麻豆传媒

IN 1919, 23-year-old artist , enamoured with the latest developments in science, decided it was time to leave the world of behind. The Dada art movement, born amid the turmoil of the first world war, sought to expose the absurdities of society and existence. Breton wanted to continue challenging society鈥檚 prevailing social and political values, but hoped to trade in Dada鈥檚 鈥渁nything goes鈥� message for a reconciliation of the rational and the irrational, which he believed would lead to truth. Thus surrealism was born.

Enthralled with Sigmund Freud, Breton wanted to express the Freudian unconscious in art. He encouraged the technique of 鈥渁utomatic drawing鈥�, in which the artist鈥檚 hand, liberated from conscious control, moves freely across the canvas.

In the late 1920s, Breton read essays by . Bachelard knew his way around relativity and quantum mechanics, writing about the schizoid wave-particle duality: light and matter exist as waves and particles at the same time. Breton and the surrealists saw this struggle to reconcile opposites as a supreme example of Marxist dialectics, the notion that human history is shaped by conflicting forces and that only through their reconciliation can a new social order emerge.

In Surrealism, Art and Modern Science, Gavin Parkinson aims to 鈥渢ransform our understanding of surrealism鈥� by examining sources from art, literature, physics, politics and philosophy. The book centres on the Viennese artist , who, according to Parkinson, attempted to capture the essence of the wave-particle duality as a symphony of vibrating lines culminating in dots. But does this really depict the duality? Quantum physics clearly influenced Paalen鈥檚 art, but the results are disappointing.

Parkinson traces surrealism back to cubism and its founder, Pablo Picasso 鈥� a crucial step in uncovering surrealism鈥檚 scientific roots. However, he tiptoes around the question of why, from 1905 to 1907, Picasso was simultaneously struggling with the same issue as Albert Einstein 鈥� the nature of space and time 鈥� though Picasso was unaware of Einstein鈥檚 work. Parkinson brushes off the question by quoting Paalen: 鈥淕reat thoughts in the same period often follow parallel ways without their authors being aware of it.鈥� In fact, scholars have shown that this was no coincidence. Questions about space and time were central to the avant-garde ideas sweeping across Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. Both Einstein and Picasso encountered the work of French polymath Henri Poincar茅, from whom they learned about four-dimensional geometry. Cubism was largely a scientific art movement, but Parkinson ignores the texts that prove it.

鈥淪pace and time were central to avant-garde ideas鈥�

In the 1920s and 1930s nobody was bringing quantum theory to the masses, but relativity had British astrophysicist Arthur Stanley Eddington. Parkinson offers exciting new revelations about Eddington鈥檚 role in surrealism. The surrealists were swept away by Eddington鈥檚 insightful and poetic explanations of complex scientific concepts, not to mention gnomic statements like: 鈥淗uman personalities are not measurable by symbols any more than you can extract the square root of a sonnet.鈥� Even to surrealists, this was surreal.

Parkinson conjectures that Salvador Dali also read Eddington鈥檚 books. Dali threw in his lot with the surrealists in 1929 and produced works that have become synonymous with it, such as . This painting captured brilliantly the core of relativity: each drooping clock shows a different time, embodying the truth that time is relative to the observer.

Does Parkinson succeed in his mission to transform our understanding of surrealism? In part when providing new information, but he leaves much to be desired. This is an exciting topic, but many of Parkinson鈥檚 sources are published ones, so there are few surprises. Still, the book shows that proponents of surrealism, such as Dali and Paalen, were conceptual artists with a concept, unlike so many 鈥渃onceptual鈥� artists today.

It couldn鈥檛 last forever, though. 鈥淪urrealism鈥檚 love affair with modern science was well and truly over鈥� after the atomic bombs were dropped, writes Parkinson. Even so, its most famous member, Dali 鈥� clinging to his fascist beliefs 鈥� continued to extol the virtues of modern science. As for Breton, he threw in the towel.