Accessibility statement

Period Band C

Realism and Surrealism: Art and Politics Between the Wars

Tutor: Michael White

For Peter Bürger, the movements which flourished after the First World War in France and Germany such as Dada and Surrealism are characterized by a common desire to reintegrate art and society. This is not just at the level of a return to representation but their shared goal to transform social relations through the power of art. Such ambition was sometimes also manifested in the tendency to dethrone art, as in the case of the Dada ready-made or the Surrealist object, and literally make it part of the real world. This module is intended to investigate such phenomena and test the theory of the avant-garde as it has been proposed against other forms of historical evidence.

The module is structured as a comparative analysis of the art worlds in France and Germany from the end of the First World War to the beginning of the Second, a period that saw enormous change politically and socially, reflected in the growing emancipation of women, the expansion of mass culture through technologies of reproduction (photography, radio and phonograph) and the rise of totalitarian regimes across Europe. As we shall see, although there is a strong desire to see the avant-garde as an international effort, there are significant national differences in the artistic response to the aftermath of the First World War and the emergence of Communism and Fascism.

The art movements that will form the basis of the discussion are Dada, Surrealism, Constructivism and Neue Sachlichkeit. Themes that may be tackled in the module include representations of war and masculinity, concepts of utopia and nostalgia, women and the avant-garde, and avant-garde use of the ‘new media’ of the time such as film and photography.