![]() Surrealism was a decidedly feminine movement. Psychoanalytic feminism and the depiction of women in surrealist photography. ![]() Retrieved March 13, 2021, from īottinelli, K., & Laxton, S. D., Borde, C., Malovany-Chevallier, S., & Rowbotham, S. Regardless of the forces that shaped it at the time, museums should be held responsible to depict the art movement as it was, which had decidedly feminine components.īeauvoir, S. One thing is undeniable surrealism needs to be depicted holistically. ![]() Some might argue that it was the thinking of their time or that the unconscious that produced these images cannot be held responsible. I don’t think that the depiction of women by male surrealists can necessarily be justified. What struck me while walking through the Surrealism exhibit that day was the stark disparity between the number of female and male artists. Like most research, delving more into the issue of misogyny and Surrealism left me with more questions. In recent years, there has been an uptick in the demand and auction prices for art by female surrealist artists. Kate Brown, writing about a Frankfurt exhibit, highlights how “the quantity and diversity of their work shows how a female perspective was central to surrealism from its birth in the aftermath of World War I”(Brown, 2020). However, to say surrealism was misogynistic would be to ignore the decidedly feminine parts of it. It felt like Conley was trying to justify the actions and beliefs of male surrealists. This argument made me uncomfortable initially. They argue that even if women were only in the unconscious, placing them there necessitated a feminine, if not feminist, perspective. Conley argues that this placing of a woman at the center, albeit as a muse, creates “the potential to step down from her pedestal and to create on her own”(Conley, 1996). Zurn and Carrington served as muses for Hans Bellmer and Max Ernst, respectively, before becoming Surrealists artists in their own right. Conley brings up two female artists : Leonora Carrington and Unica Zurn. Further, Conley argues for a new perspective on surrealism. “Maryse Lafitte argued against reading surrealist depictions of women as unremitting antifeminist, as has Rosalind Krauss”(Conley, 1996). In Automatic Woman, a text further exploring the relationship between feminism and surrealism, Katherine Conley introduces a perspective I had not considered. But this view was not unanimous amongst feminist scholars as I had presumptuously expected. Simone de Beauvoir wrote, in The Second Sex, that Breton “never talks about Woman as Subject”(Beauvoir, 1949). ![]() The misogyny inherent in surrealism is not a new idea. “Freud’s psychoanalysis theorizes that unconscious thoughts and motivations, rooted in primitive drives toward sex and aggression, are the underlying cause of human behavior”(Bottinelli, 2018). As much as I wish it stopped there, it doesn’t. ![]() These “theories on hysteria and animalistic impulses, rooted in cultural misogyny, had negative repercussions on the movement” as we already have seen (Botinelli, 2018). Freudian techniques, meant to reveal the unconscious, were common inspirations of Surrealists. This comes as no surprise since Andre Breton, the author of the Surrealist manifesto, based much of the underlying themes of surrealism on the research of Sigmund Freud. Many famous artists, including “Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Yves Tanguy, and Rene Magritte, created imagery that, in its sexual abandon, often objectified women they chopped off female arms and legs, replaced their faces with genitalia, or, as in the case of Ernst, rendered them headless”(Thackara, 2018). While Bellmer was one of the worst offenders, he was not alone in his depiction of women in surrealist art. Accompanied photographs were “taken below in a way that emphasizes the doll’s breast and genitals, while her face is partially obscured”(Bottinelli, 2004). For instance, Bellmer created a doll where the torso is actually a second pelvis. Bellmer primarily created sculptures that, in my opinion, were blatantly misogynistic. Perhaps it sounds ridiculous to have an internal feud with a German surrealist artist, but I did. While studying the painting, I was trying to block out a sculpture in my peripheral vision. So, I decided to write my paper on a self-portrait by Frida Kahlo, perhaps the most famous female surrealist artist. We had learned about a few art movements including surrealism. Two years ago, I took a trip to the Modern Museum of Art for an assignment for an introductory art history class. ![]()
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