Three Review Questions

1. Compare and contrast the two "schools" of Surrealism: one led by Andre Breton and his highly ideological Surrealist philosophy, and one by Georges Bataille, who explored the erotic and dream-like states of human existence. Draw comparisons between the (at the time) newly emerging field of Freudian psychoanalysis and Surrealism.
2. It can be argued that Surrealists felt they acted as vessels through which an artistic impulse flowed, and that their art, while technically virtuosic, was impulsive and based on fleeting mental images. Oulipans, by comparison, believed in repetition and constant creative output as a way of honing one's skill, and that art is defined by its limitations or the parameters by which the piece was created (hence the arbitrary obstructions governing many Oulipan works). Explore the two modes of artistic creation used by the Surrealists and Oulipans, citing specific artists or works that seem most indicative of the respective schools' creative philosophies.
3. Where do you perceive art in the future? As the world becomes more enmeshed with itself through social networking (the rise of internet-based collaborative art [http://inbflat.net/], large-scale performance art pieces organized online [http://improveverywhere.com/], fully anonymous interactive literature ["Mass Fiction" or "Mass Poetry" from http://www.smalltime.com]), will art become more of a social action? Remember that Dada and Surrealism were both created as reactions to the world in which the artists lived; what sort of art could you imagine in the future? What issues would it address, and how would the art manifest itself?