To what extent does Surrealism create an unconscious representation of ones inner conflicts of identity and belonging?

In 1917 surrealism was first seen in the form of art through the work of Giorgio de Chirico, who illustrated average streets but through a hallucination perspective. His paintings were moving away from realism, instead of just capturing physically what was there he also created subjective meanings within his art. Andre Baton was the original inventor of surrealist concepts in 1924 through his written surrealist manifesto, where the he describes the movement as ‘the pure psychic automatism expressed in the real functionality of a person.’ (History.com editors 2017:1). Breton was saying that a surrealist artist must bypass any thoughts of rationality in order to gain automatism which is an act or idea achieved through the unconscious mind. Sigmund Freud may have not been an artist but his development and exploration into how the mind works was a large influence. This Little Hans study into dream analysis and phobias opened doors into the world of unconscious thoughts and desires, he uncovered areas in psychology and philosophy that hadn’t ever been discovered before due to the idea that is wasn’t ‘scientific’ research. Similarly, in surrealist work can be seen as ‘unscientific’ because it doesn’t follow a strict structure like realism once did, rather it used the unconscious mind as the force behind the influence.  

Dadaism was an early stage of surrealism that commenced during World War I, its purpose was to ridicule the meaningless of the modern world. The whole concept was formed to deconstruct the definition of art by experimenting with different techniques, materials and mediums. Photo montage became popular through Dadaists such as Raoul Hausmann and his piece ‘The Art Critic’. The montage was used as a means of expressing political dissent. Other techniques were invented such as collage which is widely known today as assembling different elements to create a whole, Max Ernst famously created ‘ The Hat Makes the Man’. Cubomania is a form of collage where an image is cut into squares and reassembled randomly. This technique was invented by Romanian Surrealist artist Gherasim Luca. Surrealism began to emerge into photography through artists such as Maurice Tabard and Man Ray who explored automatic writing using techniques such as combination printing and double exposure. In the early 1920s, technology was developing rapidly and became of great interest to avant-garde artists due to its association with technology. Photography was beginning to become a chance for artists paradigms of vision and representation. The evolution of the camera worked in harmony with the movement from realism to surrealism, as technology modernized so did ideologies.