DOCSLIB.ORG

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

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
BEYOND SURREALISM SURREALISM in ART PAINTING and SCULPTURE Week 4 Colorado Academy of Lifelong Learning, Fall 2019 Georgianna Contiguglia Gjcontiguglia@Aol.Com BEYOND SURREALISM SURREALISM IN ART PAINTING 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, collage, and frottage. 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 Drawing: 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 Max Ernst: 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 art movement 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. .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Max Ernst Was a German-Born Surrealist Who Helped Shape the Emergence of Abstract Expressionism in America Post-World War II
    QUICK VIEW: Synopsis Max Ernst was a German-born Surrealist who helped shape the emergence of Abstract Expressionism in America post-World War II. Armed with an academic understanding of Freud, Ernst often turned to his work-whether sculpture, painting, or collage-as a means of processing his experience in World War I and unpacking his feelings of dispossession in its wake. Key Ideas / Information • Ernst's work relied on spontaneity (juxtapositions of materials and imagery) and subjectivity (inspired by his personal experiences), two creative ideals that came to define Abstract Expressionism. • Although Ernst's works are predominantly figurative, his unique artistic techniques inject a measure of abstractness into the texture of his work. • The work of Max Ernst was very important in the nascent Abstract Expressionist movement in New York, particularly for Jackson Pollock. DETAILED VIEW: Childhood © The Art Story Foundation – All rights Reserved For more movements, artists and ideas on Modern Art visit www.TheArtStory.org Max Ernst was born into a middle-class family of nine children on April 2, 1891 in Brühl, Germany, near Cologne. Ernst first learned painting from his father, a teacher with an avid interest in academic painting. Other than this introduction to amateur painting at home, Ernst never received any formal training in the arts and forged his own artistic techniques in a self-taught manner instead. After completing his studies in philosophy and psychology at the University of Bonn in 1914, Ernst spent four years in the German army, serving on both the Western and Eastern fronts. Early Training The horrors of World War I had a profound and lasting impact on both the subject matter and visual texture of the burgeoning artist, who mined his personal experiences to depict absurd and apocalyptic scenes.
    [Show full text]
  • Papers of Surrealism, Issue 8, Spring 2010 1
    © Lizzie Thynne, 2010 Indirect Action: Politics and the Subversion of Identity in Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore’s Resistance to the Occupation of Jersey Lizzie Thynne Abstract This article explores how Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore translated the strategies of their artistic practice and pre-war involvement with the Surrealists and revolutionary politics into an ingenious counter-propaganda campaign against the German Occupation. Unlike some of their contemporaries such as Tristan Tzara and Louis Aragon who embraced Communist orthodoxy, the women refused to relinquish the radical relativism of their approach to gender, meaning and identity in resisting totalitarianism. Their campaign built on Cahun’s theorization of the concept of ‘indirect action’ in her 1934 essay, Place your Bets (Les paris sont ouvert), which defended surrealism in opposition to both the instrumentalization of art and myths of transcendence. An examination of Cahun’s post-war letters and the extant leaflets the women distributed in Jersey reveal how they appropriated and inverted Nazi discourse to promote defeatism through carnivalesque montage, black humour and the ludic voice of their adopted persona, the ‘Soldier without a Name.’ It is far from my intention to reproach those who left France at the time of the Occupation. But one must point out that Surrealism was entirely absent from the preoccupations of those who remained because it was no help whatsoever on an emotional or practical level in their struggles against the Nazis.1 Former dadaist and surrealist and close collaborator of André Breton, Tristan Tzara thus dismisses the idea that surrealism had any value in opposing Nazi domination.
    [Show full text]
  • Yves Tanguy and Surrealism Jonathan Stuhlman
    Navigating a Constantly Shifting Terrain: Yves Tanguy and Surrealism Jonathan Stuhlman Charlotte, NC B.A. Bowdoin College, 1996 M.A. School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1998 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Art History and Architecture University of Virginia December, 2013 ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ II © Copyright by Jonathan Stuhlman All Rights Reserved December 2013 III Abstract: Yves Tanguy (1900-1955) was one of the first visual artists to join the Surrealist movement and was considered one of its core members for the majority of his career. He was also a close friend and longtime favorite of the movement’s leader, André Breton. Yet since his death, there has been surprisingly little written about his work that either adds to our understanding of why he remained in favor for so long and how he was able to do so. The aura of impenetrability that his paintings project, along with his consistent silence about them and a paucity of primary documents, has done much to limit the ways in which scholars, critics, and the public have been able (or willing) to engage with his work. As a result, Tanguy has been shuffled to the edges of recent developments in the critical discourse about Surrealism. This dissertation argues against the narrow, limited ways in which Tanguy’s art has been discussed most frequently in the past. Such interpretations, even those penned for exhibition catalogues and monographs supporting his work, have tended to be broad, diffuse, and biographically- and chronologically-driven rather than engaged with the works of art themselves and a critical analysis of the context in which they were created.
    [Show full text]
  • Surrealist Manifesto Surrealist Manifesto <Written By> André
    Surrealist Manifesto Surrealist Manifesto <written by> André Breton This virtual version of the Surrealist Manifesto was created in 1999. Feel free to copy this virtual document and distribute it as you wish. You may contact the transcriber at any time by writing to: [email protected]. So strong is the belief in life, in what is most fragile in life – real life, I mean – that in the end this belief is lost. Man, that inveterate dreamer, daily more discontent with his destiny, has trouble assessing the objects he has been led to use, objects that his nonchalance has brought his way, or that he has earned through his own efforts, almost always through his own efforts, for he has agreed to work, at least he has not refused to try his luck (or what he calls his luck!). At this point he feels extremely modest: he knows what women he has had, what silly affairs he has been involved in; he is unimpressed by his wealth or his poverty, in this respect he is still a newborn babe and, as for the approval of his conscience, I confess that he does very nicely without it. If he still retains a certain lucidity, all he can do is turn back toward his childhood which, however his guides and mentors may have botched it, still strikes him as somehow charming. There, the absence of any known restrictions allows him the perspective of several lives lived at once; this illusion becomes firmly rooted within him; now he is only interested in the fleeting, the extreme facility of everything.
    [Show full text]
  • EXPRESSIONISM- NEO-PLASTICISM (De Stijl)- SURREALISM
    04.12.2012 ART IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: EXPRESSIONISM- NEO-PLASTICISM (De Stijl)- SURREALISM Week 9 Expressionism In Germany, a group known as Expressionists insisted art should express the artists feelings rather than images of the real world. The belief that the artist could directly convey some kind of inner feeling- - emotional or spiritual- - through art was a fashionable idea in German artistic and intellectual circles at the beginning of the twentieth century. Artists had been encouraged to ‘break free’ from civilized constraints and Academic conventions and somehow express themselves more freely; these ideas are fundamental to what we call German ‘Expressionist’ art. From 1905 to 1930, Expressionism the use of distorted, exaggerated forms and colors for emotional impact dominated German art. This subjective trend, which is the foundation of much twentieth century art, began with Van Gogh, Gauguin and Munch in the late nineteenth century, and continued with Belgian painter James Ensor (1860-1849), and Austrian painters Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), Egon Schiele (1890- 1918), and Oscar Kokoschka (1886-1980). But it was in Germany, with two separate groups Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter, the Expressionism reached maturity. Die Brücke: Founded in 1905 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880- 1938) Der Blaue Reiter: Founded in Munich around 1911 by Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). 1 04.12.2012 DIE BRÜCKE (BRIDGE): BRIDGING THE GAP • Die Brücke founded by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880- 1938) • Members include Ernst Ludwig in 1905. Kirchner (1880–1938), Erich • The aim was to sieze avantgarde spirit. Heckel (1883–1970), and Emil • Members believed their work would be a “bridge” to the Nolde (1867–1956).
    [Show full text]
  • History of a Natural History: Max Ernst's Histoire Naturelle
    HISTORY OF A NATURAL HISTORY: MAX ERNST'S HISTOIRE NATURELLE, FROTTAGE, AND SURREALIST AUTOMATISM by TOBIAS PERCIVAL ZUR LOYE A THESIS Presented to the Department of Art History and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts June 2010 --------------_._--- 11 "History of a Natural History: Max Ernst's Histoire Naturelle, Frottage, and Surrealist Automatism," a thesis prepared by Tobias Percival zur Loye in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts degree in the Department of Art History. This thesis has been approved and accepted by: Date Committee in Charge: Dr. Sherwin Simmons, Chair Dr. Joyce Cheng .Dr. Charles Lachman Accepted by: Dean of the Graduate School III An Abstract of the Thesis of Tobias Percival zur Loye for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Art History to be taken June 2010 Title: HISTORY OF A NATURAL HISTORY: MAX ERNST'S HISTOIRE NATURELLE, FROTTAGE, AND SURREALIST AUTOMATISM Approved: When Andre BreJon released his Manifesto ofSurrealism in 1924, he established the pursuit of psychic automatism as Surrealism's principle objective, and a debate concerning the legitimacy or possibility of Surrealist visual art ensued. In response to this skepticism, Max Ernst embraced automatism and developed a new technique, which he called frottage , in an attempt to satisfy Breton's call for automatic activity, and in 1926, a collection of thirty-four frottages was published under the title Histoire Naturelle. This thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of Histoire Naturelle by situating it in the theoretical context of Surrealist automatism and addresses the means by which Ernst incorporated found objects from the natural world into the semi-automatic production of his frottages.
    [Show full text]
  • 12 Surrealism Angela Zornetsky Pace University
    Pace University DigitalCommons@Pace Art High School 1-1-2010 Grades 9 - 12 Surrealism Angela Zornetsky Pace University Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/high_art Part of the Art Practice Commons Recommended Citation Zornetsky, Angela,"Grades 9-12 Surrealism" (2010). Art. Paper 1. http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/high_art/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the High School at DigitalCommons@Pace. It has been accepted for inclusion in Art by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Pace. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Lesson Plan Your Name: Angela Zornetsky Unit Name: Surrealism Course Name: Studio in Art (grades 9-12) Lesson Number: 6: Introduction to and completion of the final project for the unit Length of Lesson: 8 days State Standards 1: Creating and performing in the arts; 2: Addressed: Knowing and using materials and resources; 3: Responding to and analyzing works of art; 4: Understanding the cultural dimensions & contributions of the arts Essential Question(s) for this lesson: 1. How did the Surrealists use the elements and principles of art to communicate their ideas? 2. To what degree can chance and accident dictate art? 3. In what ways can an artist express his or her ideas without literal representation? 4. Is there a relationship amongst dreams, the subconscious, and automatic activities (e.g. freewriting or exquisite corpse)? 5. Does art often have one, correct interpretation? Evidence of Student Understanding (Assessment) in this Lesson: Students produce a work of art that uses Surrealist techniques. Artwork and reflections demonstrate an understanding of the concepts discussed (abandoning traditional methods in favor of chance, dreams, collaboration, or other Surrealist methods).
    [Show full text]
  • Teacher Resource Notes – KS1-KS2 the Far and the Near International Art in St Ives 6 October 2012 – 13 January 2013
    Teacher Resource Notes – KS1-KS2 The Far and the Near International Art in St Ives 6 October 2012 – 13 January 2013 These notes are designed to support KS1-2 teachers in engaging students as they explore the art work. As well as factual information they provide starting points for discussion, ideas for simple practical activities and suggestions for extended work that could stem from a gallery visit. To book a gallery visit for your group call 01736 796226 or email [email protected]. Season Overview This season Tate St Ives provides an opportunity to view St Ives art alongside British and International modernists such as Henri Matisse, Henry Moore and Jackson Pollock, as well as contemporary artists such as Yto Barrada and Nicholas Hlobo. Over fifty artists from 1900 to today, selected from Tate's global collection, are shown in a series of themed rooms. These open dialogues between the practice of St Ives artists, such as Patrick Heron, Barbara Hepworth, Trevor Bell, Sandra Blow and Alan Davie, and the historic modernist context, as well as contemporary relationships between Modernism and international art. The Heron Mall shows a sculpture by Yto Barrada, raising themes connected with a sense of place, including the aesthetic and political effects of tourism on a location. Gallery 5 considers the artist’s studio, both as a site for abstraction and as a means of framing views of the outside world. It includes paintings Patrick Heron made in his Porthmeor studio, as well as work by Pierre Bonnard and Georges Braque. Gallery 4 explores the connections between painting, Constructivism and architecture.
    [Show full text]
  • Talented Art 1-4 - Ms
    Talented Art 1-4 - Ms. Jensen - Grace King High School Assignment #1 - Surreal Circumstances | Size: 8x10 | Media: Any | Sketch & Final ​ READ: SURREALISM Source: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/surr/hd_surr.htm ​ Surrealism originated in the late 1910s and early ’20s as a literary movement that experimented with a new mode of ​ ​ ​ expression called automatic writing, or automatism, which sought to release the unbridled imagination of the ​ ​ ​ subconscious. ​ Officially consecrated in Paris in 1924 with the publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism by the poet and ​ ​ critic André Breton (1896–1966), Surrealism became an international intellectual and political movement. Breton, a trained psychiatrist, along with French poets Louis Aragon (1897–1982), Paul Éluard (1895–1952), and Philippe Soupault (1897–1990), were influenced by the psychological theories and dream studies of Sigmund Freud ​ (1856–1939) and the political ideas of Karl Marx (1818–1883). Using Freudian methods of free association, their poetry and prose drew upon the private world of the mind, traditionally restricted by reason and societal limitations, to produce surprising, unexpected imagery. The cerebral and irrational tenets of Surrealism find their ancestry in the clever and whimsical disregard for tradition fostered by Dadaism a decade earlier. Surrealist poets were at first reluctant to align themselves with visual artists because they believed that the ​ laborious processes of painting, drawing, and sculpting were at odds with the spontaneity of uninhibited
    [Show full text]
  • DADA, SURREALISM, and THEIR HERITAGE, Directed by William S
    n? he Museum of Modern Art Vest 53 Street, New York, N.Y. 10019 Tel. 245-3200 Cable: Modernart Ko, 26 FOR RELEASE: Wednesday, March 2J, I968 PRESS PREVIEW: Monday, March 25^ 19^8 11 a.m. - h p,m. Dada, the early 20th century moveinent that reacted against the materialism of the time and the horrors of World War I, and Surrealistiv which developed in the early 2C»8 out of the nihilistic ferment of Dada inspired by Freudian explor­ ations of the unconscious, are surveyed in an exhibition of more than 3»00 works at The Museum of Modem Art from March 2? through June 9. A sampling of objects, paintings and sculpture created since World War II indicates the artistic herit­ age of these movements, both in the continuing work of older artists and in the work of later generations. DADA, SURREALISM, AND THEIR HERITAGE, directed by William S. Rubin, Curator of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modem Art, is the first comprehensive exhibition anywhere of these movements since trhe Museum presented its now classic show in 1936-37^ a generation ago. Dada, appearing almost simultaneously among artists and intellectuals in New York, Zurich, Berlin, Cologne, Hanover and Paris during the second decade of the century, was described by its leaders as an anti-art movement, an intell­ ectually oriented nihilism toward art, primarily anti-Cubism. But, as Mr. Rubin points out in the book* accompanying the exhibition, while "the anti-art created by Dada pioneers such as Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia seemed to reject out*of.hand the premises of modem painting as they stood on the eve of World War I,...»aiit4.art» depended from the first on the very presence of the »pure painting' against which it reacted, and it incorporated more of that 'art-art« than its authors knew," •DADA, SURREALISM, AND THEIR HERITAGE by William S.
    [Show full text]
  • Connections Guide
    Connections Guide September 18, 2009 – January 4, 2010 Table of Contents Introduction . 3 Chance Aesthetics— Overview and Timeline . 4–5 Collage, Assemblage, and the Found Object . 6–9 Raoul Hausmann, Fmsbwtözäu , 1918 Ellsworth Kelly, Brushstrokes Cut into Forty-Nine Squares and Arranged by Chance , 1951 Mimmo Rotella, La Dernière Marilyn , 1966 Automatism . 10–13 Max Ernst, The Habit of Leaves, from Histoire Naturelle , 1926 Jackson Pollock, Untitled , 1949 William Anastasi, Untitled (V. Dwan 10.14.67) , 1967 Games and Systems of Random Ordering . 14–17 André Breton, Jacqueline Lamba, Hans Namuth, photograph of Jackson Pollock, 1950 Yves Tanguy, Untitled “Cadavre Exquis” (“Exquisite Corpse” ), 1938 François Morellet, 50 lignes au hasard , 1967 Alison Knowles, A House of Dust , 1968 Glossary of Terms . 18 –19 This guide was prepared by Sydney Norton, museum educator and coordinator of public programs at the Educational Programs . 20 –21 Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. Unless otherwise noted, the exhibition overview and information on Acknowledgments . 22 –23 individual works of art are based on essays from the exhibition catalog Chance Aesthetics , written by Special Events and Public Programs . back cover curator Meredith Malone with contributions by Bradley Bailey, Emily Hage, Susan Laxton, and Janine Mileaf. Cover: Ellsworth Kelly, Spectrum Colors Arranged by Chance V, 1951. Collage on paper, 39 x 39". Collection of the artist. © Ellsworth Kelly 2 CHANCE AESTHETICS This Connections Guide serves as a companion to the exhibition Chance Aesthetics , held at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University from September 18, 2009, to January 4, 2010. Its primary aim is to help museum visitors engage with and make meaning of the artworks on view.
    [Show full text]
  • Augmented Imagination: Machine Learning Art As Automatism
    V5.02 Augmented Imagination: Machine Learning Art as Automatism Philipp Schmitt Augmented Imagination: Machine Learning Art as Automatism by Philipp Schmitt In the periphery of the landscape that is the current boom of machine learning (ML) sits a playground for tech-savvy creatives who are re-appropriating the technology for their own means. In one corner, there are designers focusing on applying the strengths of neural networks to the design field. They dream up new, “intelligent,” generative tools that, for example, help analyze data or produce a thousand variations of a design in an effort to select the best one.1 In another part of this playground sit artists who are interested in the new me- dium’s own expressiveness: “[ML] is becoming a tool, just like painting,” artist Trevor Paglen told me at the opening of his recent exhibition.2 Paglen and other artists like Mario Klingemann and Sascha Pohflepp have recently produced interesting visual work—what we could call machine learning art (MLA)—that prompted the thoughts behind this essay. 26 Plot(s) Figure 1. Left: Mario Klingemann, Untitled, Solitary Confinement Series, 2017. Right: Sascha Pohflepp, Spacewalk: Carnivores 3, Generation 320, 2017. Many images produced by artists using ML (such as Fig. 1) are similar in their visceral evocative qualities, their organic “brushstrokes” and textures, their surreal creatures and objects. They are usually made to depict familiar objects and draw from visual material of this world, but have something alien to them that is highly fascinating. The technology that creates these works wasn’t invented for or by artists—scientists and engineers use these images as well (but tend to discard them after their work is done).
    [Show full text]