Surrealism_Assignment

Surrealism “Surrealism is not a style. It is the cry of a mind turning back on itself.” – Antonin Artaud Surrealism is a cultural movement and artistic style that began in approximately 1924 in Paris, France by the ideas of Sigmund Freud. Freud studied the human mind and practiced self analysis and became obsessed with the power of one’s imagination. His method of psychoanalysis was used to illuminate the unconscious. Freud said; “A dream that is not interpreted is like a letter that is not opened.” Surrealists absorbed and interpreted this idea and involved it in their artwork. Freud influenced André Breton, a French writer, poet and one of the leading theorists of the movement who was greatly influenced by Dadaism. Breton wrote the Surrealist Manifesto, a document in which he aimed to liberate one’s mind from everyday’s obvious reality and reasoning so one can explore unknown and impossible ideas. Freud also greatly influenced Salvador Dali, perhaps its best-known practitioner; both men credited Freud for his work and inspiration. Dadaism was also an artistic movement that emanated from hatred of the irrationality of WWI and the destruction that it caused, so they began to create pieces of art that would make us ‘rethink our world’. This movement paved the way to Surrealism which continued to question the nature of reality. The basic principles behind Surrealism are to create art that has no sense of rationality and aims to confuse and ‘visually assault’ the viewer. Surrealist artwork is proposed to bypass the conscious mind and be absorbed and comprehended by the subconscious mind, which due to the dreamlike and obscure style of artwork makes the viewer quite uncomfortable because the art has no intention of logical comprehensibility. It leaves a huge gap between the visual imagery itself and actual comprehendible reality and intentionally disorientates and reorientates the conscious, by means of the unconscious. It might be a pleasing scene to the eyes but because the subject is so farfetched, unnatural and illogical it makes you subconsciously uncomfortable and squeamish. Sunrise By The Ocean – Vladimir Kush This modern surrealist painting depicts a giant egg that has cracked open with scaffolding supporting either side of the shell. The yolk of the egg is also the sun in the sky and the white off the egg is the ocean. The muted and placid colour scheme gives the painting a calm and sleepy ‘dreamlike’ feel. I believe the egg symbolises the beginning of life and it’s almost as if the whole world has just emerged out of this egg when it was cracked open. In the foreground of the picture there is a little man and half of a walnut shell that looks like it would be the man’s boat. In saying this you don’t quite know if the walnut is big or the man is small and in relativity to it all, therefore if the egg is big or small. Another aspect that you can’t define is that is it the suns reflection on the water or the yolk of the egg sitting in the transparent white' The idea is, and what makes this image surreal is that the object is neither one nor the other but it is both which may be impossible but that just reinforces the ideas behind surrealism. References: * http://www.enotes.com/manifesto-surrealism-salem/manifesto-surrealism * http://www.artmovements.co.uk/surrealism.htm * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Breton * http://www.surrealism.org/ * http://artsmarts4kids.blogspot.com.au/2008/04/surrealism.html * http://www.slideshare.net/daniellefeige/surrealism-freud-and-the-world-of-dreams * http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/surrealism/Origins-of-Surrealism.html * http://thedali.org/education/documents/clocking_in.pdf * http://meg-nola.suite101.com/salvador-dalis-the-persistence-of-memory-a61525