Exploring the Random - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Exploring the Random

Diving Into Surrealism:

An Art 10 Mixed Media ProjectSlide2

Max Ernst,

Surrealism

Two Children Are Threatened

by a Nightingale

, 1924

The Horde

, 1927Slide3

SURREALISM

:

Beginning

as a literary movement in 1924 by poet Andre Breton, Surrealism was

a direct descendent of Dada, absorbing many of its artists and its improvisational techniques.

Influenced by Freud's techniques of free-association and dream analysis, surrealist artists attempted to tap into unconscious imagery.The

results, often

bizarre and illogical

,

revealed

truths inaccessible to the rational mind.

There were

two

veins of surrealism

:

• in

one, artists

exercised

as little conscious control as possible

, practicing

improvised

art.

Key figures: Max Ernst, Joan Miro, Paul Klee

• in

the other, artists

created

works that

were

based on extraordinary realism to produce hallucinatory effects

defying experience and common sense.

Key figures: Salvador Dali, Rene MagritteSlide4

Ernst,

The Robing of the Bride

, 1940

Max Ernst

: (1891 - 1976)

A German who had been a Dadaist after fighting in the German army during WWI. He experienced hallucinations during childhood fevers, and often created self-induced hallucinations by staring fixedly into space and letting his mind wander.

He

used

weird, ambiguous titles to get the attention of his viewers

(

The Preparation of Glue from Bones

;

The Little Tear Gland that Says Tic

Tac

)

He

invented

frottage

--putting paper over a rough surface and rubbing it with a pencil, as well as

decalcomania

--pressing oil paint onto a canvas from some other surface and pulling away the other

surface

and

grattage

– scraping layers of paint onto a textured surface – both created

unplanned patterns which he would then elaborate into strange, unsettling images.Slide5

Ernst,

Europe After the Rain

, 1940-42Slide6

Joan Miro: (1893 - 1983)

A

Spanish

painter

who used cut-out fragments from a machinery catalogue, dropped them on a canvas, and used their shapes where they lay to create black silhouettes or hollow forms, which he then altered, resulting in

forms which bore just the slightest resemblance to things in the visible world. "Brilliantly colored and whimsical, they seem like cartoons from another planet." (Stokstad)

Joan

Miró

,

Surrealism

Painting

(Composition

),

1933

Shooting Star

, 1938

Miro,

Shooting Star

, 1938Slide7

Miro,

Composition

,

1933Slide8

Miro, The Harlequin's Carnival, 1924-5Slide9

Miro,

Head of a Woman,

1938

After

the outbreak

of the Spanish Civil War, his mood darkens and his images become more sinister. Images like this "gave savage expression to the sense of the

impending horror widely felt in Europe at that time." Slide10

Twittering Machine

,

1922

Paul

Klee

Hammamet with Its

Mosque

, 1914

SurrealismSlide11

Paul Klee: (1879 - 1940) A

Swiss

member of Der

Blaue Reiter with Kandinsky before WWI

, his later work showed his

continuing delight with the expressive qualities of color. His paintings were intentionally simple and childlike. "Klee consciously imitated the dreamlike magic of children's art by reducing his forms to direct shapes full of ambiguity....The respect for inner vision made Klee study archaic signs

such as hex symbols, hieroglyphics, and cave markings, which

he felt held some primitive power to evoke nonverbal meanings

." (

Stokstad

)

Many of his paintings contain similar kinds of symbols.

Klee did not trust rationality, believing it could get in the way of real vision and insight.

Klee,

Blue Night

, 1923Slide12

Klee,

Ad

Parnassum

, 1932Slide13

Magritte,

The Betrayal of Images

,

1929

SurrealismSlide14

Rene Magritte

:

(1898 - 1967)

A Belgian painter whose

mastery of realism enabled him to create "disturbing, illogical images with startling clarity....[using] juxtapositions of familiar sights in unnatural contexts." (Stokstad) The first impression in looking at a Magritte is that we know what we are looking at because the objects are so familiar and are so photographically rendered,

that

when we realize what we really see, the effect is even more dramatic

.

Bowler hats, apples,

and eyes

are common images.Slide15

Magritte,

Son of Man,

1964

Remember this from somewhere??Slide16

Magritte,

Time Transfixed

, 1938Slide17

Magritte,

Les Promenades

d'Euclid

, 1935Slide18

Magritte,

The Fall

, 1953Slide19

The Persistence of Memory

, 1931

Salvador Dali,

Surrealism

The Birth of Liquid Desires

, 1931-32Slide20

Salvador Dali: (1904 - 1989)

An arrogant

, shameless self-promoter who would do anything for public attention,

Dali delivered a lecture at the Sorbonne with his foot in a bucket of milk

and gave a press conference wearing a boiled lobster on his head. Dali once said, "

The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad." He had a very obsessive personality, and he was terrified of insects, boats, planes, trains, and buying shoes because he would have to expose his feet in public. Dali would

put a canvas and paints next to his bed, stare at it before he went to sleep, then paint what he called "hand-painted dream photographs" when he woke up

. (

Stokstad

) His skilled draftsmanship was

so precise it reminds us of Northern Renaissance

miniaturism

, and

created

what has come to define for most of us the "surreal."

Dali frequently used images of mutilated/disfigured/misshapen female nudes, and there is a loud undercurrent of sexual perversity through much of his work. Slide21

Dali,

Soft Construction w Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War)

, 1936Slide22

Dali,

Metamorphosis of Narcissus

, 1937Slide23

Dali,

Apparition of a Face and a Fruit Dish on a Beach

, 1948Slide24

Painted during a painful separation from Rivera in the year before they divorced and remarried. One represents the

Frida

Diego she

used to love; the other the

Frida Diego

that she no

longer loves. One represents the traditional, submissive Hispanic bride; the other, the independent modern woman

.

Another interpretation is that it represents two versions of Mexican culture – the “old Mexico” with native influences (ex. the heart is very symbolic for the Aztec culture), and the other

Frida

with European influences (dressed in white lace). “Thus,

The Two

Fridas

represents both Kahlo’s personal struggles and the struggles of her homeland.” (Gardner)

Kahlo,

The Two

Fridas

, 1939Slide25

Frida Kahlo: (1907 - 1954)

Even though she was identified

as a Surrealist by Andre

Breton (the

founder and theorist of the movement) she was fiercely independent and never called herself a member of the group

. She created intensely personal self-portraits which often imitated the style of Roman Catholic devotional images of the Virgin. She "used the details of her own life as powerful symbols for the psychological pain of human existence." (

Gardner) Kahlo

suffered

physical pain most of her life

: had polio as a child, so one leg was shorter than the other, and at age 18, was in a horrible bus accident in which a handrail pierced her body. She had 32 operations in the 26 years that followed, including

the amputation

of one of her feet. (She proudly bought a fancy Spanish leather boot ringed with bells to wear on the wooden replacement foot.) In addition to experiencing constant physical pain, she

was also involved in a stormy, tempestuous marriage to

Diego Rivera

, who is said to have battered her in fits of

rage. She once said, "I suffered two grave accidents in my life. One involved a bus...the other accident is Diego

.” He was 42 and on

his 3rd marriage when they were wed; she was 22 and on her 1st. He was over 6' tall and 300 pounds; she was 5'3" and 98 pounds. He was already famous as a muralist; she was just beginning to teach herself how to paint. When her paintings did become well-known, she had ardent admirers: her Diego and I was the first work by a Latin American painter to sell for more than $1 million. Madonna owns Self-portrait with Monkey

and several other of Kahlo’s works.

Kahlo,

Self-Portrait

with

Monkey and Serpent Necklace

, 1938Slide26

Kahlo,

Self-

Portrait with Diego

on My Mind

, 1943Slide27

Kahlo,

Frida

and Diego

, 1931Slide28

 Mission:For this project, you will begin by choosing a random assortment of PROMPTS – a 2 part phrase, a pictorial image/design and an element or principle of art, an image design strategy/artistic media. ALL of these MUST somehow be incorporated into the mixed media work

.

You will also

collect random images and other “flattish” items to work with in this collaged, mixed media piece. You will be given a piece of Mi Tentes board on which to start this work. This is meant to be a loose work where you are to ALLOW YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS to take over and not over-think your choices. The main aim is to basically EXPLORE the SPACE of the surface in conjunction with the parameters of the PROMPTS as well.

There will be a lesson on how to use transfers in mixed media too    

“RANDOM SURREALIST SPACES MIXED MEDIA PROJECT”Slide29

OTHER CRITERIA… You must include a drawing with pencil. This can be drawn directly onto the surface of the board OR on another surface that will then be attached to the board.

You must include a

TRANSFER TECHNIQUE

(to be demonstrated in class). At least one is to be added BUT you can definitely do more than one! They include Acrylic Medium Transfer, Packing Tape Transfer and/or Oil of Wintergreen Transfer.You will create a PATTERN design of some kind using a Sharpie marker or other black ink like India Ink. Again, this can be drawn directly on the surface of the board or on another surface and then attached.Apply random dripping of inks, paint, tea, or coffee. These can be moved around with a straw, paint brush, toothpick, etc.

You need to overlap solid shapes/images into or on top of other solid shapes or images. (See the example posted in the classroom.)Collaged paper! This can be paper with text on it (articles from newspaper/magazines), pictures, or coloured papers like tissue, construction paper, etc.  Slide30

HAVE FUN AND EXPERIMENT!! Remember that the Surrealists allowed room for the subconscious mind to take over

