BEYOND SURREALISM IN ART AND SCULPTURE Week 4 Colorado Academy of Lifelong Learning, Fall 2019 Georgianna Contiguglia [email protected]

Remember: Artists were trying to free the subconscious to tap their artistic creativity. They did this in two ways: by using techniques that relied on chance and randomness and through use of dreams and dream imagery, which, according to Freud, were a gateway into the subconscious. In the last class, we looked at artists’ use of objects, found randomly, manipulated or conjoined with other materials to form assemblages or combines. It was all about the random object. This time we will look at other techniques artists used, and, lastly, we will examine dream imagery.

❖ Surrealists drew upon the teachings of Freud regarding the non-rational Id, dreams, sexuality, and the subconscious. ❖ Surrealism blurred the lines between dreaming and waking. ❖ Artists employed chance, trance, and automatism. ❖ Surrealists worked in new art techniques such as assemblage, , and .

Surrealist Automatism: A method of artmaking in which the artist suppresses conscious control over the making process allowing the subconscious mind to influence the artwork.

Automatic : A method of expressing the subconscious by allowing the hand to move randomly on the paper.

Chance: Surrealist artists tapped into the subconscious by using artistic happenings created by chance by their materials.

Collage: An art technique in which forms are assembled and glued to form a completely new image. Although an ancient technique, it was revived by cubists Picasso and Braque around 1912.

Surrealist : The collage technique is the systematic exploitation of the accidentally or artificially provoked encounter of two or more foreign realities on an incongruous level …

Relief Sculpture: A design in which the background surface is cut away to reveal the image. The image can be in “high” or “low” relief, relative to how much it exists above the background surface.

Frottage: The process of creating an image by rubbing a piece of paper or cloth, under which is placed an object, with a crayon or pencil.

Grattage: Creating an image by placing a paper or cloth layered with wet paint over a highly textured object and pressing the paper into the object while scraping the paint with a palette knife.

Decalcomania: Paint is spread over parts of the canvas, then glass or a sheet of paper is pressed onto it. When the glass or paper is lifted, chance produces air bubbles, rivulets and a varied surface that can be further worked with brushed to produce the desired effect.

Dreamscapes: Based on the works of Freud, Surrealist dreamscapes use subconscious themes and settings unconstrained by notions of reality.

Conclusion: Surrealists, building upon the writings of Freud, introduced the concept of revealing the subconscious in art. Andre Breton was an instigator of this movement and he verbalized the philosophy of this in his Manifeste du Surrealisme, published in 1924. Artists moved in and out of Breton’s circle, and some Surrealists, such as Dali, whom we consider the consummate Surrealists, never called himself a Surrealist. Surrealists employed a variety of art techniques and mechanisms to tap into the subconscious: chance, trance, automatism, frottage, grattage, collage, and dreams. Surrealists’ desire to break with tradition, and the techniques they introduced provided the foundation for several art movements of the latter 20th and early 21st centuries.