Surrealism - artists and techniques.

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Surrealism, a type of art where peoples dreams are brought to life in paintings, drawings or any other technique used in fine art.

It is the unusual images which are expressed by surrealist artists which caught my eye. I decided to use surrealism as my project because of these unusual images, as they are a lot different to other types of art that I have witnessed.

This type of art was brought to life by Andre Breton in 1924 and since then there have been many artists following the path of Breton including Max Ernst, Joan Miro, Giorgio De Chirico and the most well-known Surrealist Salvador Dali.

Surrealist art can be described as an attempt to express the workings of the subconscious mind. The images expressed in surrealist art are usually fantasy and do not agree with reality. Animals, objects, backgrounds and even forces on earth that would never occur in reality would be seen in a surrealist painting. There are many other techniques used in surrealist art which make the art different from reality. This could include using different patterns and colours to disfiguring shapes and changing backgrounds. These will be investigated further on.

There are many types of surrealism, not all of surrealist art includes fantasy. Many surrealist pieces of art can look like real environments. The shapes of objects don’t need to be changed at all and objects do not need to be added or moved. The main property surrealist art has is the unusual juxtaposition of objects. The piece of art may be about an environment which is real but the properties in the art are unusual e.g. the shadows or vanishing points. Many pieces of surrealist art usually show a lot of difference from reality as this makes the work more unusual and unfamiliar. This makes the work more interesting to the viewer as it is different to what they usually see in realist paintings.

In order to clarify these concepts, I will explain the properties used in this surrealist painting by Max Ursnt.

In this painting (Oil on canvas), the animal shown is clearly imaginary, however it is made up from animals which do exist in reality e.g The head resembles a bird, and the left foot resembles a horses hoof.

A major unrealistic factor in the painting is the sheer size of the animal. If the painting was given to a scientist, that scientist would explain many reasons why the animal could never grow to that size. The major reason is the earths gravity pulling down on the animal. Gravity is to strong on earth for any land animal, which the creature in the painting clearly is, to grow larger than the size of a giraffe or elephant. As gravity is not as strong in the sea larger animals can grow. An example is the blue whale which is the largest animal in the world. This fact proves gravity is stopping larger land mammals from existing.  So the painting does not agree with forces on earth which makes it unusual.

There are also many other features which resemble a surrealist painting such as the variation of colours used. Also the animal is wearing a piece of clothing that is different on each side yet looks like a single piece of clothing.  The disfigurement of the animal including the two extra limbs on the left side of the animal, resembles a surrealist painting as it disagrees with reality. In reality the animal would not be able to survive.

To explain how a surrealist idea develop, I will need to investigate the work of a variety of surrealist artists.

André Breton (February 18, 1896 – September 28, 1966)

André Breton is best known as the founder of surrealism. At first his main profession was not as an artist but as a doctor. He worked in a neurological ward during World War 1. He met a soldier of war, Jacques Vaché. It was his anti-social attitude and resentment for established artistic tradition which influenced Breton considerably into the surrealist ideas.

Breton was very political and was part of a French communist group in 1927 before being forced to leave in 1933. He was also pacifist, and having lived through both World War 1 and 2 he had strong feelings and strong a fear of any type of war. His famous book, Arcane 17, explains this. It was his political mind and his feeling of war that was expressed in his art.

Because of Breton, surrealism became famous in Europe and influenced all domains of art. It questioned the origin of human understanding and also human perceptions of certain events and objects on earth. Breton questioned the human perception of war, asking why such a terrible event was allowed to happen. These idea helped him develop his surrealist art which created his wide variety of surrealist paintings.

Max Ernst (April 2, 1891 - April 1,1976)

Max Ernst was a German surrealist poet, who later became a self-taught surrealist artist.  There is a great variety of ideas shown in his work as he did not concentrate on one type of. Like Breton, many of his ideas came to him during The First World War. However unlike Breton, he actually served in the war as a soldier not as a doctor so his ideas varied to Bretons. Like Breton he witnessed the excessive number of deaths, however he had a much clearer image of the destruction of the war.

One of his paintings which really emphasizes his ideas was ‘Europe after the rain’ which was painted between 1940-1942.  It shows many famous building such as the leaning tower of Pisa destroyed. It is clearly fantasy as famous buildings from around the world are put near to each other in the painting and the colour of the wreckage is not realistic. The colour is meant to contrast the wreckage which contains dark or grayish prime colours to the  bright sky at the top. This explains the interpretation that areas are safe where humans cannot reach which is why the sky remains bright. The building have obviously been ravished by war. It is The Second World War which is being referred to in the paintings as Ernst moved from Europe during the war and returned to France after the war, when many cities in France were ruined from war.

Ernst created the method frottage. This is where sketching paper is put over a surface while a pencil is sketches over the top using rubber-like movements. This then makes an image on the paper of the texture from the surface. It is very effective as a successful attempt at the technique is easy to gain. This is why it is now a major surrealist technique. The image can be kept on its own, however many surrealists just like to use it as a background for a piece of art, which is what Ernst has done in a lot of his work.

Ernst created this idea in 1925. He thought of the technique after he was inspired by an ancient wooden floor. The floor had gone through a lot of abuse from human activity and had mainly weathered away due to continuous scrubbing. He wanted to re-create the patterns from the floor exactly as they were on to a piece of sketching paper. This led him to the development of frottage.

After Ernst created the technique, he started creating his major surrealists works. His ideas not only came from events which occured in the war, but after the creation of frottage, many of his ideas came to him during present events. An example is his painting called ‘The Kiss’ (oil on canvas). He had created the painting after marrying his young wife Marie-Berthe Aurenche in 1927.

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The major composition lines on the painting where not logically thought of, but where actually made by dropping pieces of string onto the canvas while using a co-ordinate grid. The co-ordinate grid was used to make sure the lines were not too random, therefore making sure that the painting would not be too hard to understand. The technique produces undulating rhythmus. It could resemble waves, and due to the sandy colour used at the bottom of the painting, the setting could be a beach. This would emphasize the feeling of love in the painting as a beach is usually ...

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