Week 8

• Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale
• Ernst
• 1924
• Surrealism
• collage/assemblage art
• gate is open - unexpected scene
• all chaos is being cause by the small bird
• upsetting visual expectations
• Could symbolism (autobiographical explanations
• 1. Death of his sister
• 2. ill fevered hallucination

• The Virgin Mary Chastising the Baby Jesus before Three Witnesses: André Breton, Paul Éluard and the Artist
• Max Ernst
• 1926
• Surrealism
• play on expectations
• stage set/ architecture in background are angular
• plot is neither sacred nor true to life
• idea of merriment - enjoy life and don't get bogged down by church/state but also don't be totally hedonistic

• The Horde
• Ernst
• 1927
• Biomorphic surrealism
• grattage
• communicates a feeling - the less clear the better
• process of creation - adds layers and then scrapes them away to achieve the look he wants

• The Treachery of Images
• Magritte
• 1933
• "This is not a pipe"
• Naturalistic Surrealism
• juxtaposes text and image
• GOAL: make viewer ask "What is representation?"
• confounds pictorial reality

• Laughing Mannequins
• Bravo
• 1930

• The Persistence of Memory
• Dali
• 1931
• "hand painted dream photographs"
• real Spanish landscape filled with melting clocks - watches serve no purpose other than making viewer think/question their purpose
• things looking recognizable but not really making sense
• unsettling - if it were abstract, it would be less disturbing
• trying to discredit reality and point out everyone has irrational thoughts/strange ideas

• The Birth of Liquid Desires
• Dali
• 1931-32
• illusionistic landscape
• organic forms
• love of cabinets because they represent the mind - all the drawers to store things/thoughts
• saturation of color
• lots of detail by misleading because objects are vague/unclear
• deliberately enigmatic
• threatening rational order

• The Human Condition
• Magritte
• 1933
• looks believable but something is a little off
• use of object to hide what lies behind it
• painting within a painting motif

• Object
• Oppenheim
• 1936
• mass produced tea cup covered in Chinese gazelle fur
• manmade vs natural materials
• deliberately absurd - not useable

• The Shooting Star
• Joan Miro
• 1938
• automatism
• allowed brush to move freely but consciously chose color
• "free association doodling"
• limitless space because it is not defined

• Self-Portrait
• Cahun

• French founder of Surrealism
• wrote manifesto - wanted to free mankind from rationality, logic, and burdens of reality

• gathered in France but an international group
• over realism, higher realism, beyond reality of everyday, discover next level of reality
• GOAL: shake us out of this plane of existence
• similar to Dada
• spontaneity and chance
• anything conventional was seen as repressive
• not directly linked to time/era but more of an ongoing effort (UNLIKE dada)
• revolution in the awareness of living
• shock viewer - upset normal patterns of living/seeing
• unconventional techniques and materials
• GOAL/CHALLENGE: access and represent subconscious

Grattage is a surrealist technique in painting in which (usually dry) paint is scraped off the canvas. It was employed by Max Ernst and Joan Miró

• human psyche = battleground
• ID: animal urges, hedonistic
• EGO: meeting ground
• SUPEREGO: rules from society/church/family/etc
• interested in the conscious and unconscious
• role of dreams - a way of connecting to subconscious

• access unconscious and see what happens
• It attempts to morph artistic design elements into naturally occurring shapes, or patterns reminisent of nature

• dictation of thought without control of the mind
• largely abstract though often contains recognizable images
• automatic drawing - allow your hand to move without any kind of rational logic; chance associations, changing context

• "spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the associations and interpretations of delirious phenomena."
• a sane person could access/cultivate paranoid tendencies, illusional ideas and that things don't go together could go together
• mix of fantasy and reality

• often uses meticulous detail
• recognizable forms/objects/scenes but take them out of regular context - combine, distort