Course Description

Instructor: Clark Poling, PhD

Surrealism arose in Paris in the 1920s and 30s as a critique of society, promoting irrationality and freedom from stylistic and moral constraints. Inspired by poetry and the psychological theories of Freud, the Surrealists created personal and mythic images in a wide variety of mediums: painting, sculpture, collage, photography, film, objectmaking, and exhibition installation. Their work ranged from free-wheeling abstractions to carefully depicted dream images. The course treats artists including Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Frida Kahlo and Pablo Picasso. Particular attention will be paid to the participation of women artists in the movement and to the Surrealists’ concepts of the self: the “primitive� self, the child self, and the female subject.