The Lugubrious Game and Jabberwocky

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Harris defines surrealism as an "avant-garde movement established in the early 1920s by the French writer Andre Breton". He also states that Breton's definition of surrealism was "pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express verbally, in writing or in any other way, the true process of thought. It is the dictation of thought, free from the exercise of reason, and every aesthetic or moral preoccupation." He continues to explain that surrealism is "the name mainly for a group of painters whose strange and sometimes disturbing images became, and remain - ... - extremely popular." (2006, p. 313)

In the following essay, the I will be talking about one piece of work from the interwar period, and one piece of work from the post-war period. The piece of work I have chosen to discuss from the interwar period is The Lugubrious Game. This was painted in 1929, by Salvador Dali (b.1904 - d. 1989), who was a prominent Spanish surrealist. The work from the post-war period I have chosen to discuss is Jabberwocky, which was made in 1971 by the Czech film-maker and artist, Jan Svankmajer (b. 1934), who is a self-labelled surrealist.

The Lugubrious Game is a part oil painting and part collage on cardboard. It depicts a large collection of objects and stones which are raised in the air above a set of steps. Among these objects are a collection of hats, items that appear to be seashells, items that appear to be sexual in nature, or depicting genitalia, an umbrella, a grasshopper, and a hand holding a cigarette. There are also a selection of portraits, including a large profile in the centre of the painting, which leads down to an area showing multicoloured swirls, and a human backside. In the background of the painting there is a sta...

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...ctably contradictory and base," (Biles, 2007, p.75) because even when we, as the viewer, are seeing something that is considered beautiful, in reality it is still hiding something ugly under the surface.

In conclusion, in both the work from the interwar period and the work from the post-war period, we can see that surrealist art has a tendency to juxtapose the poetic and beautiful and the abject and distasteful together.

Works Cited

• Adamowicz, E. (2003). Exquisite excrement: the Bataille-Breton polemic. Available: http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/aurifex/issue2/adamowicz.html. Last accessed 18th Jan 2014.
• Biles, J. (2007) Ecce Monstrum: Georges Bataille and the Sacrifice of Form, USA: Fordham University Press.
• Harris, J. (2006) Art History: The Key Concepts, London: Routledge.
• Noys, B. (2000) Georges Bataille: a Critical Introduction, London: Pluto Press.

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