Violation of the Eye
Violation of the body is a common theme in Surrealist works of art, especially the violation of the eye. The eye is one of the most important parts of the human body because it allows man to physically see, perceive and analyze his surroundings. In being able to see our surroundings, we are able to control them because we decide how to act based on what we see. When we cannot see, we have no personal power over our surroundings because we need others to describe them for us in order to analyze them ourselves. The eye is also the body part that is most vulnerable and sensitive to touch, that is why we have eyelids that automatically blink or close when something gets too close to touching the eye. The eye is so sensitive that just the thought of touching it already makes one uncomfortable, making the depiction of the violation of the eye that much more repulsive to see, because in seeing the violation we think about what it would feel like for our own eye to be violated. The eye’s importance in function and sensitivity is the reason why surrealist artists choose to inflict torture upon it, because it really disturbs the viewer and causes him to pay attention to what the artist is trying to say with his artwork. In the three surrealist works; Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel’s “Un Chien Andalou,” Man Ray’s “Object to be destroyed,” and Brauner’s “Drawing of Hitler,” the violation of the eye depicts the artists’ retaliation against the control that he feels is restricting him in some aspect of his artwork or life. Each artist takes a form of control that they want to abolish and represents it with an eye in their work. Then, in order to show their desire to get rid of this control that the eye in power has over them, they destroy or violate the eye, metaphorically freeing themselves from the controlling force they are constricted by in real life.
Un Chien Andalou- Bunuel and Dali
In making the film, “Un Chien Andalou,” Bunuel and Dali’s intention was to “disrupt the mental anxiety of the spectator” by preventing the viewer from logically interpreting what happens in the film through the presentation of images that surprise and shock.[1] Bunuel and Dali wanted to fight against the convention of logical narrative that had been established in literature and early film by creating a film that continuously avoided any logical sequence of events. The film opens with a tango playing in the background with the subtitle “once upon a time.” We first see a man sharpening a razor, who then walks out onto the balcony smoking a cigarette to look at the full moon. The man then is seen holding open a woman’s eye to cut it with the razor he just sharpened. As the eye is being cut, the camera shifts to an image of the moon being cut by a passing cloud and then shifts back to the scene of the now cut eye with liquid oozing out of it but still blinking. Immediately after this image, the words, “8 years later” appear on the screen, confusing the viewer and negating any logical narration that had been set up in the beginning of the film.
The scene is set up in such a way that the viewer expects something sexual and passionate to occur on the screen. We are made to expect this by the subtitle “once upon a time,” which hints at a beautiful and fairytale like progression of events, the tango music playing in the background; which is often associated with love, passion, and sex, and the image of the balcony and full moon, which is also associated with romance in classical literature such as Romeo and Juliet. However, instead of a love scene happening on the balcony,
the fairytale connotation of this opening scene is violently shattered by the image of a woman having her eye slit by a man who is possibly her love, producing a discordant coupling of different levels of reality. Here the slit eye metaphorizes both romantic and narrative blindness as our attempts to read coherently are continually frustrated by the film’s disjointed anti-linear structure which follows the logic of collage in its use of montage.[2]
So by showing the image of the cut eye, Bunuel and Dali interrupt the narration they had begun to establish in the first few seconds of the film and shock and confuse the audience with this horrific image. The cut eye, followed by the subtitle “8 years later” offers no hint for what will happen next in the film, destroying any sense of narration that the audience has begun to follow and expect. As Rensburg writes in his article, “violence, on a metaphorical level, also signifies the creative process of destruction, reevaluation, re-creation and the determination of an alternative aesthetic in Surrealist art,”[3] showing the viewer how Bunuel and Dali are retaliating against the control of conventional art and film that is expected to follow a coherent and logical plot line.
[1] Sense of cinema, un chien andalou, Michael koller, feb. 2001
[2] Surrealism, feminism, psychoanalysis, Natalya Lusty, pg. 52.
[3] George Bataille’s interpretation of Nietzsche: The question of violence in Surrealist art, Rensburg.
Drawing of Hitler- Brauner
“Drawing of Hitler” was made by Victor Brauner in 1934, right at the time when anti-Semitism was growing in Europe. Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany was the main force behind all the hatred towards the Jewish people because as he came into a position of power, he began to establish laws that took all freedom away from the Jews. These laws included removing Jews from positions in government service, limiting the number of Jewish students in public schools, and revoking their citizenship.[1] Being a Jewish artist in Romania and falling under the control of Hitler and the Nazis, Brauner
“became interested in mutilation, blindness and sacrifice [coinciding] with the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. The obtuse, blind society, hardened by war and crisis, was being radicalized in a fast pace and the first to be affected were the ethnic and religious minorities. Given this context, because of his Jewish origin, Brauner inevitably had the feeling of a frail, excluded and persecuted condition.” [2]
“Drawing of Hitler” depicts a bust with severe mutilations, including the eyes being gauged out and screws being put into the sockets. By mutilating and violating the eyes in his painting of Hitler, Brauner is depicting his desire for the end of Hitler’s reign and control over the Jews. The eyes in this painting, as in the other two artworks, are a symbol of control because without eyesight a ruler cannot rule. Without eyesight, the ruler must rely on another man to relate to him what is happening in his surroundings so the ruling is partially controlled by whoever is seeing for the ruler because it is up to him what he chooses to tell the ruler and what he does not.
One example in Greek mythology, where the loss of eyesight is also the loss of power is Oedipus Rex, in which the king, Oedipus, blinds himself by poking out his eyes from shame and guilt for the sin he had unknowingly committed of sleeping with his mother. Upon taking his eyes out, he begs to be exiled from his kingdom and leaves his fate in the hands of others because he can no longer see his surroundings to safely guide himself. If in Oedpus Rex, the blinding and exiling is punishment for the moral sin Oedipus has committed, in this painting as well, blindness is punishment for the moral sin Hitler has committed against the Jews.
Although we cannot tell whether the eye has been taken out by Hitler himself or by someone else, the blindness is Brauner’s metaphorical punishment for Hitler treating the Jews so inhumanely and turning a blind eye towards their right to an equal life. By physically blinding Hitler in his painting, Brauner is retaliating against the control that Hitler has assumed over the Jews by ignoring and therefore being blind to the rights that should be granted to all men, regardless of their nationality or religion.
[1] http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007459
[2] Political versus occult: “The story of Victor Brauner’s eye.” Valentina Iancu. P. 387.
Object to be destroyed- Man Ray
Another work of surrealist art that features violation of the eye is Man Ray’s “Indestructible Object.” The original work was titled “Object to be Destroyed” and consisted of a metronome with a photograph of an eye attached to it with a paperclip. Ray had originally intended for the metronome to regulate and control the frequency and number of his brushstrokes and attached the eye to it to feel as though someone was watching him while he painted. Therefore, the eye became a symbol of control because it made Man Ray feel as if he were being watched by someone and therefore pressured to perform up to the expectations of whoever he thought was watching him and dictating the rhythm of his art making. One day when the metronome had stopped but Ray did not agree that his painting was finished yet, he smashed the object because he could not handle the overwhelming silence and destroyed the control the metronome had over his painting. Ten years later, Man Ray reconstructed this object but as a response to being left by his lover, Lee Miller, using a cut out photograph of her eye. Along with the object, Ray wrote down a set of instructions for how to create personal “Indestructible Objects.” The instructions were:
“Cut out the eye from the photograph of one who has been loved but is seen no more. Attach the eye to the pendulum of a metronome and regulate the weight to suit the tempo desired. Keep going to the limit of endurance. With a hammer well-aimed, try to destroy the whole at a single blow.” [1]
The purpose of a metronome is to keep time, rhythm, and tempo; and therefore, control these elements when playing music or making art. By attaching a photograph of Miller’s cut out eye, which in the original object has been established as a symbol of control along with the metronome, it is now Lee Miller who is acting as a metronome or a controlling force in Man Ray’s life and defining the passing of his time, highlighting the effect and domination of the absence of his lover. The eye here serves as an objectification of Lee Miller that Man Ray can destroy and metaphorically displace his feelings onto. By destroying the object, Man Ray is retaliating against the control the absence of his lover has on his life, watching his every move and dictating the rhythm of his life, freeing himself from the pain of her absence.
[1] http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/man-ray-indestructible-object-t07614/text-summary
In conclusion, as seen in all three of these works of surrealist art, the artistic depiction of the violation of the eye is symbolic for the retaliation of the artist against some form of control. Whether it be the control of artistic convention, as seen in Bunuel and Dali’s Un Chien Andalou, or the control love or the absence of love has on the artist’s life, as seen in Man Ray’s “Object to be destroyed,” or the political control of a dictator over a group of people, as seen in Brauner’s “Drawing of Hitler,” by depicting physical harm and violation to the eye, the artist is blinding and metaphorically taking away the power assumed by whatever or whoever the eye is representing.
