Surrealism and the Anxieties of the 20th Century
Joseph Cassar, professor of art, University of Maryland University College and the New York Times Knowledge Network

Sigmund Freud’s publication in 1900 “On the Interpretation of Dreams” regarded dreams as the serious business of our lives. The Surrealist movement develops in the early 1920s with art that disquiets the viewer, sabotaging the existing order of things, relating theories of psychology to the idea of creativity and the production of art. The dream became equivalent to imagination itself. This seminar explores the origins of surrealism, the surrealist manifesto by Andre Breton, its widespread influence and the art of some of its most prominent members such as Max Ernst, Jean Arp, Joan Miro, Andre Masson, Rene Magritte, Alberto Giacometti, Salvador Dali, and others.