Exquisite Corpse

I couldn't talk about Surrealism without mentioning some of the games they used to play to inspire themselves and illogical idea. But anyways, the one I'm going to talk about because I know it all too well, is the making of The Exquisite Corpse, also know as the Exquisite Cadaver or Rotating Corpse. It came from an old parlor game called consequences where the same technique was used except in writing. Soon it turned into drawing and it went something like this:
* is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule (e.g. "The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective noun") or by being allowed to see the end of what the previous person contributed.


So I decided to make my roommates participate in the fun and make and one of their own. Okay, so I really didn't explain why they were doing it or what to do, but here's what we came up with.

Sooo, we came out with something looking like a angry drugged out mermaid woman.... But what I found really funny is how stressed they all felt when they were drawing. Both of them warning me of their skill,  though I said it could be totally crazy or awful, didn't matter. I think it turned out fine ahah. Plus, in the end we all shared some laughs and critiques, but I think it's a decent exercise of the imagination as well!


SO they have titled it:
Hip-hoppin' Happenin' Ursala
























Anyways, here's an example of a tad more professional version:

Agnes deBETHUNE, Alaine BECKER, Leah K. TOMAINO, Untitled/Untitled/ Rooted, Graphite, collage, watercolor, chalk, pastel crayon, fiber, acrylic paint on paper, 2009, 30” x 22”
Courtesy of the artists and the Paul Robeson Galleries, Rutgers University.
































Now this is where I shall end my project having explained and experienced some surrealism. I Hope through this blog others are able to see the spirituality involved in the movement as well as the beauty of the art that we call Surrealism!

Surrealist Sculpture

Surrealism art can also be seen in sculpture. I know in high school art class we all had to make small scale clay sculpture in a surrealist manor by combining 2 different subjects and morphing them together or making a literal creation of compound words. Just to name a few there was turtles with shells shaped like the globe, a box of fries with french berets, or ipods made out of eyes. This lesson sort of stemmed from on of the most famous pieces of surrealist sculpture art, or simply surreal art in general.

This Surrealist object was inspired by a conversation between Oppenheim and artists Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar at a Paris cafe. Admiring Oppenheim's fur-covered bracelet, Picasso remarked that one could cover anything with fur, to which she replied, "Even this cup and saucer." Soon after, when asked by André Breton, Surrealism's leader, to participate in the first Surrealist exhibition dedicated to objects, Oppenheim bought a teacup, saucer, and spoon at a department store and covered them with the fur of a Chinese gazelle. In so doing, she transformed genteel items traditionally associated with feminine decorum into sensuous, sexually punning tableware.

Meret Oppenheim. Object. 1936. Fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon, cup 4 3/8" (10.9 cm) in diameter; saucer 9 3/8" (23.7 cm) in diameter; spoon 8" (20.2 cm) long, overall height 2 7/8" (7.3 cm).

Meaning Behind the Dreams

Through these crazy new uncensored ideas and way of thinking, the surrealists were able to explore more of the bizarre, illogical and really dream-like images. Surrealism could probably be summed p by those words, maybe with "random" thrown in there. The funny part is a lot of people try and find meanings behind the surrealist art, but it truly can be meaningless and simply figments of artists imagination thrown on to paper or just interesting ideas. So in this post I really wanted to throw some really just bizarre, illogical, plain crazy looking pieces of surrealism to take in.

Now when Salvador Dali was questioned on possible meaning behind his work, he declared himself apolitical, stating that "I am Dali, and only that". But people still manage to dig into the work saying things like how through a Freudian perspective the piece represents a personal struggle with battle in his home country. Though they believe to be able to back all that up, I'm still with Dali and think the meaning is either up for grabs or nothing at all. So, for this piece and many more, that answer is up tot he viewer.

The Burning Giraffe (1937)

Salvador  Dalí 

Now Dali did come back to his work often, and I will admit I cannot find the exact date online... BUT I know it was created after the piece above. But Dali had a lot of different themes within his work like the burning giraffes or elephants for example. This piece and probably every one of Dali's works could be turned upside down and a have a million meanings but really this thing just looks crazy to me haha.

Surrealist Automatism

 Now considering surrealism is heavily doused in automatism, it doesn't always have to writing either, it could be film, performance, thought it was mainly seen in art. I wanted to take this post to show some of the art produced through automatism. In my opinion most of the automatism ended up looking quite sketch-like, but I still like it as well as the idea that those who actually drew it didn't really well... create it? Personally, I also think a big question to this is whats the difference between doodles and automatic drawing or art. But the bid difference between surrealism automatism and automatism are that though automatism focuses on almost being possesses to create this unknown thing in an almost medium sense, the surrealist definition is a little more realistic and based on art in general. When the movement started it was transitioning out of old styles like impressionism and more old school looks, the surrealists wanted to throw all the old rules and ideas of art out the window and make art without tastes or conscious aesthetic, or a moral self-censorship, but to simply create for the sake of creating and throw out prior lessons and typical aesthetics like traditional portraiture or still lifes. Just to mention it, it was movements such as that that lead to the more modernist movements that still affect the contemporary scene.

Automatic drawing by André Masson (1896-1987), ink on paper
made in Paris, France

Petra Stefankova - 3D Psychic Automatism

Automatism in Surrealist Art

Well, Surrealsim stemmed off of the non-sense that was the Dada Movement. It bagan in the 1920's, started out in Paris and spread all over. Some belived it to be a revoltionary movement with it's peivces being more of artifacts than just art. They also did a lot of writng, which is what I want to focus on in this post as well as Automatism. Automatism is one of the main reasons why I chose to focus on surrealism for my project. 

Defined by dictionary, this is what automatism is. I wanna bring emphasis to the moving/functioning without conscious control. Also an artist named Andre Breton defined surrealism as "Pure psychic automatism", while this definition has been expanded, automatism is of great importance to the movement.


The first practices of automatism was automatic writing. The first surrealism magazines published were full of it. Automatic writing is also known as psychography is writing which the writer states to be produced from a subconsciousness, or external or spiritual source without conscious awareness of the context or meaning.


With that being said, what ever the writer does write or create doesn't have to really be understood, sort of like a psycho-babble sort of thing. It really in a sense doesn't have to be in the English langauge or any language at that. It can go as far as alien letters or hieroglyph looking symbols.

Here is a piece of automatic writing produced by Helene Smith, interesting this is that she doesn't even take full credit for the piece considering she was simply a medium. Also the caption reads something about begin the first martian text written by Mlle. Smith according to a visual hallucination.

























Sample of "Martian" automatic writing by medium Hélène Smith, as found in Théodore Flouroy's From India to the Planet Mars. Cropped from fig. 21 of digital version at sacred-texts.com. Its caption reads:

"Fig. 21. Text No. 16 ; Seance of August 22, 1897. — First Martian text written by Mlle. Smith (according to a visual hallucination). Natural size. [Collection of M. Lemaître] — Herewith its French notation.

astane
esenale
pouze
mene simand
ini.
mira."

DaDa Movement

In my last post I left off with  René  Magritte and  his work translated title: What Is Surrealism. Now to try and answer that question. The movements roots were started in the Dada movement starting around 1916 durring WWI. The Dada-ists such as Hugo Ball, Max Earnst, and Louis Aargon, were mainly based in Switzerland, and thier style was more of an anarcist movement against teh horrors of the war. The rejcted the logical and stood for all things nonsense. Thier publications and art was aimed to stray away from classical art motiefs and into random bizarre ideas. The hated their world of war so they made up reason-less and whimsical culture. Like this artist below, Duchamp. I mean he literally put a urinal in an art show and called it "ready made art". If that's not sticking it to some classic art snobs, then I don't know what is.

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917, white glazed ceramic plumbing fixture and painted signature, readymade porcelain urinal on its back, 63 x 48 x 35 cm. The urinal, purchased from "Mott Works" company in New York and signed "R. Mutt," was submitted to the jury-free 1917 Independents exhibition but was suppressed by the hanging committee. This is a photograph of either the second version of 1951 or the third of 1964. The Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris publishes a color photo of it. 

Or one of Duchamp's other famous works: L.H.O.O.Q where I like to point out that at the bottom of the portrait he wrote in french, "She has a hot ass"... yeah I know it's not really about the good surreal dreamy unconscious stuff yet but I wanted to share:)

My Religion and Media Project: Surrealism

 

My Religion and Media Project: Surrealism

 So, after looking at the unconscious, subconscious, and dreams in class, I was reminded of the Surrealist art movement. I really like learning about art history and surrealism is one of my favorite movements of all time. Almost everyone has seen some Salvador Dali dripping clock stuff, but it goes a lot further than that in my opinion. So, for my project I'll be explaining Surrealist art as well as exploring it a little. So on the note of introducing surrealism, I'll just leave this here for now...

René Magritte, Le Viol (Rape) drawing on cover of Qu’est-ce que le Surréalisme?, 1934.  Houghton Library, Harvard University