Surreal, I'm damned if I do give a damn what people say
New show and tell episode "Surrealism" featuring special guest Abby Aleksinas, out now!
In this week’s episode, we discuss the art style of surrealism and explore how it relates to Taylor Swift. Abby Aleksinas, of @arthistoryabby on Tik Tok, joins us to help us understand how visual arts can connect to music. We dive into “The Archer” from Lover, then we look at “closure” from evermore, and wrap it up with “Lavender Haze” from Midnights. Join us as we dive into the unconventional pairings, unexpected imagery, and use of surrealism to convey emotions and create a dreamlike atmosphere!
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🏫 This Week’s Extra Credit - Brought to you by Jodi
When we decided on the topic of Surrealism, my first immediate thoughts were:
Oh shit.
Oh cool!
To be honest, I don’t remember where the idea for the topic came up. Why not focus more broadly on art history? Why pick a notoriously nebulous, difficult-to-pin-down artistic movement known for abstraction? We must have had a reason for putting it on the schedule, so onward we went!
Surrealism is most known for its artistic movement of the 1920’s-1950’s, but it wasn’t limited to art—it was a cultural movement spanning visual arts, poetry, literature, film, theater, and more. According to the leader of Surrealism, Andre Breton, Surrealism aimed to “resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality.” The best summary of Surrealism I found in my research (outside Abby’s wisdom shared on the podcast, of course!) comes from James Voorhies of the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
Officially consecrated in Paris in 1924 with the publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism by the poet and critic André Breton (1896–1966), Surrealism became an international intellectual and political movement. Breton, a trained psychiatrist, along with French poets Louis Aragon (1897–1982), Paul Éluard (1895–1952), and Philippe Soupault (1897–1990), were influenced by the psychological theories and dream studies of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and the political ideas of Karl Marx (1818–1883). Using Freudian methods of free association, their poetry and prose drew upon the private world of the mind, traditionally restricted by reason and societal limitations, to produce surprising, unexpected imagery. The cerebral and irrational tenets of Surrealism find their ancestry in the clever and whimsical disregard for tradition fostered by Dadaism a decade earlier.
Need to break it down a bit further? This video from Tate Modern (yes, made for kids) does a great job and even references Dorothea Tanning, mentioned by Abby in this week’s episode as a big Taylor Swift Easter Egg
Surrealists from This Week’s Episode
Abby’s primer on Surrealism truly helped ground our conversation, and she mentioned a few notable Surrealists and their art to help bring the topic to life. Since we didn’t have the images on hand while recording (and since podcasting is an audio medium) I thought I’d share some of the artist’s work here to bring the topic to life:
Salvador Dali
René Magritte
Max Ernst
Dorothea Tanning
Joan Miro
