Time to get weird
This Show & Tell, we're exploring the weird & wonderful world of Surrealist art. Consisting of melting clocks & lobster phones, it is one of my all-time favorite art-movements in terms of aesthetic, composition, artistry and representation of ideas
Picasso: Guernica
A Short Introduction
The Surrealist movement, born in France in post-World War I Europe, consisted of a coalition of artists such as Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Rene Magritte, Max Ernst, and led by Andre Briton. The surrealists sought to use the subconscious mind to further increase their creativity, seeking to free the individual from it's current reality, and to force them to look at every-day life with a new perspective. Using Freudian techniques of psychoanalysis, these artists made dream journals and entered hallucinatory states to unlock the unconscious. As you read along, you'll notice the heavy use of symbolism that reflect the artists experiences and ideals in their work.
Like most quality art, surrealism was political. Heavily linked to Karl Marx's revolutionary ideals, the Surrealists believed that the subconscious was the key to political and social revolution, believing that the existing economic/social systems were sub-par. They believed that the subconscious was key to achieving absolute truth and freedom, that the world right in front of us was only a layer to be peeled away, and sought out to understand the hidden under-layer of reality. They despised rationality, believing it to be a hinderance to their search for the real version of reality. As you can tell, the Surrealists had intense beliefs, and sought to portray those beliefs through their art.
Salvador Dali: The Temptation of St. Anthony
Composition
Pictured below are pieces by Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, and Rene Magritte. All are oil on canvas pieces, and all are equally weird. Surrealist paintings tend to use a lot of symmetry and color, then add on a heavy layer of weirdness on top of those. I use the word weirdness because it is the best word to describe the special ingredient found in surrealist pieces. I find that the more you study surrealist paintings, the easier it gets spot the surrealist cues.
Let's look at Ernst's painting below: the piece has symmetry with the two characters in the machine (or tube?), then there is also symmetry with their colored lapels and the weathervane. Then, in true surrealist fashion, there appears to be a rip in the time-space continuum on the upper right, along with rock outcroppings appearing at the horizon line. This example is relatively easy-to-digest, using a realist style to portray the subjects and landscape, while still having those unmistakeable surrealist cues.
What about the meaning of the painting? Let's look at the bottom right of the piece for the title: "Castor et Pollution", or translated to "Castor and Pollution". The two subjects stem directly from the Freudian theory of double figures, a phenomenon in which an individual's ego manifests into reality through pure narcissism. The title alludes back to Greek & Roman mythology, alluding to the half-twin brothers Castor and Pollux, who were also identical. Instead of naming the second-brother "Pollux", Ernst named him "Pollution" instead, which is a direct criticism of the waste produced by the existing bourgeois economic system (remember, the surrealists really liked Karl Marx lol). In one fell-swoop, Ernst alluded to freudian and marxists theory while simultaneously critisizing capitalism...fun! While I don't necessarily agree with Ernst's criticism of capitalism (where would we be without Jeff Bezos's beautiful bald head?), I admire the artistry and symbolism in his piece.
Max Ernst: Castor et Pollution
Dali: The Persistence of Memory
Quite possibly the most important piece of Surrealist art, The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali is a perfect ambassador for surrealism. The piece has achieved legendary status; not only as the face of the surrealist movement, but as a defining piece of early 20th-century art.
Featuring alluring symbolism with hard & soft lines that weld the surrealist and realist styles together, it's easy to see why this painting is so widely beloved. For me, the defining factor of surrealist art is the "wow" in the initial viewing, and The Persistence of Memory has that "wow" factor by the boatloads. That comes from Dali's fusion of hard and soft lines. The slab of rock in the foreground and background, the jagged rocks in the top-right, and the tree provide realist-versions of objects. Then we look at the clocks, which is probably what pizza would look like if an impatient college student decides to pull it out of the oven too early and then proceeds drops it on his already dirty futon. In addition to the melty look of the clocks, the effect is amplified by the draping effect of the clocks overlapping on hard edges. Let's not forget Salvador Dali's face laying on the ground, which achieves a similar uncooked-pizza look.
Uncorking Dali's paintings is notoriously fun, especially because Dali refused to provide information about his work (as one should). Given my interpretation, the piece is commentary on the fleeting and liquid nature of our memory. We that Dali utilized his experiences with dreams in his work constantly, so I think that this painting is depicting the fleeting yet sticky ability of memory. Meaning that we can wake up and immediately forget what happened in our dreams, but we'll suddenly remember the dream-sequence two weeks later while folding laundry. It can also serves as it's own dream-sequence, a depiction of one of Dali's dreams. Lastly, Dali uses ants and flies as portrayals of decay in his work, symbolizing the decay of time as the ants crawl over the pocketwatch.
Rene Magritte: The Lovers II
The last piece is by my favorite surrealist artist, Rene Magritte. This painting actually has a counterpart called The Lovers I, where it featured a similar story of two veiled people embracing each other. The two paintings are great, but other works such as The Son of Man, Not to Be Reproduced, and The Treachery of Images are my other favorites.
Magritte's work is great because of his subtle yet profound use of the surreal. Much like Max Ernst's Castor et Pollution, Rene peppers surrealism into the piece in a spooky kind of way. His paintings are somewhere between innocencent and disturbing, which is probably why I'm so drawn to them. Looking at the composition, the only aspect out of the ordinary is the white veils draped over the subjects, everything else is in standart realist style. In fact, even the white cloth itself is made in realist style, wrapping around the heads of the subjects with folds and creases. It's the fact that the cloth itself is present is what makes it surreal.
So what does this mean? Unlike Dali, Rene Magritte wasn't so secretive with his works. He, like the other surrealists, believed in Freudian theory. Rene was particularly interested in the facades people put up in social interactions, which he manifested into reality by creating the veil's draped over the subject's faces. I find this symbolic of not only the "faces" people use in social settings (the subjects who are in formal event attire), but a commentary on shallow, lust-filled experiences. The two individuals never really connect or touch each other, despite all of the physical "activities" they partake in, never truly understanding who each other is. This of course is further amplified by the title: "The Lovers". This makes for a piece that is eye-catching, deeply interesting, and sad in its overall message.
Till Next Time
So there's short dive into Surrealism. I hope you enjoyed learning about these awesome artists, and maybe next time you see a surrealist piece, you'll be able to appreciate it a little bit more.
What are your impressions of the pieces talked about today? Have you encountered any surrealist art lately? And what art should I cover next?