Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for its visual artworks and writings. The aim was to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality". Artists painted unnerving, illogical scenes with photographic precision, created strange creatures from everyday objects and developed painting techniques that allowed the unconscious to express itself.
Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur; however, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, with the works being an artifact. Leader André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a revolutionary movement.
Surrealism developed largely out of the Dada activities during World War I and the most important center of the movement was Paris. From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe, eventually affecting the visual arts, literature, film, and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy, and social theory.
Surrealist cinema is a modernist approach to film theory, criticism, and production with origins in Paris in the 1920s. Related to Dada cinema, Surrealist cinema is characterised by juxtapositions, the rejection of dramatic psychology, and a frequent use of shocking imagery. The first Surrealist film was The Seashell and the Clergyman from 1928, directed by Germaine Dulac from a screenplay by Antonin Artaud. Other films include Un Chien Andalou and L'Age d'Or by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí; Buñuel went on to direct many more films, with varying degrees of Surrealist influence.
In his 2006 book Surrealism and Cinema, Michael Richardson argues that surrealist works cannot be defined by style or form, but rather as results of the practice of surrealism. Richardson writes: "Surrealists are not concerned with conjuring up some magic world that can be defined as 'surreal'. Their interest is almost exclusively in exploring the conjunctions, the points of contact, between different realms of existence. Surrealism is always about departures rather than arrivals." Rather than a fixed aesthetic, Richardson defines surrealism as "a shifting point of magnetism around which the collective activity of the surrealists revolves."
Surrealist music is music which uses unexpected juxtapositions and other surrealist techniques. Discussing Theodor Adorno, Max Paddison (1993, 90) defines surrealist music as that which "juxtaposes its historically devalued fragments in a montage-like manner which enables them to yield up new meanings within a new aesthetic unity," though Lloyd Whitesell says this is Paddison's gloss of the term (Whitesell 2004, 118). Anne LeBaron (2002, 27) cites automatism, including improvisation, and collage as the primary techniques of musical surrealism. According to Whitesell, Paddison quotes Adorno's 1930 essay "Reaktion und Fortschritt" as saying "Insofar as surrealist composing makes use of devalued means, it uses these as devalued means, and wins its form from the 'scandal' produced when the dead suddenly spring up among the living" (Whitesell 2004, 107 and 118n18).
In the 1920s several composers were influenced by surrealism, or by individuals in the surrealist movement. The two composers most associated with surrealism during this period were Erik Satie (LeBaron 2002, 30), who wrote the score for the ballet Parade, causing Guillaume Apollinaire to coin the term surrealism (Calkins 2010, 13), and George Antheil who wrote that, "The Surrealist movement had, from the very beginning, been my friend. In one of its manifestos it had been declared that all music was unbearable—excepting, possibly, mine—a beautiful and appreciated condescension" (LeBaron 2002, 30–31).
The American was an American automobile, built in Plainfield, New Jersey, manufactured from 1917 to 1924. The company also used names American Balanced Six or American Six, "Balanced" referred to its chassis, not the engine. It was an assembled car, one of many built in its time, and it used components from several manufacturers like Borg & Beck for clutch, Warner transmission, Stromberg carburetor and Rutenber engines.
The company was never large; its peak production was 1400 vehicles built in 1920. In that same year a powerful 58 hp Herschell-Spillman six-cylinder engine replaced old 45 hp Rutenber six. American was commonly advertised as a 'Smile Car' because the company believed their cars offered trouble-free miles for their owners. In 1923 the company became associated with the Bessemer Truck Corporation; that October, the company became Amalgamated Motors, incorporating Northway and Winther as well. Before spring of 1924 American car was out of production. The total number of cars produced was about 6000 cars.
As of December 2, 2015, the United States has a total resident population of 322,267,564, making it the third most populous country in the world. It is very urbanized, with 81% residing in cities and suburbs as of 2014 (the worldwide urban rate is 54%).California and Texas are the most populous states, as the mean center of U.S. population has consistently shifted westward and southward.New York City is the most populous city in the United States.
The total fertility rate in the United States estimated for 2014 is 1.86 children per woman, which is below the replacement fertility rate of approximately 2.1. Compared to other Western countries, in 2012, U.S. fertility rate was lower than that of France (2.01),Australia (1.93) and the United Kingdom (1.92). However, U.S. population growth is among the highest in industrialized countries, because the differences in fertility rates are less than the differences in immigration levels, which are higher in the U.S. The United States Census Bureau shows a population increase of 0.75% for the twelve-month period ending in July 2012. Though high by industrialized country standards, this is below the world average annual rate of 1.1%.
American language or American languages may refer to: