• Surrealism & Comics

I am an Art History graduate working in London. I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on the links between Surrealism and comics. I have collated here some material I wrote about and came across while researching this area.

[furiousape]

That’s not half as weird as a Hans Bellmer.

[surrealism-and-comics]

Although the self-definition of Surrealism and the initial defining of science fiction as a genre both took place in the 1920s and the links between the two are manifest, no full study has appeared till now on Surrealism and SF.

Gavin Parkinson has edited the first book exploring the relationship between Surrealism and comics.  

Holy hairy eyeballs! I can’t wait to read this...

[happyt0besad]

[surrealism-and-comics]

Why are the hands so small??? It’s beautiful. 

[tompeyer]

Clock King and painting.

[surrealism-and-comics]

Batman and Robin and Dali

[tentativelytitled]

Winsor McCay

[markmcevoy]

Gotham

[surrealism-and-comics]

Another well executed and fun altered image from Markmcevoy.tumblr.com 

[surrealism-and-comics]

Sequential narrative humour see more here.

[markmcevoy]

Fresh Widow

[surrealism-and-comics]

This re-interpretation of Marcel Duchamp's Fresh Window is excellent! 

[tompeyer]

[surrealism-and-comics]

This panel from 1968 Batman, The Brave and the Bold series suggests that it would be madness to deface one of the world's most iconic portraits of Western Art though the addition of a mustache... However, of course Marcel Duchamp did this to a reproduction in 1919 with is work titled 'L.H.O.O.Q.'

Source: tompeyer:

Batman! He's gone mad!

[surrealism-and-comics]

Portrait of Jean Cocteau by Philip Halsman

Jean Cocteau as Spider-Man Villain Doctor Octopus? 

[superpunch2]

Son of Krypton.

[surrealism-and-comics]

A novel take on Magritte's 'Son of Man'

[winds-of-desolation-deactivated]

[nevver]

Rabbit hole

[surrealism-and-comics]

A Magrittian visual pun in an episode of Looney Tunes...

[surrealism-and-comics]

This page can be found in the catalogue for the 1942 exhibition First Papers of Surrealism, co-organised by Andre Breton and Marcel Duchamp - It depicts Nietzsche and Superman.

[surrealism-and-comics]

Tragic, In the Manner of Comics, Andre Breton, 1943

Mark Polizzotti, Breton's biographer, saw this collage as evidence of his 'discovery of American comic book art.'

[nevver]

Dali x Batman

[nevver]

“Have no fear of perfection - you’ll never reach it.” — Salvador Dalí

[surrealism-and-comics]

A lovely drawing of a far from lovely man...

[bigredrobot]

[surrealism-and-comics]

While 'surreal' and 'uncanny' are two very overused words I feel that they are both very relevant to this image... 

The Surrealists were readers of Sigmund Freud and they took up his notion of the unheimlich (the uncanny or more literally the unhomely). Freud writes an essay discussing exactly what the uncanny is for him, but essentially it is that feeling of something being familiar, but alien at the same time...