Surrealism, as an aesthetic movement in the creative arts, as a means to 'extend the reality', challenging the normative mode of appreciating the reality, has contributed tremendously in different forms of expressions during the twentieth century. Salvador Dali, the great Spanish painter; Luis Bunuel, the famous film maker and many prominent figures subscribed surrealism. The basic elements responsible for the growth of surrealism like questioning the reality, the existing belief systems are also essential to promote research minds. However, we seldom come across scientists influenced by surrealism. Why is it so? Is there any fundamental contradiction?
Thank you Clifford for your answer.
Surrealism as a form of inquiry had its strongest influence on art and literature during the interim period of the first and the second World War and formalized by the poet Andre Breton (1924) in a famous manifesto. The manifesto claims a stronger presence of reality in the dream sequences where certain chains are formed which are not governed by the normative mode of constructing reality. However, this raises different possibilities. The age of the 'surreal world' and 'the age of surrealism' are two different issues. The question is not whether Physics influenced surrealism or the other way round. In an interdisciplinary world, any movement in the realm of thinking is supposed to permeate different fields of inquiry. The present thread was raised to understand whether the post world war science was influenced by surrealism or not. If yes, how? If no, why?
Nice question. However, I think Clifford makes a good argument for saying it appears that science does embrace surrealism, if perhaps indirectly, and there is evidence, as he said, of that predating surrealism in art.
So I think there is some level of disagreement with your following comment: "However, we seldom come across scientists influenced by surrealism." I can understand why it may appear that that would be true, and it may be true in the strictest sense. But I've heard - and believe - that most scientific breakthroughs are attributable to people outside the given field. That is natural, I suppose, when paradigms can be very useful in science, but simultaneously potentially stifling. And I would think it rare to hear a scientist reference an artist, though that may be helpful in creative thinking.
So I don't think there is "...any fundamental contradiction," but it may be more of a case of 'parallel evolution.' Or perhaps surrealism was actually influenced by science!
But, you said "The present thread was raised to understand whether the post world war science was influenced by surrealism..." and, strict speaking, I am unaware of any evidence of that.
The Surrealists themselves are often considered to have been influenced by Freud-whether psychoanalytical forms are scientific is a matter for conjecture. But art itself did not perhaps need Freud as its purpose has always been to manipulate reality in one form or another-to reshape phenomenon. And Surrealists commonly employed techniques that were connected to the spiritualism of Victorian times such as automatism. In the Renaissance art and science commonly fed off each other-the perspective and optical insights of the foremost painters influenced the foremost natural philosophers/scientists, such as Galileo.
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