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Exploring the Random. Diving Into Surrealism: An Art 10 Mixed Media Project. Max Ernst, Surrealism. The Horde , 1927. Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale , 1924.
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Exploring the Random Diving Into Surrealism: An Art 10 Mixed Media Project
Max Ernst, Surrealism The Horde, 1927 Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale, 1924
SURREALISM: Beginning as a literary movement in 1924 by poet Andre Breton, Surrealism was a direct descendent of Dada, absorbing many of its artists and its improvisational techniques. Influenced by Freud's techniques of free-association and dream analysis, surrealist artists attempted to tap into unconscious imagery. The results, often bizarre and illogical, revealed truths inaccessible to the rational mind. There were two veins of surrealism: • in one, artists exercised as little conscious control as possible, practicing improvised art. Key figures: Max Ernst, Joan Miro, Paul Klee • in the other, artists created works that were based on extraordinary realism to produce hallucinatory effects defying experience and common sense. Key figures: Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte
Max Ernst: (1891 - 1976) A German who had been a Dadaist after fighting in the German army during WWI. He experienced hallucinations during childhood fevers, and often created self-induced hallucinations by staring fixedly into space and letting his mind wander. He used weird, ambiguous titles to get the attention of his viewers (The Preparation of Glue from Bones; The Little Tear Gland that Says Tic Tac) He invented frottage--putting paper over a rough surface and rubbing it with a pencil, as well as decalcomania--pressing oil paint onto a canvas from some other surface and pulling away the other surfaceand grattage– scraping layers of paint onto a textured surface – both created unplanned patterns which he would then elaborate into strange, unsettling images. Ernst, The Robing of the Bride, 1940
Joan Miró, Surrealism Joan Miro: (1893 - 1983) A Spanish painter who used cut-out fragments from a machinery catalogue, dropped them on a canvas, and used their shapes where they lay to create black silhouettes or hollow forms, which he then altered, resulting in forms which bore just the slightest resemblance to things in the visible world. "Brilliantly colored and whimsical, they seem like cartoons from another planet." (Stokstad) Miro, Shooting Star, 1938 Painting (Composition), 1933 Shooting Star, 1938
After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, his mood darkens and his images become more sinister. Images like this "gave savage expression to the sense of the impending horror widely felt in Europe at that time." Miro, Head of a Woman, 1938
Paul Klee Hammamet with Its Mosque, 1914 Twittering Machine, 1922 Surrealism
Paul Klee: (1879 - 1940) A Swiss member of Der Blaue Reiter with Kandinsky before WWI, his later work showed his continuing delight with the expressive qualities of color. His paintings were intentionally simple and childlike. "Klee consciously imitated the dreamlike magic of children's art by reducing his forms to direct shapes full of ambiguity....The respect for inner vision made Klee study archaic signs such as hex symbols, hieroglyphics, and cave markings, which he felt held some primitive power to evoke nonverbal meanings." (Stokstad) Many of his paintings contain similar kinds of symbols. Klee did not trust rationality, believing it could get in the way of real vision and insight. Klee, Blue Night, 1923
Magritte, The Betrayal of Images, 1929 Surrealism
Rene Magritte: (1898 - 1967) A Belgian painter whose mastery of realism enabled him to create "disturbing, illogical images with startling clarity....[using] juxtapositions of familiar sights in unnatural contexts." (Stokstad) The first impression in looking at a Magritte is that we know what we are looking at because the objects are so familiar and are so photographically rendered, that when we realize what we really see, the effect is even more dramatic. Bowler hats, apples, and eyes are common images.
Remember this from somewhere?? Magritte, Son of Man, 1964
Salvador Dali, Surrealism The Persistence of Memory, 1931 The Birth of Liquid Desires, 1931-32
Salvador Dali: (1904 - 1989) An arrogant, shameless self-promoter who would do anything for public attention, Dali delivered a lecture at the Sorbonne with his foot in a bucket of milk and gave a press conference wearing a boiled lobster on his head. Dali once said, "The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad." He had a very obsessive personality, and he was terrified of insects, boats, planes, trains, and buying shoes because he would have to expose his feet in public. Dali would put a canvas and paints next to his bed, stare at it before he went to sleep, then paint what he called "hand-painted dream photographs" when he woke up. (Stokstad) His skilled draftsmanship was so precise it reminds us of Northern Renaissance miniaturism, and created what has come to define for most of us the "surreal." Dali frequently used images of mutilated/disfigured/misshapen female nudes, and there is a loud undercurrent of sexual perversity through much of his work.
Dali, Soft Construction w Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War), 1936
Dali, Apparition of a Face and a Fruit Dish on a Beach, 1948
Painted during a painful separation from Rivera in the year before they divorced and remarried. One represents the FridaDiego she used to love; the other the Frida Diego that she no longer loves. One represents the traditional, submissive Hispanic bride; the other, the independent modern woman. Another interpretation is that it represents two versions of Mexican culture – the “old Mexico” with native influences (ex. the heart is very symbolic for the Aztec culture), and the other Frida with European influences (dressed in white lace). “Thus, The Two Fridas represents both Kahlo’s personal struggles and the struggles of her homeland.” (Gardner) Kahlo, The Two Fridas, 1939
Frida Kahlo: (1907 - 1954) Even though she was identified as a Surrealist by Andre Breton (the founder and theorist of the movement) she was fiercely independent and never called herself a member of the group. She created intensely personal self-portraits which often imitated the style of Roman Catholic devotional images of the Virgin. She "used the details of her own life as powerful symbols for the psychological pain of human existence." (Gardner) Kahlo suffered physical pain most of her life: had polio as a child, so one leg was shorter than the other, and at age 18, was in a horrible bus accident in which a handrail pierced her body. She had 32 operations in the 26 years that followed, including the amputation of one of her feet. (She proudly bought a fancy Spanish leather boot ringed with bells to wear on the wooden replacement foot.) In addition to experiencing constant physical pain, she was also involved in a stormy, tempestuous marriage to Diego Rivera, who is said to have battered her in fits of rage. She once said, "I suffered two grave accidents in my life. One involved a bus...the other accident is Diego.” He was 42and on his 3rd marriage when they were wed; she was 22 and on her 1st. He was over 6' tall and 300 pounds; she was 5'3" and 98 pounds. He was already famous as a muralist; she was just beginning to teach herself how to paint. When her paintings did become well-known, she had ardent admirers: her Diego and I was the first work by a Latin American painter to sell for more than $1 million. Madonna owns Self-portrait with Monkey and several other of Kahlo’s works. Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Monkey and Serpent Necklace, 1938
“RANDOM SURREALIST SPACES MIXED MEDIA PROJECT” • Mission: • For this project, you will begin by choosing a random assortment of PROMPTS – a 2 part phrase, a pictorial image/design and an element or principle of art, an image design strategy/artistic media. ALL of these MUST somehow be incorporated into the mixed media work. • You will also collect random images and other “flattish” items to work with in this collaged, mixed media piece. • You will be given a piece of MiTentes board on which to start this work. This is meant to be a loose work where you are to ALLOW YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS to take over and not over-think your choices. • The main aim is to basically EXPLORE the SPACE of the surface in conjunction with the parameters of the PROMPTS as well. • There will be a lesson on how to use transfers in mixed media too
OTHER CRITERIA… • You must include a drawing with pencil. This can be drawn directly onto the surface of the board OR on another surface that will then be attached to the board. • You must include a TRANSFER TECHNIQUE (to be demonstrated in class). At least one is to be added BUT you can definitely do more than one! They include Acrylic Medium Transfer, Packing Tape Transfer and/or Oil of Wintergreen Transfer. • You will create a PATTERN design of some kind using a Sharpie marker or other black ink like India Ink. Again, this can be drawn directly on the surface of the board or on another surface and then attached. • Apply random dripping of inks, paint, tea, or coffee. These can be moved around with a straw, paint brush, toothpick, etc. • You need to overlap solid shapes/images into or on top of other solid shapes or images. (See the example posted in the classroom.) • Collaged paper! This can be paper with text on it (articles from newspaper/magazines), pictures, or coloured papers like tissue, construction paper, etc.
HAVE FUN AND EXPERIMENT!! Remember that the Surrealists allowed room for the subconscious mind to take over
