by Cyn Rene' Whitfield
Oscar Wilde said “Life imitates art, more than art imitates life“. With that understanding it is not those artists from the Renaissance, or the Baroque, or the Neo-Classical eras that express the depiction of everyday life. The ability to represent life most accurately belongs to the Realists. I appreciate these artists as they depict life without embellishment or interpretation. What a better world we would have if we could climb into that canvas and live within the rules of the Realists.
Lately, I prefer to believe that Surrealism is dominating our lives. Surrealism, born out of the Dada movement, Surrealism features the element of surprise and exaggeration. It was intended to be a positive expression against rationalization. Life representative in our world today exists as lies, deception and skewed points of view which the Surrealists would have little trouble duplicating.
When André Breton started the Surrealism movement in 1924, he introduced a style rich with visual imagery from the subconscious mind to create art without the intention of logical comprehensibility. It is no wonder this movement was influenced by the psychoanalytical work of Freud and Jung, Ultimately Jung believed that by understanding how one's personal unconscious integrates with the collective unconscious, a person can achieve a state of individuation, or wholeness of self. Frued believed that we dream when we are tired of responding and receiving stimuli from an environment we wish to change. This withdrawal from reality causes us to stop any interest of conclusions of reality allowing us to escape in fabrications that allow us to cope.
Explore the works of Surrealist artist Man Ray in his 1938, oil on canvas entitled, "Pisces”. Understand Man Ray’s intention of the piece placing the woman lying alongside a fish to create contrasting of similar and different forms at the same time. Fantasy is enhanced using the painting technique known as grattage which involves scraping the paint off the canvas by trowel. How manageable our lives would be if we had the same opportunities to trowel away the hurt, the pain, the deception, the mistrust. To wipe the canvas clean.
Sources:
Surrealism, Retrieved October 20, 2010 from http://www.surrealism.org/
Jungs Approach to Dreams, Retrieved October 20, 2010 from http://library.thinkquest.org/C005545/english/dream/jung.htm
I call myself an artist, have no problem with it sounding pretentious. I have no specific style or medium I like to use, although the messier the better! I get most of my inspiration from other artists so I decided to create this blog to engage others to share their ideas, techniques and designs to increase creativity. My objective is to energize the medium and assist in the creative block we often experience as artists.
Collage
No comments:
Post a Comment