The Significance of Anti-visual Imagery in Story of the Eye and Un Chien Andalou. :: Movie Film Essays

The Significance of Anti-visual Imagery in Story of the center and Un Chien Andalou The faithful alliance between the eye and the body came under heartrending attack with the oncoming of the first world war. The effects of trench war on peoples perceptions caused them to question and reevaluate the confidence they had once put into their scent out of vision. The experience of trench warfare was characterized by confusion due to non being able to see the enemy, indistinguishable shadows, gas-induced haze, and sudden spurts of blinding argus-eyed (Jay 174). As a result of this lack of visual clarity, a jingoistic movement in interwar France emerged towards visual lucidity that was evident in the declining bear on in Cubism and the subsequent appraisal of Purism (Silver 79). The directive of this movement was to restore a unified sense of vision that would coincide with what was desired for the reemerging postwar society. This exertion to reorganize the shattered sense of per spective, however, encountered dissonance in many of those that were confused in the war. Many of the Surrealists, including Breton, were forced to participate in the war, and their experiences in it left over(p) them disenchanted (Jay 182). The war helped to contribute to their overall feelings of nihilism and to what Breton described as their campaign of systematic refusal. Breton elaborated on this systematic refusal in his act What Is Surrealism? by discussing the incredible stupidity of the arguments which attempted to legitimize our participation in such an enterprise as the war, whose issue left us all in all indifferent, and defined their refusal as against the whole series of intellectual, moral and friendly obligations that continually and from all sides weigh down on man and grind him. The eye was not, it seems, impervious to the scope of this systematic refusal. Breton and his group of Surrealists perpetuated their ideas beyond the text and into the eye through the use of painting and photography, while at the aforementioned(prenominal) time redefining the roles of these forms of media. Painting the impossible is what Magritte liked to call giving precedency to poetry over painting (Mathews 34) In his and other Surrealist paintings there was a strong urge to challenge the integrity of the optical experience. For example, the Rumanian-born Victor Brauner had obdurate to paint with his eyes closed, and Magritte directly challenged speech and thought with the incorporation of his betraying titles.