Subversive Surrealism?
panel discussion by research group ArchiVolt
with Kurt De Boodt, Liesbeth Decan, Vincent Van Meenen, Quinten Ingelaere, and John C. Welchman, moderated by Johan Pas
Wednesday 23 October 2024, 20:30
Lange Zaal, Academy
Join us for a panel discussion on the contemporary relevance of Surrealism, 100 years after the First Surrealist Manifesto (1924). Artists and theorists explore and discuss the topicality of Surrealist concepts and methods. Do they still make sense, and if so, how to deal with them?
Our times are as troubled as those of the interbellum, when Surrealism emerged from the rubble of earlier avant-garde movements and the traumas of the First World War. It was a movement that witnessed the rise of Fascism and Communism, and the crisis of modernism.
Notwithstanding its entanglement with its cultural and historical contexts, Surrealism managed to survive these and became the most lasting avant-garde movement. Only at the end of the 1960s, with its spokesman André Breton passing away and postmodern art movements gaining prominence, did Surrealism really became a phenomenon to look back on in history.
Today, its imagery and vocabulary are still being appropriated and quoted. Names like Salvador Dalí and René Magritte attract public attention, while some of their images have become part of our collective memory. Surrealism has been reduced to its most canonical artists and motifs and seems to have lost its sense of danger and provocation.
Commemorating a centenary of Surrealism, Mark Polizzotti, biographer of André Breton, recently released Why Surrealism Matters. Exploring Surrealist themes, such as transformation, appropriation, subversion, transgression, disruption and revolution, the author concludes that Surrealist topics and strategies still make sense and deserve to be reinterpreted, even after a hundred years.
The Surrealists believed in a revolution of the mind and the liberation of humankind. Is this purely utopian or are there things to be learned from their radical position? In an informal conversation with theorists, artists and the audience, we will try to explore if, how and why Surrealism still makes sense today.
(image: VVV. Poetry, Plastic Arts, Antropology, Sociology, Psychology, nr. 4, New York, 1944 (cover image by Roberto Matta), detail)
→ This lecture is part of the research festival ARTICULATE 2024 I ANONYMOUS CREATIVITY - ART WITHOUT ARTISTS
