The
Paranoiac-critical method is a
surrealistSurrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
technique developed by
Salvador DalíSalvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marquis of Púbol was a Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres....
in the early 1930s. He employed it in the production of
paintingPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
s and other
artArt is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, sculpture, and paintings...
works, especially those that involved optical illusions and other multiple images.
The Surrealists related theories of psychology to the idea of creativity and the production of art. In the mid-1930s
André BretonAndré Breton was a French writer, poet, and surrealist theorist, and is best known as the principal founder of Surrealism...
wrote about a "fundamental crisis of the object".
The
Paranoiac-critical method is a
surrealistSurrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
technique developed by
Salvador DalíSalvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marquis of Púbol was a Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres....
in the early 1930s. He employed it in the production of
paintingPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
s and other
artArt is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, sculpture, and paintings...
works, especially those that involved optical illusions and other multiple images.
Origins
The Surrealists related theories of psychology to the idea of creativity and the production of art. In the mid-1930s
André BretonAndré Breton was a French writer, poet, and surrealist theorist, and is best known as the principal founder of Surrealism...
wrote about a "fundamental crisis of the object". The object began being thought of not as a fixed external object but also as an extension of our subjective self. One of the types of objects manifested in Surrealism was the phantom object.
According to Dalí, these objects have a minimum of mechanical meaning, but when viewed the mind evokes phantom images which are the result of unconscious acts.
The paranoiac-critical arose from similar Surrealistic experiments with psychology and the creation of images such as
Max ErnstMax Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst is considered to be one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
’s frottage technique, which involved rubbing pencil or chalk on paper over a textured surface and interpreting the phantom images visible in the texture on the paper.
Description
The aspect of
paranoiaParanoia is a thought process heavily influenced by excessive anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs concerning a perceived threat towards oneself. In the original Greek, παράνοια simply means madness...
that Dalí was interested in and which helped inspire the method was the ability of the brain to perceive links between things which rationally are not linked. Dalí described the paranoiac-critical method as a "
spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the associations and interpretations of delirious phenomena."
Employing the method when creating a work of art uses an active process of the mind to visualise images in the work and incorporate these into the final product. An example of the resulting work is a double image or multiple image in which an
ambiguous imageAmbiguous images are optical illusion images which are crafted to exploit graphical similarities and other properties of visual system interpretation between two or more distinct image forms...
can be interpreted in different ways.
André BretonAndré Breton was a French writer, poet, and surrealist theorist, and is best known as the principal founder of Surrealism...
hailed the method, saying that Dalí's paranoiac-critical method was an "
instrument of primary importance" and that it "
has immediately shown itself capable of being applied equally to painting, poetry, the cinema, the construction of typical Surrealist objects, fashion, sculpture, the history of art, and even, if necessary, all manner of exegesis."
External links