Art, Surrealism, and the Grotesque

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The term "grotesque" in art and literature, commonly refers

to the juxtaposition of extreme contrasts such as horror and

humor, or beauty and monstrosity, or desire and revulsion. One

function of this juxtaposition of the rational and the irrational

is to subdue or normalize the unknown, and thereby control it.

The simultaneity of mutually exclusive emotional states, and the

discomfort it might cause, inspires a Freudian analytic critical

approach because of its focus on controlling repressed desires

through therapeutic rationality.

There are volumes of Freudian art criticism, which typically

begin by calling attention to manifestations, in some work of

art, of the darkest desires of the id. Perhaps in no field of

art criticism does Freud's name appear more frequently than in

surrealism, and for various reasons, the grotesque figures very

strongly in that art movement. From the association of

surrealist art and Freud, we can derive a cursory understanding

of the grotesque in this breed of Modernist art: the grotesque

appears as an image, the content of which might traditionally be

repressed, but instead, it is expressed within the controlled

confines of a work of art. The psychoanalytic critic will focus

on the simultaneous attraction to and repulsion from the dream-

like imagery on the surrealist canvas. Yet, this does not

consider the surrealist notion of art as a liberation of the

subconscious, nor does such analysis adequately incorporate the

surrealist goal of political revolution. Instead, it reduces

surrealist art criticism to the interpretation of dreams. This

Freudian view becomes too limiting of our understanding of

surrealism, the grotesque, and perhaps even of ourselves...

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Sartre, Jean-Paul. Nausea. trans. Lloyd Alexander. New York: New

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------- The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre: A Bibliographic Life

Chicago: Northwestern University Press. Interview with

Claudine Chonez in Marianne, Dec. 7, 1938.

------- "What is Literature?" and Other Essays. Trans. Steven

Ungar. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988.

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