20th Century Expressions VII:Surrealism 2.

Leonora Carrington (UK 1917-2011), Portrait of the late Mrs Partridge, 1947, details unknown.

Leonora Carrington ( UK, 1917-2011) was one of the women Surrealists.Her art, like other Surrealists, was mysterious and she sought to access the unconscious. She was interested in Nature, magic, alchemy, and the Goddess. Her work contains many symbols that the average viewer would never understand. How could we go about describing this work in the structural frame?

Like other Surrealist images we have seen, this image of Carrington’s is full of symbols. Note the use of space again. This is a recurring aspect of Surrealist practise. What is this use of space telling us, as audience? Surrealist work lends itself to the Structural Frame, because of the symbolic nature of the imagery.

Self portrait 1937-8, oil on canvas,65 x 81cm

Women in Surrealist practice. The ideas behind Surrealism involved liberty and a doing away with middle-class values, restraints and rationalism. Also, Surrealists generally celebrated sexuality (mostly hetero though.) This would theoretically mean that women were accepted fully, rather than as marginalised people. However they were of a time and place where women’s roles were only recently being questioned and challenged. We saw in Dada that Hannah Hoch established herself as an artist, but not without difficulty. Women were more often seen as muses; or supports or inspirations to the main game – that is, male artistic production.

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997), Sans Titre, (untitled),

1934,Photograph.

<<Picasso, Portrait of Dora Maar

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Meret Oppenheim (Swiss, 1913-1985)

Object,(Lunch in fur), 1936, teacup, saucer and spoon covered with gazelle hide.

Audio clip from MoMa: http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/3/59

Women artists were in fact more a part of the Surrealist movement than in any other Modernist movement (Leslie, 1980, p. 85) and their presence and work eventually had an impact. They were not simply the lovers, partners or companions of the men. However, women were only allowed to show in Surrealist exhibitions from 1933 onwards, with Oppenheim and Valentine Hugo. This image is another example of the Surrealist Object. A ‘readymade’ object – the cup and saucer - is transformed into something symbolising the Wild; Nature; and the erotic. What might a cup and saucer normally symbolise for us?

In a way different to Magritte or Dali, here Oppenheim is representing the human form in a distorted, partially abstract kind of way. These forms are referred to as biomorphic. This type of distortion would go on to influence other artists.

Oppenheim, Red head, blue body, oil on canvas, 1936, 80 x 80cm

Note that the actual figure, thoughdistorted and puzzling, is illusionistic….what about the ground though? How are we toread this image?

Salvador Dali (Spanish, 1904-1989)

Dali, The accommodation of desire, oil and collage on cardboard, 22 x 34cm, 1929

The Surrealists as a group were interested in accessing an inner reality. They werealso politically motivated as a group. They regarded themselves as revolutionaries…they didn’t want to fight with weapons of war, but they did want to overthrow the current waysociety was running…a way that was supposedly rational and proper. They were interested in liberty of all kinds, including sexual liberty. Salvador Dali became notorious as a semi-madman; semi-genius. Many of his images are well known to us. Part of the reason for that is that he was a great self-promoter and a truly eccentric character, which the media (growing in influence all the time during this period) loved.

Dali was very interested in Freud’s ideas and used symbols mentioned in Freud’s writings. (To Freud, symbols of various kinds often – usually- end up symbolising the phallus, or envy of the phallus, or fear of castration, or sexual desire of some kind.) Dali played with images which read ambiguously or morphed. He was known to have many obsessions and hallucinations, which he cultivated. He devised and named the ‘paranoic-critical’ method to arrive at images. This means staring at something fixedly…and eventually allowing yourself to see something else in it. It is another way of connecting to the unconscious.

Dali, Soft self-portrait with bacon, 1941, oil on canvas, 61 x 51cm

Salvador Dali, Lobster telephone, painted plaster and working telephone, 1936

This is a famous example of the Surrealist Object, mentioned last session. It was a new form of artmaking. It comprises two ready-made (already existing in themselves), totally unrelated objects…or perhaps, if we reflect, we could see some relation? Or…not? Why do you think the Surrealists may have been attracted to this art technique?

Dali became known to the Surrealists first because of his film, The Andalusian Dog. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm2E5rTJCtA&list=PL2D885F5ED630353D&index=21&feature=plpp_video

He collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock onThe design for a dream sequence in theFilm Spellbound in 1945.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzxlbgPkxHE&list=PL2D885F5ED630353D&index=23&feature=plpp_video

Rene Magritte (Belgian, 1898-1967)

Promenades of Euclid, oil on canvas, 1955, 162 x 129cm

Magritte , like Dali, used a very illusionistic style in his work. He differed from Dali though, in that he didn’t populate his work with morphed creatures. Rather, he cultivated a sense of weirdness and dislocation by using normalthings in everyday life.

What was the possible intention of this super-realistic style? What effect does this have on us as audience?

Euclid was an ancient Greek mathematicianWho wrote about geometry andperspective.

Clip on Magritte and Reality: http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artwork/27665

Personal Values, 1952,oil on canvas, 80 x 100cm

What are we to make of theobjects in this image? Howcould these be read assymbols?

Magritte often played withThe confusion of interior and Exterior.

The treachery of images, oil on canvas, 1928-9, 58 x 78cm.

In a way this image is the opposite of some Surrealist Imagery, in that it doesn’t seem at all incongruous or odd. The effect could be said to be the same though – that is, to ‘shock’ or shake us into some connection with an inner, liberating reality. Magritte’s use of text within the image is informing us. It’s like a kind of signpost, which is in fact what all writing is. It’s pointing out what is real. Possibly.

Examining the exam

After our ‘Wolf-table’ Surreal Object of last session, check out this fascinating website on NZ artist Lisa Black (thanks Graham): http://www.dyscario.com/design/steampunk-taxidermy-by-lisa-black.html

Q: The Blackstone Tjanpi Weavers are a group of Aboriginal women from 28indigenous communities in Western Australia. Identify the main characteristics of their artmaking practice as represented in the images below.

Plate 1: Blackstone Tjanpi Weavers, Australia. Tjanpi Grass Toyota, 2005. Grass, raffia and a discarded car frame.

Plate 2: Kantjupayi Benson, Basket, 2005. Grass and raffia, 30 cm in diameter. Kantjupayi Benson is a leading member of the group. She specialises in coiled basketry technique.

Q: Explain how Jeffrey Smart and Glenn Murcutt have responded to the worldaround them in these artworks.

Smart painted this picture from a photograph he took of a railway station whiletravelling in country Victoria. A siding is a section of track off the main railwayline. It is used for loading, unloading and storing trains.

Plate 3: Jeffrey Smart, born 1921, Australia, living in Italy. Morning, Yarragon siding, 1982–4. Oil on canvas, 100 × 134 cm.

This house was commissioned by the Magney family to be built on the location oftheir favourite coastal camping site.

Plate 4: Glenn Murcutt, architect, born 1936, Australia. Magney House, 1982–4, Bingie Point, New South Wales. Corrugated iron, steel, glass and brick.

ResourcesMetropolitan Museum of Art: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1999.363.16Pompidou Centre: http://www.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources/ens-surrealistart-en/ens-surrealistart-en.htm#dali

Gala & Salvador Dali Foundation: http://www.salvador-dali.org/dali/en_index.html

Short, Robert, Dada and Surrealism. London: 1980, Octopus Books Ltd.Dali Exhibition at National Gallery of Victoria: http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/dali/#id=Dali&num=01San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artists/4034?artwork=27665Leslie, Richard, Surrealism: the dream of revolution. New York: 1997, Smithmark Publishers. Dorothea Tanning: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/dorothea-tanning-2024Leonora Carrington: http://www.carringtonleo.5u.com/leoweb/Galleries/glryindex.htmDora Maar photographs: http://www.all-art.org/art_20th_century/maar1.html