SURREALISM

•  During the Modernist period a number of important historical events occurred one being World War I that influenced a Modernist art movement called Dada.
• Based in Zurich, Switzerland (neutral country) it was a direct reaction against the war, bourgeois and art.
• Visual artists used everyday items and technology to convey their message
• Collages and photomontages were assembled with techniques similar to the cubist.
• This art movement ultimately led to the development of Surrealism.
• After the war ended, artists experimented with a process called ‘Automism’ which is a process of creating without thinking
• They liked to create from their dreams
• Andre Breton coined surrealism: “Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.”
• Photography later on came into Surrealism in the works of Man Ray, Maurice Tabard.
• The use of such procedures such as double exposure, combination printing, montage, and solarisation dramatically evoked the union of dream and reality
•  Other photographers used techniques such as distortion and rotation to get a surrealist effect
• Hans Bellmer obsessively photographed the mechanical dolls he fabricated himself, creating strangely sexualised images

Romain Laurent's works convey a surreal sense of humour. He had worked for some of the world's largest ad agencies and fashion magazines, and Laurent's work has been commissioned by companies such as Microsoft, Nissan and the Discovery Channel.