Art History - Surrealism

 Max Ernst

Salvador Dali

Surrealism was a 20th century 'avant-garde' art movement. Its aim was to create work from there own dreams and thoughts of the unconscious mind.Two well known surrealist artist i want to look at in this report are Salvador Dali And Max Ernst.

Both men were inspired by Sigmund Freud's dream theory, Freudian theory. Freud used the analogy of an iceberg to describe the three levels of the mind.

On the surface is consciousness, which consists of thoughts and actions focused on now (this is seen as the tip of the iceberg)

The preconscious consists of all which can be retrieved from memory.

The third is the unconscious. He believed this part of the mind was responsible for most of our behavior (Like an iceberg, the most important part of the mind is the part you cannot see).

He thought this part of the mind acted like a ‘cauldron’ of primitive wishes and impulses kept at bay or where we repressed thoughts, memories or information to painful or frightening for us to know.

Sigmund Freud thought the unconscious mind was of great importance, basically, Freudian theory is idea that the unconscious mind is responsible for certain behavior's we expressed to a greater degree than people suspect, and how these express themselves in our dreams, which are our unconscious thoughts.

When i thought about this i realized that artists have used dreams, visions and there inner thought as a source for creating their work long before surrealism, so what makes it different ?  The use of the minds psychology as an artistic inspiration?

Salvador Dali, ”Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening” (1944),

The painting above, depicts a woman (Dalí's wife, Gala) sleeping on rocks floating over the sea, An elephant with long, thin legs carrying an stone pillar. Near the woman there is a small pomegranate. To the left there is a larger pomegranate and a fish coming out of that, and a tiger coming from the fish and another tiger coming from that. It is total madness but also i think very beautiful. I really like this paintings i think it is a good representation of how the subconscious mind can create work. 

Another element of how Sigmund Freud's theory inspired surrealism is the concept of automatic mark making. The idea of doodling or scribbling... the loosening of control of conscious thought and letting the unconscious mind create. Despite giving free rein to the unconscious mind, the artists who “practiced” automatic painting were actually quite careful and selective in the use of shapes and the object. I was lucky enough to see some of Dali and max Ernst's work in the Peggy Guggenheim in Venice and the detail was unbelievable. 

Ernst attempted to freely paint from his inner psyche. Doing so unleashed his primal emotions and revealed his personal traumas, which then became the subject of his collages and paintings. This desire to paint from the sub-conscious, and automatic painting was central to his Surrealist work.

 Max Ernst, Celebes, 1921, Oil paint on canvas.

The titles comes from a German rhyme ‘The elephant from Celebes has sticky, yellow bottom grease’. In this painting i see a sinister metal monster, that looks like the elephant, and a headless female figure. It also reminds me of work i have seen in Dada artists. Most of the sky is empty, apart from two fish 'flying', is this under water? 

 

 I found a connection with his collage work and tried out out in my sketch book. I really love his collages.

 What i love about collages made from photography is they are real images, spliced together to make something completely different than reality. I am going to focus on collage for my final work, but i will also look at Dada.