Interpretation of the Female in Surrealism

Surrealism was a literary and artistic movement that began in the 1920’s. Surrealism has often been criticized for being sexist and although many female writers and artist emerged and followed the path of surrealism in this time period, they were not recognized as a part of the movement itself. The surrealistic movement was officially founded in Paris by Andre Breton following his “Le Manifesto du Surrealism”. In his manifesto he defines surrealism as “psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner the actual functioning of thought”^[1]. With this definition he advises artist to seek contact with their unconscious mind in order to get inspired. In this paper I will explain the origins of surrealism as a movement in order to reflect on how a sexist surrealist movement in command by men viewed the female subject. I will use these reflections to explore the difference between male and female artists that followed the path of surrealism and show how female artist re-appropriated and reinterpreted surrealism to represent them in a different way using Frida Kahlo and her masterpiece “the two Fridas” as an example of this.  

Andre Breton was a French writer and poet, but is known to most as the father of surrealism. He was educated in medicine and he also showed a big interest in psychology. Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, whose work distinguished between the conscious and the unconscious mind, heavily inspired Breton.^[2] Freud’s explanation of the unconscious mind, made the foundation for his essay and probably most known work “The Manifesto of Surrealism.” Sigmund Freud’s studies were based on his interest in the causes and effects of mental illness. He tried to understand the inner workings of the minds and the concept of the unconscious was central to Freud’s studies. He believed that poets and thinkers already knew of the existence of the unconscious.^[3] Freud divided the human psyche into three parts: id, ego and superego and he distinguishes between our conscious mind, our unconscious mind and our preconscious mind. The conscious mind contains the information that is currently being processed, the unconscious mind is the information that is capable of becoming conscious, and the preconscious mind represent repressed thoughts.^[4] In Bretons definition of surrealism he continue to explains that “dictated by thought in the absence of any control exercised by reason, free of any aesthetic or moral concern”^[5], where he explains that surrealism liberates the artists from the pressure that is society. Surrealism frees you from the norms of everyday life. He believes that surrealism can connect the state of dream and reality into “a kind of absolute reality, a surreality”^[6].