.

The first problem is trying to find the original “Surrealism.” One could argue followers of Andre Breton and his 1924 manifesto, the group of male Surrealists including Dali, Hans Arp, Max Ernst, Joan Miro, Many Ray, Luis Banuel, and others as the original Surrealist group. However, this would ignore the fact the Surrealists were also fragmented and ironically, since the movement emphasizes liberation of the individual, very individualistic. From the very beginning, there was another group of Surrealists not related to Breton and headed by Yvan Goll.

The second problem regards artists who are considered Surrealist but were excluded from the group. Salvador Dali as I mentioned before was kicked out for his controversial positions. It is important to note that Dali wasn’t conservative or really political. He was an artist who liked to shock people with things like his Hitler fetish and was really only political when it served him.

Salvador Dali had his own idea of Surrealism, interested in the psychological and symbolic aspects, and not so much the political aspects. He would go on to claim he was more Surrealist than Breton and the others. He, as well as others, tried to expand and redefine the movement which ultimately led to Breton to writing and writing until his death to save the integrity and intended concept of Surrealism. Breton’s aspirations and Dali’s innovations provide different visions and definitions of Surrealism, especially as Dali is seen as the quintessential Surrealist despite not following close to Breton’s ideals for Surrealism.

The other important outlier is Remedios Varo and the Women “Surrealists”, excluded because they were women artists. Some women “Surrealists” even rejected the label themselves and yet we still use them. Women “surrealists” also had a different and unique message and were playing with different ideas from the male Surrealists.

The third problem which I find as a problem with scholars in Surrealism is the idea that association means you were part of the school or group. Many DADA artists became known as Surrealists, not because of the content in their work, but because of simply having relationships with those in the movement.

One example I think of is Meret Oppenheim and her fur cup. She had relationships with Surrealists but her work doesn’t seem to convey discussion of psychodynamics, Freudian or Jungian ideas. I believe her work is DADAist but because of the timing was considered Surrealist. Scholar Gwen Raaberg points out that Oppenheim’s works were often reinterpreted by Breton and the Surrealists so it’s possible that is part of the problem.

I also think about how Surrealist scholars have dealt with the boundaries of Surrealism as the many innovations and concepts from Surrealism have permeated popular culture to the point that “Surrealism” can be used as an adjective for contemporary work: “surrealistic.” The way I have noticed Surrealist scholars respond is by expanding the art historical boundaries of Surrealism to anyone who had any association with Surrealism, which I’m critical of.

The final problem I think about is the shadowing of local movements. In trying to periodize modern art, we can end up ignoring more local movements like the “Logofobistas” in Barcelona which were inspired by Surrealism and had Varo in their group who end up absorbed into Surrealism. This problem isn’t unique to Surrealism.

These problems have ultimately lead me to think past what is original Surrealism and what are neo-Surrealisms and just simply use the term “surrealisms”, implying there are multiple groups. Surrealism, I find, is still an elusive term, it may not be a great critical term in analysis, but simply a word to describe a loosely defined body of ideas that inspire us.

10. Personal Mythologies of Dali and Varo

The fifth category is the individual artists. I often think of individual styles and what I call “personal mythologies” which involves the kind of stories individual artists tell and how they use certain symbols to convey personal meanings. I think it is important to look at the individual artists’ evolution through changes in their personal styles. As mentioned before, artists change styles and play with different ideas throughout their lives. Dali was unique compared to other Surrealists in his use of classical and Renaissance techniques in his work and working in a hyper-realistic style. Dali over time seemed to move from Breton’s surrealism to his own conception of Surrealism to Atomicism and a unique proto-Pop Art style.

Varo as my other example changed from painting similar compositions to the male Surrealists to painting more mature, colorful, vibrant, and personal works in the 1950s-1960s.

11. Conclusion

To conclude, we have explored my interest in Surrealism, discussed problems with periodizing and understanding Surrealism and modern art in the typical isms model and offered a taxonomy that might provide solutions for this problem from the broadest: currents to the most narrow: the individual artists and their personal ideas.