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Surrealism didn't take (Part I of II)

© Valerie Borey

Despite it’s enormous popularity in Europe in the WWII epoch, surrealism never experienced widespread acceptance in Norway during this period. Surrealist artists found little success on the Norwegian market and encountered apathy among Norwegian audiences. Why did Norway resist an ideological movement that emphasized breaking from the arbitrary boundaries of perception and reality in preference of a more traditional perspective on the times? Why, in such turbulent times, did Norway turn its gaze inwards rather than embrace a philosophy that emphasized an externalization of the inward gaze?

The surrealist movement of the war years originated in the strong currents of Dadaism coursing through Europe after WWI. Dadaism, an art movement that emphasized the rejection of traditional morality and rationalism, arose in response to the brutalities experienced in Europe during the first World War. The senseless violence and poverty created by war conditions prompted figures such as German born artists Kurt Schwitters, Max Ernst, and Hanna Höch, and Frenchman Marcel Duchamp, to adopt an artistic pose that elevated the absurd and irrational shadows of the human psyche.

Norway, which had recently gained independence in 1905, remained neutral during WWI and suffered few of the hardships that the rest of Europe struggled with. Although about 2,000 sailors had been killed at sea, caught in the midst of military battles, Norway enjoyed relative prosperity. Financial losses in other European countries made it possible to reclaim native industries that had passed into foreign hands. While the rest of Europe found themselves morally responsible and economically troubled from the war, it wasn’t until the 1920s that Norway began feeling the effects of the depression.

As the severity of the economy began to lessen in the rest of Europe, Dadaism soon gave way to surrealism in an effort to harness the energy of irrationality rather than simply expose it. Inspired by Freudian thought, surrealists sought entrance into the unconscious realm of desire and dormant perception, in order to make sense of their world and the roles they played within it, particularly as events converged into what would later become WWII. In a speech delivered in Brussels, 1934, the founder of surrealism, André Breton said,

…I cannot refrain from adding that at the hour in which I speak, old and mortal shivers are trying to substitute themselves for those which are the very shivers of knowledge and of life. They come to announce a frightful disease, a disease followed by the deprivation of rights; it is only a matter of having the courage to face them also. This disease is called fascism.