1. The Art of Dreams and the Sunconscious Mrs. DiGiacomo
SURREALISM
The Art of Dreams
and the Sunconscious
Mrs. DiGiacomo

3. The Metamorphasis of Narcissus, Salvador Dali

4. https://youtu.be/_ST52WsmUIM
What is Surrealism?
Surrealism was an early 20th century art movement (or a style of art and literature) that emphasized:
dream-like subject matter
Reflects subconscious human thought
Juxtaposition, dislocation, transformation and metamorphisis
Realistic settings with unusual objects and/or twists.

5. When was the Surrealist Movement?
1920’s, post WW1
Founded in 1924 by French poet and writer André Breton, rooted in the nihilistic, anti-art ideas of post WWI Dadaism,
Coincided with the theories of Sigmund Freud.

6. Who were the Surrealists?
Artists included:
Pre Surrealists
Marc Chagall
Giorgio de Chirico
Marcel DuChamp
Surrealists:
Joan Miro
Paul Klee
Salvador Dali
Rene Magritte

7. Where did this take place?
The movement was begun primarily in Europe, centered in Paris,
Surrealism grew out of the earlier Dada movement, which before World War I produced works of anti-art that deliberately defied reason.
Marcel Duchamp’s, Fountain

8. Why did Surrealism begin?
Surrealism was a reaction against the destruction wrought by the "rationalism" that had guided European culture and politics in the past and had culminated in the horrors of World War I.
Response to Sigmund Freud’s developing philosophies on psychology.

9. Why is Surrealism Important?
Pre-cursor to conceptual art (art in which idea takes precedence over materials, craftsmanship, etc).
Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs (1965

10. EARLY SURREALISTS Marc Chagall – 1887 - 1985
The Russian painter Marc Chagall was an early inspiration for the Surrealist movement. While he always kept one foot planted in the real Russian soil that produced him, he was one of the first to free his visual imagination “from the bonds of reason and convention,” and his work served as inspiration for the Surrealists.
Chagall, I and the Village

11. Giorgio de Chirico –
De Chirico was an Italian painter whose works from the period 1909 to 1919, were to have an influence on the Surrealist movement that would form a few years later.
Created several disquieting paintings of desolate urban landscapes.

12. SURREALISTSSalvador Dali
Salvador Dali is often the first name we associate with Surrealism, but he did not join the movement until 1929, five years after its founding, and he was kicked out of the movement in 1939, because of his fascist leanings.
The Hallucinogenic Toreador

13. The Persistence of Memory
The distortion of the clocks suggests the way that time is distorted by the subconsciou s. In dreams, time often seems fluid; events do not follow in a linear or chronologic al sequence.

15. Geopolitical Child
A new world power “hatches” from the egg shaped globe, emerging from the United States.

17. Salvador Dali
The Burning Giraffe
Here we see one of Dali’s motifs, the drawers that suggest the hidden contents of the human subconscious

18. Salvador Dali Space Elephant Dali returned to this spindly legged elephant motif over and over again. The fragile legs seem incapable of supporting the weight of the animal.

19. Rene Magritte – 1967
Magritte's work frequently displays a juxtaposition of ordinary objects in an unusual context, giving new meanings to familiar things.
"The mind loves the unknown," he avowed, "it loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.”
The Son of Man

20. Magritte – The Treachery of Images – 1928/29

21. Magritte – Golconde 1953

22. Time Transfixed, 1939

23. Magritte – The False Mirror

24. Les Amants (The Lovers)
1912, Magritte’s mother committed suicide by drowning herself in the River Sambre. According to a legend, 13-year- old Magritte was present when her body was retrieved from the water. Supposedly, her dress was covering her face, an image that has been suggested as the source of several paintings of people with cloth obscuring their faces, including Les Amants.

25. Joan Miro

26. Meret Oppenheim

27. Surrealist Architecture Antoni Gaudi

28. Contemporary Surrealists
Surrealist style and influence are present in many contemporary artist’s works like:
Sandy Skoglund
Bev Doolittle
M.C. Escher

29. Sandy Skoglund

31. De Chirico – Italian Piazza

32. Bev Doolittle The Forest Has Eyes

33. The Exquisite Corpse
Surrealist poets experimented with Automatism, a form of writing that had poets trying to record their thoughts, without conscious control and without any conscious regard for aesthetic or moral considerations. The Exquisite Corpse was a “game” that came out of this idea.

34. How to play
Release your inhibitions of shared drawing and do what first comes to mind (automation).
No judgment of other people’s work, no right/wrong responses!
Have fun and a sense of humor
BE SCHOOL APPROPRIATE IN IMAGERY
Leave marks where you’ve have left off for the next artist
Use color if desired!
Be creative and surreal. Use unusual objects, shapes, line variety. It doesn’t have to “make sense”.
You will have apprx. 4 minutes before passing (12 min. total per artwork).
(7:10)