Exploring the imagination in the wake of Surrealism

English: This thesis reports an exploration of various interrelated facets of human imaging and imagining using the literary and artistic movement, French Surrealism, as catalyst. The ‘wake of Surrealism’ – a vigil held at the movement’s passing, as well as its aftereffects – indicates my primary focus on ideas concerning the imagination held by members of the Surrealist movement, which I trace further in selected artworks of a cluster of women surrealists active in Latin‐America as well as select artists in the South African context. The Surrealists desired a return to the sources of the poetic imagination, believing that the so‐called ‘unfettered imagination’ of Surrealism has the capacity to create unknown worlds, or the potential to envision often startling and strange realities. Not only did members of Surrealism have a high regard for the imagination, they also emphasised particular involuntary actions and unconscious functions of the imagination, as evidenced in their use of the method of automatic writing, dreams, play, objective chance, alchemy and so‐called primitivism. In this investigation I follow digital‐archival procedures rather than being in the physical presence of the artworks selected for interpretation. Responding to this limitation and to the current interest in image theory, I elaborate a method of art historical interrogation, based on the eventful and affective power of images. This exploration of the imagination into Surrealism’s wake therefore also functions as a ‘pilot study’, to determine the viability of this approach to image hermeneutics. I appropriate and expand W.J.T. Mitchell’s notion of ‘hypericons’ to develop the proposed concept of ‘hypericonic dynamics’. The hypericonic dynamic transpires in ‘hypericonic events’, through the cooperative imaging and imagining eventfulness of the interaction between artist and spectator, mediated by artworks. The dynamic is especially prominent in artworks with a metapictorial tenor. With hypericonic dynamics and metapictorial thematics as my heuristic method, I investigate artworks by three women surrealists – Frida Kahlo, Remedios Varo, and Leonora Carrington – living and working in Latin‐America after the Second World War, and after the French Surrealist movement had already experienced its decline. Against the backdrop of indigenous visual culture their distinct individual styles are also related to Magical realism in the Latin‐American literary context, a style which overlaps and intersects with Surrealism. I expand upon insights gained in investigating the women in Mexico, to determine whether select South African artists, Alexis Preller, Cyril Coetzee, and Breyten Breytenbach belong in the wake of Surrealism. The central aim of my exploration of the imagination is to gain a deeper understanding of the everyday human imagination and its myriad operations in daily life, for the greater part conducted below the threshold of consciousness. The imagination is a universal human function, shared by all, yet also operational at an individual level. It also performs a unique function of image creation in the specialised domain of the fine arts. I understand the imagination to be irreducible, while often working in a subconscious, involuntary, and supportive, but nevertheless primary manner in everyday human life.