Investigation Y9 – 1st term - Perspective: Magritte’s Room

By: Coral Conde Velasco, 9B

Some of it’s history:Surrealism became popular in the 1920’s. It spread quickly round all the world because everyone wanted to illustrate people with their thoughts and opinions; it started in Paris, a couple years before World War I started.It influenced on music, art, literature, philosophy and also on political thoughts and views.Andre Breton was the initial proponent of surrealism. He defended that surrealism lets people express themselves and got inspired easily and with more fluidity, they just had to let the pencil flow. He’s not the father of it, bi¡ut the driver.Doing my investigation the word “unconscious” came up a few times, it’s an important (if not the most important concept) about surrealism.

Basic definition about surrealism:

Surrealism is a cultural and artistic movement which consists basically on showing visual audience anything that the author wants to transmit to them. It doesn’t have rules; no proportions, it doesn’t have to make sense. Surrealism lets people to interpret the image in their own way, “artists let their imagination express what they want”.It has to be original and creative, not logical or real. It wants to surprise and to have an effect, impact the receptor, be unexpected.We can find anything in surrealistic drawings, as nightmares where «ridiculous» scenes take place.

Question n.1:Look at Surrealist artwork; define Surrealism in your own words referring to examples.

It’s clearly surrealistic, it’s not real, it’s not based on something he saw, it came from his imagination. We can see a man covered with fruits and vegetables; an eggplant represents the nose, some lettuce its shoulders, pineapples represent its beard….

I wanted to include in the examples one of Magritte’s images, he’s also a very famous surrealistic artist. You will see more about it later. We can see the naked body of a woman represented on a face, representing its features: the eyes, the nose, the mouth.

This is a very famous image of Dali, called “la persistencia de la memoria”. It is important to understand the interpretation of surrealistic images is free. Every interpretation is valid, so this image can transmit for you something totally opposite from me.

Some examples are…

QUESTION N.2: Select one of Magritte's images and describe it referring to the visual elements used, such as, texture, form, space, line, tone, color and shape. In addition to this comment on the most important idea. LOVE IS BLIND, this piece of art is called:

the loversIn this image we can see two people kissing. We suppose they are a man and a woman (because one of them wears a business suit and the other one is wearing an orange dress), but we cannot know this because a sort of cloth is covering their faces. The shadows are very well drawn and seen, it clearly shows the folds of the cloth.They seem to be in a room, the back wall has blue and black tones. The colors are well-defined.

Many interpretations can be accepted in this image. I think that the intention of the author was impacting the viewer, transmitting them that love has nothing to do with physical appearance. It is said that when you’re in love with someone the age doesn’t matter, nor the sex of the person.I think that the intention of the author was making us reflect about what I have said.

1

QUESTION N.3: Define the phrases color mood and related colors.

COLOR MOOD: Mood means humour, how do you feel at that moment. Each color represents a state of humour. For studied reasons, colors represent different moods, they affect on people’s feelings and emotions. They have different meanings. For example, people feel more relaxed in green rooms. Certain colors make similar reactions to many people. I’ve search for a brief paragraph about the most important colors:- Red: It represents excitement, passion, danger.- Yellow: It represents happiness, distraction, imagination.- Blue: It’s said that it brings down blood pressure and heart rate, so it relaxes

and calms you.- Black: mystery, fierce, serious.- Green: It’s a very used color because it’s neutral, represents calm and

sensitivity. It’s the color which represents hope.- Purple: euphoria, passion, sensual.- White: temperate, constant, confused, indifferent.

RELATED COLORS:As we know, there are 3 primary colors: red, blue and yellow. When we combine and mix these ones, we form the other colors of the rainbow. For example, when we mix red and yellow we obtain orange. When we mix blue and yellow we obtain green, etc.An example of related color is orange and green because they have in common the same primary color (yellow). So related colors are the ones that share the same primary color.

Related Colors

Color Mood

QUESTION N.4: Study one particular aspect of Poland or Polish Surrealist artists which you would like to include in your final piece. Give reasons for your choice.

I will want to talk about a polish surrealist artist in my final piece called Jacek Yerka. Jacek Yerka was born in a little city situated at the north of Poland in 1952. he studied art at the University before not wanting to paint with too much realism and detail. He studied other surrealist artists and liked that way of thinking.He did not have an easy childhood and many of his paintings are based on it. He had problems at home, and in school things weren’t so different, he used to have no friends. They’re finished carefully, painted with acrylic paints.He’s also known as the dreams artist because he draws many things related with fantasy and dreams scenarios. I have chosen Yerka because I think he is a great artist, and one of the most famous ones I Poland and because he says that he is still a kid, he sees everything with kid’s eyes, that explains many of his pictures. We have 2 examples below:

QUESTION N.5: Collect collage materials to be used in the final piece and briefly explain the relevance of the collage materials you have collected.

REFERENCES:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-surrealism.htm#

1 http://www.lacasadeviena.com/artes-visuales/rene-magritte-el-surrealista/attachment/magritte-21184251640/

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/colors1.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/27/how-color-affects-our-moo_n_1114790.html

http://freshome.com/2007/04/17/room-color-and-how-it-affects-your-mood/

http://sheofmermaids.blogspot.com.es/

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_do_the_colors_mean_on_a_mood_necklace

http://s1.hubimg.com/u/3963020_f520.jpg

http://sheofmermaids.blogspot.com.es/

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_related_colors

https://morpheusgallery.com/jacek%20yerka/biography.php