Surrealism

Surrealism was the next art movement, it mainly grew out of a group of Dada artists in Paris. The aim of Surrealism was to “Resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality”. The artists would paint un-realistic un-nerving strange scenes in such a photo-realistic way that it produced a very strange image. The artists developed ideas and techniques which allowed them to explore their conscious.

         The main inspiration behind the strange scenes which were painted and wrote about was influenced by the research Freud did about unconscious mind and dreams. Automatic writing was a large part of surrealism, it began with drawing, people would put pencil to paper and let their subconscious mind draw whatever it pleased without being censored by the conscious mind, which may feel it needs to change what comes naturally. The automatic writing is a very similar principle, except rather than drawing, writing. The surrealists thought that performing these activities helped people to connect with their unconscious mind, allowing them to see parts of themselves which they never may have explored before.

         Children generally haven’t developed there need to censor the things which they say or do, and so child art is a great influence to the surrealist artists. Also ‘insane’ people; people which are clinically insane generally tell the truth, come up with whatever is on their mind and don’t tend to sensor what they’re saying. Insane people can range from all ages and say and feel all sorts of different things which they may be trying to put into words or art, hence why they were also influenced by these kinds of art pieces.

De Chirico

The art work by De Chirico was said to have been pre-war, and his pieces greatly influenced the surrealist artists. After creating pieces of work like the piece below he became interested in more traditional ways of painting, which was where he focused his future work, however he still re-visited the mythical themes present in his earlier work.

         Most of De Chirico’s work was old city type views based on a place called Turin, Italy. Although the cityscape’s look quite realistic In the way that he has painted the buildings and the surroundings as something which may have been together, they are infact quite often made up. The steam trains, statues and buildings are based on the scenes around Turin, but in actual fact a made up composition. The way that he uses the great dominating shadows to overcast the painting creates a feeling in the piece and helps to tell a story.

         Chircico’s work is often described as ‘Metaphysical’ art. This was a style of art which flourished mainly between 1911 and 1920. the works would usually have hints of yellow, threatening colours. The paintings would usually have very dominant subjects which were all very bold and could be seen as quite intrusive.

The shadows in this painting could be seen as quite aggressive. There’s quite a large tonal quality between the shadowed area and the areas around it, this to me gives off the sense of a bright un-natural light which is flooding the scene. The work is a quite un-realistic style, it’s more realistic than some styles, such as abstract or cubist art, but it’s very tonal, the tonal quality is great but for it to be more realitic there is usually a more gradual subtle difference.

Max Ernest

Max Ernest is probably one of the most versatile Surrealist artists. He not only worked extensively with the mix of collage and paint (as I looked at previously) in the piece “Massacre of the innocents”, here he worked very loosely and un-realistic with the paint which made me thing originally that he didn’t work with tone or detail qualities. However the paintings he created afterwards when moving on to the surrealist movement were actually very realistic and complexly painted. 

The image above is a painting by Max called “Oedipus Rex” created in 1922. The combination of elements in this piece are extremely strange, there was no real reason for these components of the drawing, however Max put them together from his imagination, so it probably meant something to him personally. We know a few things about this piece though; we know that Max was fascinated with the work of Sigmund Freud and his research on dreams, imagination and the subconscious mind, however this doesn’t help us to guess any relevance to the components of the piece.

         The one thing about these strange non described pieces is that we, as viewers, tend to look at them and amylase them much more. If a piece has an obvious story you tend to accept that instantly, where as when looking at a strange, weird image like this, you find yourself questioning why it is the way it is, instead of accepting the title straight away.

Yves Tanguy

The piece above is by an artist called Yves Tanguy called “Great mutation” created in 1942. The interesting thing about this painting is the way that she has used realistic light and shadow to create objects which look 3D and sculptural, even though they are infact 2D. The components in the painting look very static, their sculptural form intertwined with other elements of the painting make it look very static, as though the components couldn’t move if they did decide to do so.

         The  interesting thing about this piece is that rather than being an observational painting of a sculpture or anything like that, it’s a complete imaginary 2D image, which could be made into a pretty interesting sculpture. The use of colour is very plain and simple, but very effective. She uses whites and greys for the sculpture, and the same colour in the background but with a hint of blue. This makes the sculpture part stand out very boldly from the background.

Joan Miro

The piece above is called “figures at night guided by the phosphorescent tracks of snails”. I found this title very funny for some strange reason, I think it’s perhaps because it’s such a straight forward descriptive title for such a non-straight forward strange piece of work.

         The marks on this piece area all either block colours, or very linear; the lines are very fluid, usually when you create marks with paint on a brush or ink on a pen it will run out leaving brush marks and some areas of imperfectancies, however this doesn’t happen here. The blue, which makes up the piece gives off a very twilight midnight feel, however the red gives off a sense of danger. I love the way that the almost ‘random’ looking lines in the piece are called ‘snail tracks’, it’s so imaginative rather than just calling them linear marks, it’s the type of thing I can imagine a child saying, like I mentioned earlier the art is not censored, so this was probably the first thing that came into his mind, which I find very strange.

         The piece is full of symbols, like the one in the very top right. Some of them are instantly recognisable others may be personal to the artist or made up on the spot. I love the way this piece looks like a jumble of thoughts have all been scribbled down on to paper, he includes everything and anything which pops into his head.

         The colours which have been used are very simple primary colours, much like the style of drawing which is equally as simple. The drawings resemble those that a child would create, the movement was highly influenced by the innocence and non-censored imagery children create, and this is shown in this piece when the artist turns quite simple drawings and plain symbols into a story.

         The messy un-organised un-realistic painting gives a feeling of excitement, danger, darkness and it’s full of movement and life. The bright colours draw your attention to different areas giving you so much to look at, every time you look at the piece you see something new and different.

Rene Magritte

Rene Magritte created this very strange painting above called ‘The lovers’ which shows two lovers locked in embrace kissing through a veil. The room behind the lovers is painted in such a way it almost looks insignificant. The lovers have the main focal point in the painting and the wall and ceiling behind are so generic and ordinary you don’t hardly notice it.

       The man seems like the more dominant out of the two in the painting, he is at a higher level than her meaning she has to tilt her head for the kiss. She is also leaning in towards him while he looks at ease and in a normal stance. The painting itself is actually rather un-interesting, if it was a normal couple painted kissing in the same style, composition and way as this it would be very easy to overlook, however the veil creates an air of mystery and tension. Frustrated desires seem to be a particular theme in the work of Rene, this is represented by enshrouded faces.

       The different colours on this painting resemble different meanings red-passion, love anger. Black- death, scariness. White- purity, virginity. So it is very difficult to decipher a meaning from using any of the colours as symbols.