connections between Art and Science

Surrealism: Symbols of Relativity By Andrea Martin The artistic movement of Surrealism took place between 1924 and 1940 in France. Often categorized as an elite clique, it reflected artistic sensitivity to recent political changes occurring in the Western world. The death and destruction during the First World War, for instance, had shattered the confidence of many in the West’s ability to progress benevolently. Additionally, revolutionary discoveries, such as Sigmund Freud’s identification of the unconscious mind, and Albert Einstein’s theories regarding time and space had left the masses feeling uncertain about humanity and the world around them. In reaction to this, Surrealist artists created a medium of images that articulated such disturbing social changes which words alone failed to express. Although Surrealism stemmed from an earlier movement of Dadaism, it evolved as Surrealists spun their own web and vision of the unconscious. However, the purpose of this research project is to explore how artists Salvador Dali and René Magritte illustrated Einstein’s complex scientific theories of relativity, while using the concepts of Surrealism. The assertion that Surrealist art conceptualized and illustrated Einstein’s scientific theories depends on an initial exploration of how the Dada movement acted as an essential predecessor to this new form of art. During the First World War, an emergence occurred of artists who "protested against all art, modern or traditional, as well as the civilization that had produced it" (Gardner 1069). Some poets and artists of this era displayed their disapproval of military violence, which killed soldiers from all over the world, by rejecting social values and ideals. Such artists formed a group called Dada in Switzerland—a neutral territory during the war. The group produced work that was nonsensical and mocked all prior visual and written arts. In fact, attempting to mock reason, the name dada, which means child’s rocking horse, was intended not to have any significant bearing on what the movement actually represented (Gardner 1069). Significantly, this movement which had attempted to tear down the systemic traditional beliefs about what was right or wrong, good or bad, did influence subsequent art forms, including Surrealism: A whole new realm of artistic possibilities opened [from Dada] in which the remnants of the optical world, shattered by scientific and compositional analysis, emerged to play expressive new roles determined by the different contexts in which they drew on materials lying deep within the human consciousness. (Gardner 1070) Without Dada, Surrealist artists would not have had the ability to see beyond conventional thought and tradition of mainstream society to entertain the unbelievable or nonsensical. Dada’s altered state of early twentieth century perception enabled the Surrealist artists to incorporate a primal view of the world that may have otherwise been out of reach. Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), a Canadian writer argues that: Art, or the graphic translation of a culture, is shaped by the way space is perceived….Primitive and pre-alphabet people integrate time and space as one and live in…[a] horizonless, boundless olfactory space rather than a visual space. (McLuhan 57) Dada was devoted to a primal attitude used to affront traditional western philosophy that they had judged had plagued humankind. Perhaps McLuhan’s views about primitive societies can be compared to Dadaist theories in the sense that they contributed to the Surrealists a fresh view of the world and more openness to the thoughts and actions of those around them. André Breton, a poet who was once a member of the Dadaist movement, had seen the horrors of war first hand. Trained in medicine, Breton worked in psychiatric wards during the First World War, an experience which may have given him an individual perspective into the lunacy and irrationality of the war. In 1924, he officially broke away from Dada and created the first of three manifestos which assert Surrealism’s ideology and are supposedly influenced by Sigmund Freud’s research (Breton). Jack J. Spector argues that Breton’s separation from Dada was "on the grounds of its nihilism and diffusiveness" (41). His departure was also based on his interest in Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis that was discredited by Dadaists (Spector 39). Breton had looked to Freud’s interpretation of dreams for the purpose of reproducing a new reality for his group (Spector 41). This renewed, naked view of the world enabled the French Surrealist artists to illustrate "chance association[s] of things and events, the dislocation of images and meanings, the scrambling of conventional contexts, the exploration of the subconscious, and the radical freedom of artistic choice" (Gardner 1074). Because artists were able to portray images and ideas that could not be conceptualized verbally, Surrealism was able to accommodate Einstein’s theories of relativity. Leonard Shlain asserts that aspects of Einstein’s theories of relativity were impossible for the layman to comprehend, even with the guidance of books written by Einstein to clarify his own discoveries. Surrealist art, however, seems to have been used as a medium to explain theories that Einstein was unable to convey with words (Shlain 221). Shlain also explains that although time and space were incomprehensible in terms of Einstein’s theories of relativity, Einstein’s concept of time being something other than "linear commandments of train time" was easier to interpret when put into terms of dreams (223). People seem to understand that time and space within their dreams do not follow any sequence or pattern that can be measured in defined logical terms (Shlain 223). Accordingly, since Surrealist artists conceptualized dreams in their paintings, they also seem to have articulated Einstein’s theories in the same artistic medium. Within Surrealist art forms, scientific discoveries are represented more clearly than words will allow. To this end, Spector seems to concur when he states that Surrealists "seemed to evoke a reality not otherwise accessible" (41). Although Shlain describes Dali as having relied more on dreams and mysticism for his artistic inspiration instead of science, he further asserts that Dali managed to create "symbols for the … language of new physics" (228). Dali’s painting, The Persistence of Memory (1931), contains images of clocks melting at the forefront of a desolate beach landscape (Fig. 2). Shlain’s interpretation of The Persistence of Memory slants towards connecting Dali’s images with Einstein's theories. Findley and Rothney concur, suggesting that when one views Dali’s painting, one is reminded that "in the Einsteinian universe, time is relative to the observer and can be told as well by a melting watch as by a normal one" (151). In his painting, Dali demonstrates the symbols expressed in Einstein’s second paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies." In this essay, Einstein explains that what we "observe …[as] the passage of distance and time is ‘relative’ to our own motion within the universe. Absolute distances and times do not exist" (Findley 139). As previously suggested, the theories of distance and time that Einstein articulated and unleashed on the world were meaningless to the masses, since the scientific language was foreign to them. Shlain suggests that Einstein was aware of this (221). Whether or not Dali consciously interpreted Einstein’s theories, the most puzzling incident of unconscious symbolic interpretation of Einstein’s theories of relativity in Surrealist art is found in the work of René Magritte.1 In Magritte's Time Transfixed (1935) (Fig. 3), he depicts a train protruding from a fireplace surrounded by a mantelpiece supporting a clock. The painting contains the images that Einstein himself relied on to illustrate his theories of relativity, namely, the clock and the locomotive (Shlain 233). When prompted to explain his motivation for creating this painting, Magritte suggests that this painting was not consciously derived from an idea. Magritte describes how his thought process of associating a train and a fireplace was instead reliant on an image: I only thought of an image …. After the image has been painted, we can think of the relation it may bear to ideas or words. This is not improper, since images, ideas, and words are different interpretations of the same thing: thought. (Shlain 235) This being the case, because he merely associated one image with another, one wonders how these spontaneous images so closely resemble the thoughts and words of Einstein. Were Magritte’s images an illustration of a "chance association of things and events" (Gardner 1074), which is one of the concepts that Surrealists strove to embrace in their artistic movement? Alternatively, one wonders if it was a subconscious illustration of what Einstein was incapable of explaining with words? I suggest it was a combination of both. It is possible that although science did not interest Magritte at all (Shlain 236), he was aware of Einstein’s theories, since they would have involved social discourse of the era. Magritte’s title Time Transfixed suggests that he was aware of the concept, because as Shlain points out, "To transfix means to stop. In the special theory, time and motion stop under only one condition¾ the speed of light" (Shlain 233). If, in fact, Magritte was not consciously using Einstein’s theories as a basis for his painting¾ which would have been contradictory to what the Surrealists generally stood for¾ can we then speculate that, instead, he had subconsciously used his own language of art to illustrate the unexplainable? Perhaps Magritte subconsciously produced Einstein’s symbols to make sense of what Einstein had revealed about the world around him. Dali and Magritte were not consciously creating allegories for Einstein’s theories, but they were making sense of what had been revealed about the world around them. After all, art can be viewed much like a dream: when we go to sleep, we do not plan what we will dream. Yet, when we awaken from the dream, sometimes we attempt to psychoanalyze the dream’s meanings and how they relate to our lives. In some cases, analyzing our dreams for meaning can help us better understand ourselves (Miller). Perhaps the same metaphor can be used for Surrealist art. Surrealist artists who created their paintings may not have consciously planned the images they would use; yet, as an audience, we attempt to evoke meaning from the images in order to make sense of what the artist's intention was. Doing this, we make sense of human nature and the relativity of the world around us.