For an independent revolutionary art: Marxism and Surrealism

Surrealism was a revolutionary artistic movement founded in 1922 and led by writer and poet André Breton.

The movement produced and influenced a galaxy of the 20th centuries finest artists.

Surrealist artwork deals in the bizarre and the strange. On the surface, it can seem as if this is all it is - though, it stands for something much deeper.

In this talk, Will Collins from the RCP Central Committee explains how surrealism grew out of the general feeling of malaise and anger that existed across Europe following the barbarism of the First World War and at the same time the inspiration from the revolutionary events that swept Europe.

This revolutionary spirit reflected itself in the art produced by the surrealists. Surrealist art seeks to express a contradictory view of reality. It reveals the violence and savagery that lurks underneath the thin veneer of bourgeois civilization. The polite manners and “good taste” of bourgeois society is really just a façade that conceals the most terrible suffering, exploitation and repression.

But really the essence of the surrealist movement, was to liberate the artist from the shackles of ‘official’ culture, the state, church and even of the mind itself.

In its form, the surrealists developed techniques that aimed to tap into the creative well-spring of the subconscious mind - they experimented with automatic writing and painting, dream recitals and research into mental illness and recent studies in psychoanalysis.

The surrealists were not at all armchair intellectuals, but committed revolutionaries. After being ex-communicated by the Stalinist Communist Party, Breton was drawn into the orbit of Leon Trotsky who in 1937 together published a manifesto called a ‘Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art.’

Here, they argue that art must remain true to itself and not degenerate into mere propaganda dictated to it by a revolutionary party yet should place itself at the service of the revolution.

But to truly liberate the mind, a life and death struggle would have to be waged against the system that enslaves it, and commit to the building of a socialist society.

The manifesto finishes with the slogan:

"Our aims: The independence of art — for the revolution. The revolution — for the complete liberation of art!”