TRANSFORMATIONS IN PAINT

1. TRANSFORMATIONS IN PAINT The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless. Not being able to enlarge the one, let us contract the other. Jean Jacques Rousseau

2. Your Painting Project • Your goal for this painting project is to create a surrealist painting, but you do not need to feel hemmed in by the history of the Surrealist artists learned in class. Your painting can come from your imagination, dreams etc, and need not reference Dali, Magritte or other surrealist artists. • You will develop a painting using at least 2 techniques of transformations that we will discuss in a moment. You will be required to discuss your use of these techniques and their effects on your viewer in an artist statement at the end of our painting unit. • You must include an environment and at least one figure in your painting. The environment can be anyplace! The figure need not be human, but these elements must be in your work. See me if you have a proposal for something that seems to bend this stipulation.

3. Transformation Techniques Magnification:The "reconstruction" of a subject on a much larger scale than of the original; for example, a pencil sharpener, eight feet high as a subject for sculpture.

4. Minification Making an object appear smaller. An image-development strategy used to decrease the apparent size of an image. The contrast between the large female figure and the tiny man expresses the artist's idea that the evil is not a omnimpotent force greater than ourselves--a force that is more powerful than ourselves. But rather, evil in in reality that miniscule, insipid character within our own mind. Perhaps the greedy selfish thought, the indifference, the envy, and the desire to harm.

5. Metamorphosis Depicting images or forms in progressive states of change.

7. Salvador Dali - Metamorphosis Of Narcissus

8. Transmutaton A radical form of metamorphosis; creating Jekyll-and-Hyde transformations, mutations, alterations, hybridizations, re-materializations.

9. Transference The intrusion of an object or element into a space or environment not normally its own; the displacement of an object or elements into a new situation. For example, a huge egg towering above the skyscrapers of New York City's skyline. This is also an example of magnification in some respects.

10. Simultaneity Presenting several views or time modes simultaneously; for example, simultaneous presentations of side, top, back, and bottom views, as in Cubist painting; temporal dislocations, such as the simultaneous presentation of childhood and adult memories or various time-space situations; simultaneous presentation of different sensory experiences

12. Fragmentation Splitting or fragmenting objects or images. The subject may be either partially developed, fragmented, or dismembered. Splitting planes, as in Cubist art.

13. Disguising The use of latent or hidden images; obscuring the qualities by wrapping, masking or camouflaging.

15. Substitution Changing the original qualities of objects and surfaces: a "soft" hone, a "wooden" light bulb, a "concrete" pillow, et cetera.

16. Reversals Reversing colour, perspective, functions, relative sizes and so on; reversing the "laws of nature," such as gravity, et cetera.

19. Animation Inanimate subjects can be made "to come to life": organic or in-organic subjects can be given human qualities. Functions can also be implied through image repetition and progression; for example, overlapping silhouettes of scissors in various open and closed positions to suggest "cutting."

21. Distortion Changing an object or image by deformation, distortion, or progressive states of degradation; burned, dissolved, decomposed, crushed, cracked, et cetera

22. Collapsing Volume (or vice-versa: expanding two-dimensional forms into three- dimensional objects): Rendering three-dimensional subjects to appear flat or transparent, through the use of contour line, silhouette, transparent planes, et cetera. And the reverse: a well-known painting interpreted as a three-dimensional form.

23. Juxtaposition • The placement of two things (usually abstract concepts, though it can refer to physical objects) near each other. • Juxtaposition functions to make a viewer reconsider or recontextualize an object, place or person through a surprising or unclear combination of things.

26. Begin with a Collage!! • You will begin your project by creating a collage in your sketchbook. You do not need to be a slave to your reference, but making a surreal collage will be a good place to begin playing with the techniques we have seen. Perhaps make more than one collage to play with various ideas. Or experiment with various figures or characters in collage before choosing one or two for inclusion in your painting. You may also print images in class if you have something specific in mind, or cannot find a photo of what you need in the magazines, newspapers provided. • If you want to apply a techniques for transformation in your painting, you do need to develop an exact collaged image of what it will look like…that is what the paint is for! • Dali would have had an actual clock reference, but he would not have had a melting clock to paint from directly. Much of the work of transforming objects, places, people will come from how you articulate them in paint. Any holes or not yet achieved affects from your collage can be worked out in paint. • Even though this is an imaginative painting, the most convincing surreal effects will be created by having good reference to draw and paint from, so do not reject the process of gathering material. Your collage and preliminary sketchbook drawings will be part of your mark.

27. Materials… • You have all been assigned a pallet and will soon also receive brushes. • You will recycle a surface from last year to paint on, and prime it white again once you are ready to paint (i.e. when your painting is planned in full and you have done the warm up painting work on mayfair (example…) • Take only surfaces from last year (marked 2010-2011). Put your name, class and the year on the back so that your board does not get taken by another student please.