Exploring Surrealism

• The Surrealists sought to channel the unconscious as a means to unlock the power of the imagination. 
• The Surrealists believed the rational mind repressed the power of the imagination, weighing it down with taboos.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.”

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I feel looking at surrealism is a good start when exploring avenues within characterization. I love the bizarre element to surrealism, Within a figure I could see by taking this art movement in mind would open me to wide range of ways I could manipulate the form. Salvador Dali quotes:
“The fact that I myself, at the moment of painting, do not understand my own pictures, does not mean that these pictures have no meaning; on the contrary, their meaning is so profound, complex, coherent, and involuntary that it escapes the most simple analysis of logical intuition.”

With that in mind, I can take visually engaging imagery and portray it on the ceramic figures whilst keeping in mind a consistent theme – or just body shape so that they do work collectively together but each have there own unique weirdness to them. I’m interested currently at the play with memories and feel Surrealism could take some aspects of each person and there own individual memories and express it onto the form. Each person experiences different things and feels eternally different things, with that in mind taking visuals such as loved possessions, quotes, favorite animal and so on… I like the idea of playing with these memories and using just a human/hybrid form and putting the elements onto the clay – whether that be through engraving or the form holding a particular possession, perhaps the form could be the loved teddy bear but with other elements like quotes etc engraved on to it.

Andre Breton

• Breton was a major member of the Dada group and the founder of Surrealism. He was dedicated to avant-garde art-making and was known for his ability to unite disparate artists through printed matter and curatorial pursuits.
• Breton drafted the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, declaring Surrealism as “pure psychic automatism,” deeply affecting the methodology and origins of future movements, such as Abstract Expressionism.
• One of Breton’s fundamental beliefs was in art as an anti-war protest, which he postulated during the First World War. This notion re-gained potency during and after World War II, when the early Abstract Expressionist artists were creating works to demonstrate their outrage at the atrocities happening in Europe.

Salvador Dalí

Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Filmmaker, Printmaker, and Performance Artist

• Salvador Dalí is among the most versatile and prolific artists of the 20^th century and the most famous Surrealist.
• Freudian theory underpins Dalí’s attempts at forging a visual language capable of rendering his dreams and hallucinations. These account for some of the iconic and now ubiquitous images through which Dalí achieved tremendous fame during his lifetime and beyond.
• Obsessive themes of eroticism, death, and decay permeate Dalí’s work, reflecting his familiarity with and synthesis of the psychoanalytical theories of his time. Drawing on blatantly autobiographical material and childhood memories, Dalí’s work is rife with often ready-interpreted symbolism, ranging from fetishes and animal imagery to religious symbols.
• Dalí subscribed to Surrealist André Breton’s theory of automatism, but ultimately opted for his own self-created system of tapping the unconscious termed “paranoiac critical,” a state in which one could simulate delusion while maintaining one’s sanity.

I very much like the artist Salvador Dali, his work really inspires me and I just love the wackiness to it. I especially love his quote above ^ as it speaks out to me, sometimes you just don’t need a reason to be creative and perhaps now it doesn’t currently mean or interpret something but I think that’s the amazing thing about it. It’s an act of story telling really, digging deep within your mind to unleash the imaginative. I was playing on the idea of memories but reading key points for Dali’s reasoning inspires me also for the idea of dreams. Could memories and dreams not go into one another? I feel both still express inner self and with the fantasy like element of dreams, I could just see it opening up so many possibilities. What are are goals? ambitions? What keeps us going everyday? Do you wish you had powers? Do you wish you could fly? the list goes on… the idea in which I could use the form and add these elements on for instance could the form that’s portraying the figure have wings to express the dream-like world of an individual that dreams they could fly? The means of making it more surreal and symbolic but whilst also have the the elements of the reality of the life they’re living such as tattoo’s etc. Could use body language to express the feeling of euphoria or sadness as with dreams there also comes nightmares – there is many possibilities and each will be unique due to the nature nature of us as humans.

THE BURNING GIRAFFE

This artwork really speaks to me, it really gives me a sense of horror. the figure in blue which expresses the emotion of sadness despite no facial expression on the figures face, the body language speaks for itself. The figure seems unbalanced with arms out in attempt to keep standing, the drawers give this sense of unbalance as well as the feeling of chaos. With only a wooden stand to keep the body in place, the painting withholds a hierarchy going from the central figure, then the figure on the right to then the burning giraffe. I feel once you get to the burning giraffe that’s when it hits hard the reality of the chaos. It’s very symbolic and and despite it not all perfectly making sense, you can still see within the visuals the personal struggle Dali was feeling.

http://umich.edu/~umfandsf/symbolismproject/symbolism.html/F/fire.html

Fire can represent the emotions of pain and death but that’s dependent on the content in which it appears.
Fire is viewed by Christians, the Chinese, and the Hebrews as being a symbol of divinity (Cooper, 1978).  In Christianity, fire can also be symbolic of religious zeal and martyrdom. In Egypt it represents a sense of superiority and control. Many cultures view fire as a symbol of wisdom and knowledge.

Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man, 1943 by Dali

Within this image before taking context into reasoning, I feel this act of anxiety. The feeling of being compressed into a spot unable to break free, it shows this to me with the man in the egg gripping with one arm the outside with imprints of his head and foot stretching out this egg – something that is often seen as fragile. I feel that gives the horror to it more, especially with the draped like material above the egg almost like a stormy cloud above it. Noticing now that there’s some type of material on the egg which makes it look like earth, perhaps this is saying something about himself trying to free himself of the damage within the world but can’t break free. The background being rather empty and ominous, almost looks deserted. With a figure in the right corner pointing at the central figure, maybe he is directing us the viewer of the reality of some sort of disaster.

I really love the symbolism Dali uses within his works, without context it’s still engaging visually and emotionally, I really love the idea of looking further into symbolism to represent inner self – imagery can speak a thousand words.