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Beyond Dreams: How Figurative Surrealism Differs from Traditional Surrealism?
- Sutithi
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 22 hours ago
The world of bizarre, strange, dreamlike, and irrational has fascinated artists since the last century. After World War I, artistic expressions changed dramatically. People were traumatized by the gruesome reality of the war, especially artists, who were trying to figure out how to translate that feeling of helplessness into art. Art movements that started taking shape around that period in Europe tried not to depict the grim realities of war but divert attention to a kind of art that was completely different. They introduced absurdity in art with Dadaism – art that was absurd and meaningless.
Surrealism followed soon, reflecting the world of dreams and the subconscious workings of the mind. During the early 1900s, Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud became famous for his psychological analysis of the subconscious mind. The concept of the hidden mind deeply influenced the Surrealists.
"Surreal" means anything unreal, weird, or bizarre. But there are different interpretations of the surreal in art. Some artists have created dreamlike worlds with recognizable figures, while others have completely abandoned realistic forms in traditional surrealism.
That is how figurative surrealism came into play. Though it shares surrealism’s idea of the fantastic and the bizarre, it includes realistic, recognizable objects from where the journey of the unreal begins. Let’s get into the whole story.
What is Traditional Surrealism?
Whatever the underlying aim of artists navigating a difficult period of time, all they needed was to escape reality. Traditional surrealism refers to the artistic ideas that developed during the 1920s when André Breton published his Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924.
The artistic styles of artists like Joan Miró and André Breton were mostly experimental. That was called automatic surrealism. It was spontaneous mark-making without any specific subject. They were abrupt and unplanned.
Salvador Dalí and René Magritte painted figures and identifiable objects with precise details, placing them in impossible situations.
Thus, there was no one style to assign to surrealism art style; they were dreamlike, fantastic, abstract, symbolic, and sometimes realistic.
What is Figurative Surrealism?
Imagine you walk into a room and see a lady seated by the window. This is a commonplace scene with a chair, curtains, and the sunlight settled on the face. But when you look into the reflection on the window, you see a strange and different world. While the woman remains real, the world around her looks out of the world. This strange meeting of usual with the unusual is the foundation of figurative surrealism.
This approach includes figures of animals and humans, landscapes, and scenes that look realistic but introduces an element of distortion in the imagery through juxtaposition, symbols, and changing scales.
That’s how a perfectly drawn person’s head can become a bird’s cage, a locomotive engine can emerge from clothing, or a background landscape can feel floating.
The figures are recognizable while what happens around them is not like that.
If you are interested in Surrealism, you’ll be fascinated to know how the broader realm of traditional surrealism branches out into abstract surrealism, veristic surrealism, and automatic surrealism.
It depends on how artists shift from the point of reality to explore the world of the unusual, dreamlike, and unconscious.
René Magritte and Figurative Surrealism
“To be surrealist is to banish the notion of déjà vu and seek out the not yet seen.” — René Magritte
Think of René Magritte paintings and how he treated objects in a matter-of-fact way, placing the recognizable figures and forms in unusual situations. Magritte used a figurative approach so that he could make viewers rethink and challenge conventional notions of reality. It makes sense to understand reality not as a fixed state of being but as something open to interpretation.
Dali’s Paranoiac Critical Method: How He Used Hallucination in His Images
Dali’s works resembled larger-than-life imagery, where he often placed himself in a state of hallucination. His painting of ‘Difference between a Madman and Me’ is striking, where he mentioned that he was not the madman. In another image of an altered state, he said that I don’t do drugs; I AM drugs. Most of the creations represented an enormous ego, central to Dali’s persona.
Traditional Surrealism VS. Figurative Surrealism: Are They the Same?
To understand the difference between these two closely knit surrealist approaches, we must consider the point from which the strange takes off.
Traditional Surrealism: Here, the subconscious or the creation process is more significant.
Figurative Surrealism: Here, figures and objects are central to the composition.
Traditional Surrealism: Reality gets distorted through methods like unexpected juxtaposition, changing scales, and others.
Figurative Surrealism: Here, reality is distorted through transformation.
Traditional Surrealism: Here, automatism and meticulous realism are widely used. "Automatism" means a spontaneous, repetitive form of expression. Meticulous realism means mimicking reality with high precision.
Figurative Surrealism: Realistic rendering of objects and placing them in unreal contexts.
Traditional Surrealism: Symbolic and unexpected juxtapositions are predominant.
Figurative Surrealism: More visually understandable than traditional surrealist themes.
One thing we must note is that figurative surrealism works within the broader scope of the traditional approach. They are no watertight compartments but closely related artistic ideals.
How Can We Understand Veristic Surrealism? Where Does it Fit in?
The word 'veristic' comes from the word 'verus,' meaning real or true. Veristic surrealism suggests something extremely real-looking but which is fundamentally unreal. When we think of Dalí's The Persistence of Memory, we can relate to realistic objects like the cheese, clock, trees, and shadows, but you can sense something strange in the composition. We cannot relate to a melting clock. It disrupts our understanding of reality.
Thus, the veristic approach matches the classic ideals of surrealism of challenging traditional reality.
The more believable the objects seem, the more the unreal context starts to haunt our senses. A kind of tension is created. This is the strongest appeal of figurative and veristic perspectives of surrealism.
What About Abstract Surrealism?
Unlike placing recognizable objects in the compositions, abstract surrealism takes a different path. Here, artists use non-representational forms, unexpected textures, erratic movement of lines and shapes, and unusual colors to suggest the theme of the subconscious.
This idea of abstraction resonates with automatic surrealism, where artists apply spontaneous strokes and marks, reducing conscious control. Automatic drawings of André Masson, a French painter and designer, combined biomorphic surrealism and automatism.
So, abstract surrealism deals with objects that may not exist in the physical world.
In figurative surrealism, the artists start with something real-world but try to decode something strange about the object.
Why Does Contemporary Figurative Surrealism Matter Today?
Though surrealism was an artistic invention of the 1920-30s, the idea of challenging conventional realism still matters today. Artists working in this genre still juxtapose to create a balance between the mysterious and the recognizable parts.
They combine unrealistic objects to create a tension, something that doesn’t make sense. Viewers can recognize a pipe, an apple, a face, an animal, a tree, and houses, and then the scene jumps into a dreamlike state to suggest memory, metaphor, or mystery.
In contemporary figurative surrealism, artists mix figurative references with symbols that suggest their personal experiences, cultural identities, or some pressing contemporary concerns.
They can be a lot different from legends, like Joan Miró, André Breton, Frida Kahlo, Dalí, or Magritte.
Contemporary creators keep surrealism alive while painting floating architectures, merging landscapes with objects, or anything psychologically haunting. Because artists believe that the element of the uncanny still exists in our society.
Figurative Surrealism Is More Than the Difference Between Real and Imaginary
There is a popular misconception about figurative realism, which is that it means realistic surrealism, which is not true. It is more complex and layered than that.
In surrealism, an artist doesn’t recreate reality but creates a fake reality; figurative surrealism also does that, starting with a recognizable point to create more tension.
From Dali’s fascination with altered and dreamlike states to Magritte's impossible objects, the Surrealists tried to disrupt reality to create chaos. The most real-looking thing can turn into something realistically impossible. Here the notion of perceived reality comes in.
Thus, figurative surrealism makes viewers navigate the passage between the real world and the world of imagination to look beyond what we think exists.
FAQ queries:
What are the two main types of Surrealism?
Ans: The two types of surrealism are veristic surrealism and automatic surrealism. The veristic approach deals with realistic objects or figures to place them in unrealistic contexts, whereas automatic surrealism works with non-representational and abstract objects.
What is the difference between figurative surrealism and traditional surrealism art?
Ans: Traditional surrealism explores dreamlike states and the subconscious, including mark-making, use of symbols, and juxtapositions. Figurative surrealism keeps recognizable objects as central to the creations but places them in strange situations with unnatural juxtapositions.
3. What is the figurative style of Surrealism?
Ans: The figurative style of surrealism uses human and animal figures, or other identifiable objects, to create an unreal landscape. It is also known as veristic surrealism.
Who are the most famous figurative surrealist artists?
Ans: Most famous figurative surrealist artists of the 20th century are Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst, Dorothea Tanning, Leonora Carrington, Kay Sage, and others.
Who are some of the most famous artists of figurative art?
Ans: Some of the most famous names associated with figurative art are Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Frida Kahlo, Lucien Freud, Jenny Saville, and Édouard Manet.
