20th cent task 4(final)

For the Final task, we are to create an artwork based on all we had learned. We were given the topic teenagers. So, our ideas would be based around anything that had to do with teenagers. Firstly,  we discussed about our ideas. My first idea was about teenagers that flys out to space with a skateboard and without a spacesuit. This idea originally means that teenagers like to explore, younger people are fascinated by space and freedom.

However, the idea was abit hard to imagine for others. So,  we changed the idea around the opposite into something like confinement, bullying and unable to escape such a life. The first art was to make a teenage entity trying to come out of a plastic wall. Much like the statues inside walls.

 Kitchen wrappers

 Wrapping the model

 Plastic model of the model leg

My first experiment, I used kitchen wrappers and parts of the models for wrapping. The wrapping around the model continues until it is completely wrapped( unable to see model color. Using the heat blower and setting it to about 180 - 250 degrees. I blew around the wrapped model so it would melt and harden, molding its form. However, there are some complications with the melting process.First The plastic used are not exactly hard enough no matter how many times it was blown. Second, with the blower running quite hot the plastics would create holes and reducing the coverage of the wrapper. This process continued until I have a set of 2 legs ,1 hand, 1 partial shoulder and a partial face. It turned out not as impressive as we though so we came up with another idea.

 Vaccuum former 

(The white line is the maximum limit)

  Modeled hand that got stuck

PVC sheet with the model 

 reducing size the modeled hand

 One of the final hand piece 

 My second experiment is creating walls of the model using plastics as well. This time I require a lecturer to help operate the vacuum former, which is required for my experiment. However there are some complications, the vacuum former did not have a large space to fit the model. So, we improvise to only use the hands. But, it would require a lot of copies of hands to meet our requirements. The complications did not end there, some of the formed model are stuck inside the PVC sheet due to some parts of it got locked. For example like the metal end and some parts of the fingers. We had to cut out holes on the PVC to free the modeled hand for modeling. It was a hard and long process and the vacuum made it worst as it heats up and dispels some polluted air.

After hours of forming, I then had to cut the PVC plastics in a more smaller piece so it did not take too much space. The PVC sheet is not easy to cut due to it being quite durable and less bendable.

 Description

 

Wall of Hands

 

Finally, I merged them together and typed out the description for it. It is about the struggles by bullying and you can read it at the picture above.


Reflection
The process and experimenting was long and hard but a good learning experience. I learned a lot during the process of making the artwork. Such as,  complications and thinking solutions on how to deal with them. Finding a better idea as well as improving it and solutions if it did not work out.

20th cent task 1 (cubism)

Our first task, is to create a cubism styled artwork out of our peers. We are tasked to create the artwork based on the information we gathered about them. I was tasked to create an artwork about Yati. So, we took a session for questioning each others personality, likes, hobby's and other information.

 After the questioning, I started to create a sketch based on the answers I was given. I used Picasso inspired cubism work in my sketch.

For the real work, I used a large Styrofoam and based on the sketch, I created faint lines on the foam for cutting

With some of the spare left overs, I used it to create simple details like the eyes and mouth. For the parts, I used toothpicks to stick them together.

The final result of my work, the artwork represents Yati's  personality and image. For the top, she had a cooking hat which represents her like in food. The facial areas represents what I see. The camera tells that she likes taking pictures as well as traveling.

Reflection

During the task, I learned the cubism style used by Pablo Picasso. I also learned that cubism styles then to look flat and blending in with the background. Other than that, I learned to communicated with my peers and get to know them a bit more for the semester.

20th cent task 2(DADA)

 This week, we are tasked to go out for 30 minutes to find recyclable materials around the campus. There were a lot of thrown away items at the time. Some, we are not sure if the college still needs the as they seemed perfectly intact. However, we spotted some thrown out wood  and decided to take a few of them.
My items are 2 curved wooden board and 1 broken wood side table

 Recycle wood

After gathering some recycled materials, I took some time figuring what to turn it into. At first, I tried turning it into an item about broken dreams however it looked very much like a chair. Another Idea is to turn it into a skateboard as to how teenages are fond of such sport. So, I went with the skateboard idea.

First off, I take 2 of the similar boards and  asked  a lecturer for assistants in drilling holes the board. After drilling the holes, I used metal wires to merge them together. I dismembered the table legs and used saws to cut off the parts of table leg so that it looks like wheels and  used nails and hammer to nail them together

 Resulting skateboard

Reflection

I learned alot about the art movement Dadaism and how they turn any recyclable items into an unexpected artwork. Just like how I managed to turn random wooden boards and tables into a skateboard

20th cent task 3(Conceptual)

This week, we are tasked to create ideas on the spot with an A2 sized paper. I had a 2 A3 sized paper taped together with a masking tape. During the idea process, I took some time folding and thinking. While folding, I folded out a shape that looks  like a bag. Then, I though what is currently trending. At, first I though about music since it also can be turned into a stage. But then, there was the presidency in the USA about Donald trump. So, I went with that idea and created a business bag and drew Donald Trump on stage inside the bag. I even titled it : The business man that became president.

Business bag

Donald Trump on stage

Reflection

I learned that Conceptualization is all about ideas and creating an idea  never comes easy. It involved a lot of thinking and time especially with a blank slate.

Postmodern Art

What is Postmodernism

Postmodernism is best understood by defining the modernist ethos it replaced - that of the avant-garde who were active from 1860s to the 1950s. The various artists in the modern period were driven by a radical and forward thinking approach, ideas of technological positivity, and grand narratives of Western domination and progress. The arrival of Neo-Dada and Pop art in post-war America marked the beginning of a reaction against this mindset that came to be known as postmodernism. The reaction took on multiple artistic forms for the next four decades, including Conceptual art, Minimalism, Video art, Performance art, and Installation art. These movements are diverse and disparate but connected by certain characteristics: ironical and playful treatment of a fragmented subject, the breakdown of high and low culture hierarchies, undermining of concepts of authenticity and originality, and an emphasis on image and spectacle. Beyond these larger movements, many artists and less pronounced tendencies continue in the postmodern vein to this day.

Postmodernism is distinguished by a questioning of the master narratives that were embraced during the modern period, the most important being the notion that all progress - especially technological - is positive. By rejecting such narratives, postmodernists reject the idea that knowledge or history can be encompassed in totalizing theories, embracing instead the local, the contingent, and the temporary. Other narratives rejected by postmodernists include the idea of artistic development as goal-oriented, the notion that only men are artistic geniuses, and the colonialist assumption that non-white races are inferior. Thus, Feminist art and minority art that challenged canonical ways of thinking are often included under the rubric of postmodernism or seen as representations of it.

Postmodernism overturned the idea that there was one inherent meaning to a work of art or that this meaning was determined by the artist at the time of creation. Instead, the viewer became an important determiner of meaning, even allowed by some artists to participate in the work as in the case of some performance pieces. Other artists went further by creating works that required viewer intervention to create and/or complete the work.

The Dada readymade had a marked influence on postmodernism in its questioning of authenticity and originality. Combined with the notion of appropriation, postmodernism often took the undermining of originality to the point of copyright infringement, even in the use of photographs with little or no alteration to the original.

The idea of breaking down distinctions between high and low art, particularly with the incorporation of elements of popular culture, was also a key element of postmodernism that had its roots in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the work of Edgar Degas, for example, who painted on fans, and later in Cubism where Pablo Picasso often included the lyrics of popular songs on his canvases. This idea that all visual culture is not only equally valid, but that it can also be appreciated and enjoyed without any aesthetic training, undermines notions of value and artistic worth, much like the use of readymades.

History

Beginnings

The first signs of postmodernism were evident in the early twentieth century with Dada artists who ridiculed the art establishment with their anarchic actions and irreverent performances. The term, however, was not used in the contemporary sense until 1979 in the philosopher J.F. Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition. In art, the term is usually applied to movements that emerged beginning in the late 1950s in reaction to the perceived failures and/or excesses of the modernist epoch.

Modernism

From the late nineteenth to the mid twentieth century, art as well as literature, science, and philosophy was defined by a sense of progress and technological advancement, brought about by the industrial revolution and affiliation with the positivity of modern life. Artists such as Paul Cézanne and Piet Mondrian strove to find a universal means of expression through the increasing abstraction of their subject. Other artists who focused on the subjective and the forbidden, such as Salvador Dalí or Marcel Duchamp were seen as outliers in this emphasis on progress and rationality and their work became precursors to postmodernism. By the 1930s in certain artistic circles, the process of painting, once the means to depict a subject through the use of line, color, and form, became the subject itself. This emphasis on formalism was first observed and championed in the U.S. by Clement Greenberg, an art critic and fierce proponent of modernism. His theoretical writings are often seen as the antithesis of postmodernism because of their advocating of artistic purity and for their singular focus on formalism at the expense of subject matter. By the time the Abstract Expressionists were painting in New York lofts in the 1940s, representation had been entirely eliminated in favor of a direct gestural expression that focused on paint application rather than narrative. Fundamental to the modernist avant-garde artist was individuality, autonomy, and the tendency for radical experimentation in search of an ultimate truth or meaning.

Most Important Art

Marilyn Diptych (1962)

Artist: Andy Warhol

Artwork description & Analysis: This series of silkscreen prints of Marilyn Monroe was taken from her image in the film, Niagara and reproduced first in color, and then in black and white. They were made in the months after her death in 1962 by Warhol who was fascinated by both the cult of celebrity and by death; this series fused these interests. The color contrasted against the monochrome that fades out to the right is suggestive of life and death, while the repetition of images echoes her ubiquitous presence in the media. This work can be conceived of as postmodern in many senses: its overt reference to popular culture/low art challenges the purity of the modernist aesthetic, its repetitive element is an homage to mass production, and its ironic play on the concept of authenticity undermines the authority of the artist. The use of a diptych format, which was common in Christian altarpieces in the Renaissance period, draws attention to the American worship of both celebrities and images. All of these translate into an artwork that challenges traditional demarcations between high and low art and makes a statement about the importance of consumerism and spectacle in the 1960s.

Acrylic on Canvas - Tate Modern, London

Floor-Burger (Giant Hamburger) (1962)

Artist: Claes Oldenburg

Artwork description & Analysis: Giant Hamburger was one of Oldenburg's first soft sculptures, where he recreated common objects using cushioned materials that belied their solid structures. His works are monumental but placed directly on the floor, dispensing with the pedestal or plinth normally associated with sculpture in a way that literally places the work of art in the viewer's own space. Giant Hamburger uses the banality reminiscent of Dada's readymades to elevate a piece of everyday life to the status of art. In his re-appropriation of this object with discordant materials he underscores the larger than life quality of popular or low culture - in this case junk food - in everyday life. Oldenburg's essay entitled, 'I Am for an Art,' (1961) succinctly expresses his belief that anything can and should be considered art.

Canvas filled with foam rubber and cardboard boxes, painted with acrylic paint - Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Michael Jackson and Bubbles (1988)

Artist: Jeff Koons

Artwork description & Analysis: In this piece, Michael Jackson and his pet monkey (and closest friend), Bubbles, are shown life-size sitting on a bed of flowers. The work is a good example of the excesses that characterize Koons' art in terms of color, size, and theme. At the time, Jackson was at the height of his popularity, which Koons underscored by painting the figures in gold in order to make Jackson into a "god-like icon." The gold and white coloring is also reminiscent of Byzantine, Baroque, and Rococo art; this hearkening back to past styles and deliberate theatricality is typical of the camp aesthetic that characterizes some postmodern art. The work was done as part of Koons' "Banality" series and serves as a good example of the kitsch aspect of much of Koons' art in that it valorizes the garish and the sentimental. Like most postmodern art, the work seems to be a deliberate challenge to conventional notions of taste and to the modern separation of high art and popular culture.

Porcelain - The Broad Art Foundation

Conceptual art

 What is conceptual art?

Conceptual art is art for which the idea (or concept) behind the work is more important than the finished art object. It emerged as an art movement in the 1960s and the term usually refers to art made from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.

Conceptual art can be – and can look like – almost anything. This is because, unlike a painter or sculptor who will think about how best they can express their idea using paint or sculptural materials and techniques, a conceptual artist uses whatever materials and whatever form is most appropriate to putting their idea across – this could be anything from a performance to a written description. Although there is no one style or form used by conceptual artists, from the late 1960s certain trends emerged. Browse the slideshow below and read the captions to see examples of conceptual art and to find out about some of the main ways conceptual artists explored and expressed their ideas.

When, why and where did conceptual art happen?

The term conceptual art usually refers to an art movement that emerged in the mid 1960s and continued until the mid 1970s. It was an international art movement happening more or less simultaneously across Europe, North America and South America. 

Artists associated with the movement attempted to bypass the increasingly commercialised art world by stressing thought processes and methods of production as the value of the work. The art forms they used were often intentionally those that do not produce a finished object such as a sculpture or painting. This meant that their work couild not be easily bought and sold and did not need to be viewed in a formal gallery situation. 

It was not just the structures of the art world that many conceptual artists questioned, there was often a strong socio-political dimension to much of the work they produced, reflecting wider dissatisfaction with society and government policies.

Key conceptual artists

Some of the main artists associated with the conceptual art movement are: Art & Language, John Baldessari, Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, Victor Burgin, Michael Craig-Martin, Gilbert & George, Mary Kelly, Yves Klein, Joseph Kosuth, John Latham, Richard Long and Piero Manzoni.

Keith Arnatt
Trouser - Word Piece 1972-1989

The development of conceptual art

Although the term ‘concept art’ had been used in the early 1960s. it was not until the late sixties that conceptual art as a definable movement emerged. Joseph Kosuth’s series Titled  1966-7. the proposal for an exhibition Air Show Air/Conditioning 1966-7 by English artists Terry Atkinson and Michael Baldwin . John Baldessari’s word paintings exhibited in LA in 1968; and important group exhibitions such as that organised by art dealer Seth Siegelaub in New York in 1969.

In 1973 a pioneering record of the early years of the movement appeared in the form of a book, Six Years, by the American critic Lucy Lippard. The ‘six years’ were 1966–72. The long subtitle of the book referred to ‘so-called conceptual or information or idea art’.

John Latham
Time Base Roller 1972

Origins and influence

As a definable movement conceptual art is associated with the 1960s and 1970s, but its origins and its influence reach beyond these two decades. Marcel Duchamp is often seen as an important forefather of conceptual art, and his readymade Fountain of 1917 cited as the first conceptual artwork. The influence of conceptual art also stretches way beyond the early 1970s with contemporary artists such as Martin Creed, who is often referred to as a conceptual artist, championing the importance of the idea and process of art making over the art object.

Marcel Duchamp
Fountain 1917, replica 1964

Surreallism

The Surrealist artists sought to channel the unconscious as a means to unlock the power of the imagination. Disdaining rationalism and literary realism, and powerfully influenced by psychoanalysis, the Surrealists believed the rational mind repressed the power of the imagination, weighting it down with taboos. Influenced also by Karl Marx, they hoped that the psyche had the power to reveal the contradictions in the everyday world and spur on revolution. Their emphasis on the power of personal imagination puts them in the tradition ofRomanticism, but unlike their forbears, they believed that revelations could be found on the street and in everyday life. The Surrealist impulse to tap the unconscious mind, and their interests in myth and primitivism, went on to shape many later movements, and the style remains influential to this today.

Key Ideas

André Breton defined Surrealism as "psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express - verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner - the actual functioning of thought." What Breton is proposing is that artists bypass reason and rationality by accessing their unconscious mind. In practice, these techniques became known as automatism or automatic writing, which allowed artists to forgo conscious thought and embrace chance when creating art.

The work of Sigmund Freud was profoundly influential for Surrealists, particularly his book,The Interpretation of Dreams (1899). Freud legitimized the importance of dreams and the unconscious as valid revelations of human emotion and desires; his exposure of the complex and repressed inner worlds of sexuality, desire, and violence provided a theoretical basis for much of Surrealism.

Surrealist imagery is probably the most recognizable element of the movement, yet it is also the most elusive to categorize and define. Each artist relied on their own recurring motifs arisen through their dreams or/and unconscious mind. At its basic, the imagery is outlandish, perplexing, and even uncanny, as it is meant to jolt the viewer out of their comforting assumptions. Nature, however, is the most frequent imagery: Max Ernst was obsessed with birds and had a bird alter ego, Salvador Dalí's works often include ants or eggs, and Joan Miró relied strongly on vague biomorphic imagery.

Beginnings

Surrealism grew out of the Dada movement, which was also in rebellion against middle-class complacency. Artistic influences, however, came from many different sources. The most immediate influence for several of the Surrealists was Giorgio de Chirico, their contemporary who, like them, used bizarre imagery with unsettling juxtapositions. They were also drawn to artists from the recent past who were interested in primitivism, the naive, or fantastical imagery, such as Gustave Moreau, Arnold Bocklin, Odilon Redon, and Henri Rousseau. Even artists from as far back as the Renaissance, such as Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Hieronymous Bosch, provided inspiration in so far as these artists were not overly concerned with aesthetic issues involving line and color, but instead felt compelled to create what Surrealists thought of as the "real."

The Surrealist movement began as a literary group strongly allied to Dada, emerging in the wake of the collapse of Dada in Paris, when André Breton's eagerness to bring purpose to Dada clashed with Tristan Tzara's anti-authoritarianism. Breton, who is occasionally described as the 'Pope' of Surrealism, officially founded the movement in 1924 when he wrote "The Surrealist Manifesto." However, the term "surrealism," was first coined in 1917 by Guillaume Apollinaire when he used it in program notes for the ballet Parade, written by Pablo Picasso, Leonide Massine, Jean Cocteau, and Erik Satie.

Around the same time that Breton published his inaugural manifesto, the group began publishing the journal La Révolution surréaliste, which was largely focused on writing, but also included art reproductions by artists such as de Chirico, Ernst, André Masson, and Man Ray. Publication continued until 1929.

The Bureau for Surrealist Research or Centrale Surréaliste was also established in Paris in 1924. This was a loosely affiliated group of writers and artists who met and conducted interviews to "gather all the information possible related to forms that might express the unconscious activity of the mind." Headed by Breton, the Bureau created a dual archive: one that collected dream imagery and one that collected material related to social life. At least two people manned the office each day - one to greet visitors and the other to write down the observations and comments of the visitors that then became part of the archive. In January of 1925, the Bureau officially published its revolutionary intent that was signed by 27 people, including Breton, Ernst, and Masson.

Concepts and Styles

Surrealism shared much of the anti-rationalism of Dada, the movement out of which it grew. The original Parisian Surrealists used art as a reprieve from violent political situations and to address the unease they felt about the world's uncertainties. By employing fantasy and dream imagery, artists generated creative works in a variety of media that exposed their inner minds in eccentric, symbolic ways, uncovering anxieties and treating them analytically through visual means.

Surrealist Paintings

There were two styles or methods that distinguished Surrealist painting. Artists such as Dalí, Tanguy, and Magritte painted in a hyper-realistic style in which objects were depicted in crisp detail and with the illusion of three-dimensionality, emphasizing their dream-like quality. The color in these works was often either saturated (Dalí) or monochromatic (Tanguy), both choices conveying a dream state.

Several Surrealists also relied heavily on automatism or automatic writing as a way to tap into the unconscious mind. Artists such as Miró and Ernst used various techniques to create unlikely and often outlandish imagery including collage, doodling, frottage, decalcomania, and grattage. Artists such as Arp also created collages as stand-alone works.

Hyperrealism and automatism were not mutually exclusive. Miro, for example, often used both methods in one work. In either case, however the subject matter was arrived at or depicted, it was always bizarre - meant to disturb and baffle.

Surrealist Objects and Sculptures

Breton felt that the object had been in state of crisis since the early nineteenth century and thought this impasse could be overcome if the object in all its strangeness could be seen as if for the first time. The strategy was not to make Surreal objects for the sake of shocking the middle class a la Dada but to make objects "surreal" by what he called dépayesment or estrangement. The goal was the displacement of the object, removing it from its expected context, "defamilarizing" it. Once the object was removed from its normal circumstances, it could be seen without the mask of its cultural context. These incongruous combinations of objects were also thought to reveal the fraught sexual and psychological forces hidden beneath the surface of reality.

A limited number of Surrealists are known for their three-dimensional work. Arp, who began as part of the Dada movement, was known for his biomorphic objects. Oppenheim's pieces were bizarre combinations that removed familiar objects from their everyday context, while Giacometti's were more traditional sculptural forms, many of which were human-insect hybrid figures. Dalí, less known for his 3D work, did produce some interesting installations, particularly, Rainy Taxi (1938), which was an automobile with mannequins and a series of pipes that created "rain" in the car's interior.

Surrealist Photography

Photography, because of the ease with which it allowed artists to produce uncanny imagery, occupied a central role in Surrealism. Artists such as Man Ray and Maurice Tabard used the medium to explore automatic writing, using techniques such as double exposure, combination printing, montage, and solarization, the latter of which eschewed the camera altogether. Other photographers used rotation or distortion to render bizarre images.

The Surrealists also appreciated the prosaic photograph removed from its mundane context and seen through the lens of Surrealist sensibility. Vernacular snapshots, police photographs, movie stills, and documentary photographs all were published in Surrealist journals like La Révolution surréaliste and Minotaure, totally disconnected from their original purposes. The Surrealists, for example, were enthusiastic about Eugene Atget's photographs of Paris. Published in 1926 in La Révolution surréaliste at the prompting of his neighbor, Man Ray, Atget's imagery of a quickly vanishing Paris was understood as impulsive visions. Atget's photographs of empty streets and shop windows recalled the Surrealist's own vision of Paris as a "dream capital."

Surrealist Film

Surrealism was the first artistic movement to experiment with cinema in part because it offered more opportunity than theatre to create the bizarre or the unreal. The first film characterized as Surrealist was the 1924 Entr'acte, a 22-minute, silent film, written by Rene Clair and Francis Picabia, and directed by Clair. But, the most famous Surrealist filmmaker was of course Luis Bunuel. Working with Dalí, Bunuel made the classic films Un Chien Andalou(1929) and L'Age d'Or (1930), both of which were characterized by narrative disjunction and their peculiar, sometimes disturbing imagery. In the 1930s Joseph Cornell produced surrealist films in the United States, such as Rose Hobart (1936). Salvador Dalí designed a dream sequence for Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945).

Rise and Decline of Surrealism

Though Surrealism originated in France, strains of it can be identified in art throughout the world. Particularly in the 1930s and 1940s, many artists were swept into its orbit as increasing political upheaval and a second global war encouraged fears that human civilization was in a state of crisis and collapse. The emigration of many Surrealists to the Americas during WWII spread their ideas further. Following the war, however, the group's ideas were challenged by the rise ofExistentialism, which, while also celebrating individualism, was more rationally based than Surrealism. In the arts, the Abstract Expressionists incorporated Surrealist ideas and usurped their dominance by pioneering new techniques for representing the unconscious. Breton became increasingly interested in revolutionary political activism as the movement's primary goal. The result was the dispersal of the original movement into smaller factions of artists. The Bretonians, such as Roberto Matta, believed that art was inherently political. Others, like Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, and Dorothea Tanning, remained in America to separate from Breton. Salvador Dalí, likewise, retreated to Spain, believing in the centrality of the individual in art.

Later Developments

Abstract Expressionism

In 1936, the Museum of Modern Art in New York staged an exhibition entitled Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, and many American artists were powerfully impressed by it. Some, such asJackson Pollock, began to experiment with automatism, and with imagery that seemed to derive from the unconscious - experiments which would later lead to his "drip" paintings.Robert Motherwell, similarly, is said to have been "stuck between the two worlds" of abstraction and automatism.

Largely because of political upheaval in Europe, New York rather than Paris became the emergent center of a new vanguard, one that favored tapping the unconscious through abstraction as opposed to the "hand-painted dreams" of Salvador Dalí. Peggy Guggenheim's 1942 exhibition of Surrealist-influenced artists (Rothko, Gottlieb, Motherwell, Baziotes, Hoffman, Still, and Pollock) alongside European artists Miró, Klee, and Masson, underscores the speed with which Surrealist concepts spread through the New York art community.

Feminism and Women Surrealists

The Surrealists have often been depicted as a tightly knit group of men, and their art often envisioned women as wild "others" to the cultured, rational world. Work by feminist art historians has since corrected this impression, not only highlighting the number of women Surrealists who were active in the group, particularly in the 1930s, but also analyzing the gender stereotypes at work in much Surrealist art. Feminist art critics, such as Dawn Ades, Mary Ann Caws, and Whitney Chadwick, have devoted several books and exhibitions to this subject.

While most of the male Surrealists, especially Man Ray, Magritte, and Dalí, repeatedly focused on and/or distorted the female form and depicted women as muses, much in the way that male artists had for centuries, female Surrealists such as Claude Cahun, UnicaZurn, Lee Miller, Leonora Carrington, and Dorothea Tanning, sought to address the problematic adoption of Freudian psychoanalysis that often cast women as monstrous and lesser. Thus, many female Surrealists experimented with cross-dressing and depicted themselves as animals or mythic creatures.

Important Art and Artists of Surrealism

The below artworks are the most important in Surrealism - that both overview the major ideas of the movement, and highlight the greatest achievements by each artist in Surrealism. Don't forget to visit the artist overview pages of the artists that interest you.

Harlequin's Carnival (1924)

Artist: Joan Miró

Artwork description & Analysis: Miró created elaborate, fantastical spaces in his paintings that are an excellent example of Surrealism in their reliance on dream-like imagery and their use of biomorphism. Biomorphic shapes are those that resemble organic beings but that are hard to identify as any specific thing; the shapes seem to self-generate, morph, and dance on the canvas. While there is the suggestion of a believable three-dimensional space inHarlequin's Carnival, the playful shapes are arranged with an all-over quality that is common to many of Miró's works during his Surrealist period, and that would eventually lead him to further abstraction. Miró was especially known for his use of automatic writing techniques in the creation of his works, particularly doodling or automatic drawing, which is how he began many of his canvases. He is best known for his works such as this that depict chaotic yet lighthearted interior scenes, taking his influence from Dutch seventeenth-century interiors such as those by Jan Steen.

Oil on canvas - Albright-Knox Art Gallery

Battle of Fishes (1926)

Artist: André Masson

Artwork description & Analysis: Masson was one of the most enthusiastic followers of Breton's automatic writing, having begun his own independent experiments in the early 1920s. He would often produce art under exacting conditions, using drugs, going without sleep, or sustenance in order to relax conscious control of his art making so that he could access his unconscious. Masson, along with his neighbors Joan Miró, Antonin Artuad, and others would sometimes experiment together. He is best known for his use of sand. In an effort to introduce chance into his works, he would throw glue or gesso onto a canvas and then sand. His oil paintings were made based on the resulting shapes.

Battle of the Fishes perhaps references his experiences in WWI. He signed up to fight and after three years, was seriously injured, taking months to recover in an army hospital and spending time in a psychiatric facility. He was unable for many years to speak of the things he witnessed as a soldier, but his art consistently depicts massacres, bizarre confrontations, rape, and dismemberment. Masson himself observed that male figures in his art rarely escape unharmed. Battle of Fishes has subdued color, but the fish seem involved in a vicious battle to the death with their razor-like teeth and spilled blood. Masson believed that the use of chance in art would reveal the sadism of all creatures - an idea that he could only reveal in his art.

Oil on canvas - Museum of Modern Art, New York

Mama, Papa is Wounded! (1927)

Artist: Yves Tanguy

Artwork description & Analysis: The most pivotal moment for Tanguy in his decision to become a painter was his sighting of a canvas by Giorgio de Chirico in a shop window in 1923. The next year, Tanguy, the poet Jacques Prévert, and the actor and screenwriter Marcel Duhamel moved into a house that was to become a gathering place for the Surrealists, a movement he became interested in after reading the periodical La Révolution surréaliste. André Breton welcomed him into the group in 1925. Tanguy was inspired by the biomorphic forms of Jean Arp, Ernst, and Miró, quickly developing his own vocabulary of amoeba-like shapes that populate arid, mysterious settings, no doubt influenced by his youthful travels to Argentina, Brazil, and Tunisia. Despite his lack of formal training, Tanguy's mature style emerged by 1927, characterized by deserted landscapes littered with fantastical rocklike objects painted with a precise illusionism. The works usually have an overcast sky with a view thatseems to stretch endlessly.

Mama, Papa is Woundedshows Tanguy's most common subject matter of war. The work is painted in a hyperrealist style with his distinctive limited color palette, both of which create a sense of dream-like reality. Tanguy often found the titles of works while looking through psychiatric case histories for compelling statements by patients. Given that, it is difficult to know if this work is relevant to his own family history as he claimed to have imagined the painting in its entirety before he began it. His brother was killed in World War I and the bleakness of the landscape may refer generally to losses suffered in the war by thousands of French families. De Chirico's influence on Tanguy's work is obvious here in his use of falling shadows and a classical torso in the landscape.

Oil on Canvas - Museum of Modern Art, New York

The Accommodations of Desire (1929)

Artist: Salvador Dalí

Artwork description & Analysis: Painted in the summer of 1929 just after Dalí went to Paris for his first Surrealist exhibition, The Accommodations of Desire is a prime example of Dalí's ability to render his vivid and bizarre dreams with seemingly journalistic accuracy. He developed the paranoid-critical method, which involved systematic irrational thought and self-induced paranoia as a way to access his unconscious. He referred to the resulting works as "hand-painted dream photographs" because of their realism coupled with their eerie dream quality. The narrative of this work stems from Dalí's anxieties over his affair with Gala Eluard, wife of artist Paul Eluard. The lumpish white "pebbles" depict his insecurities about his future with Gala, circling around the concepts of terror and decay. While The Accommodations of Desire is an exposé of Dalí's deepest fears, it combines his typical hyper-realistic painting style with more experimental collage techniques. The lion heads are glued onto the canvas, and are believed to have been cut from a children's book.

Oil and cut-and-pasted printed paper on canvas - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Palace at 4 a.m. (1932)

Artist: Alberto Giacometti

Artwork description & Analysis: Giacometti was one of the few Surrealists who focused on sculpture. The Palace at 4 a.m. is a delicate construction that was inspired by his obsession with a lover named Denise the previous year. Of the affair he said, "a period of six months passed in the presence of a woman who, concentrating all life in herself, transported my every moment into a state of enchantment. We constructed a fantastical palace in the night - a very fragile palace of matches. At the least false movement a whole section would collapse. We always began it again." In 1933, he told Breton that he was incapable of making anything that did not have something to do with her.

The work includes representations or symbols of his love interest as well as perhaps of his mother. Other imagery, such as the bird, is less easy to interpret. Thus, the work is characterized by its bizarre juxtaposition of objects and a title that is seemingly unrelated to the constructed scene, giving the piece an undercurrent of mystery and tension as if something frightening is about to occur. The work, in its child-like simplicity, captures the fragility of memory and desire. Giacometti's postwar interest in Existentialism is already evident here in how he represents the isolation of the various figures.

Wood, glass, wire, and string - Museum of Modern Art, New York

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/surr/hd_surr.htm
http://www.theartstory.org/movement-surrealism.htm