Dreams in Art

A comparison of the art of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia and

the European Surrealists

The Dreamtime• A creative period between the origins of the

universe and when humans were created, yet it is never ending

• Supernatural creatures (like the Rainbow Serpent and All-mother and All-father) roamed the land and formed the sky, water, etc.

• Time when men and women and all laws, customs, traditions and rituals were established for their well being.

Symbols used in Papunya Central Desert art - Based on information from "Papunya Tula" by Geoffrey Bardon

Bessy Nakamura Sims

Maggie Wilson, Woman Dreaming

Colleen Wallace, Dreamtime Sisters

Colleen Wallace, Dreamtime Sisters

Vid on Aboriginal Art

•Took form during WWI, primarily in Zurich and New York.

• Dada proclaimed the uselessness of social action. Protesting the war, but moving beyond to create a fresh slate for art, Dada used destruction as a creative force.

• Dada moved to destroy the deception of artificial order imposed by man, and return to the more natural state of disorder and childhood.

• Leading Dadaist Hugo Ball stated that one of the goals of Dada was to show that there “were people who were independent and beyond war and nationalism, who live for other ideals.”

• Dada used nonsense, chance, contradiction and insult in their work.

Dada

Hugo Ball - Karawane Raoul Haussmann

Marcel Duchamp Man Ray

•a reaction to Dada in that the Surrealists wanted to return art to something positive and a benefit for mankind.

•a highly organized group of artists and writers led by Andre Breton.

Surrealism

Max Ernst, Reunion of Friends, 1922

•Andre Breton, a writer, was the leader of the surrealist movement.

•Based on a misinterpretation of Freud’s psychoanalytic analysis of dreams as expression of the unconscious mind.

•Surrealism glorifies irrationality

•Wanted to transform concrete reality into a response to man’s desires and psychic unity. (‘reason’ prevents this unity)

SURREALISM, noun, masc., Pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express, either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations. -Andre Breton, First Surrealist Manifesto, 1924

Artistic imagination must remain free. It is by definition free from any fidelity to circumstances, especially to the intoxicating circumstances of history.

+ The approval of the public must be avoided above all. The public must be forbidden to enter if confusion is to be avoided.

+ The mind which plunges into Surrealism, relives with burning excitement the best part of childhood.

+ I could spend my whole life prying loose the secrets of the insane. These people are honest to a fault, and their naivety has no peer but my own.

+ Let us not mince words.. the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful.

Quotes from Andre Breton

Earlier influences on Surrealist imagery

Henri Rousseau

Georgio DiChirico

Marc Chagall

Three major intellectual directions:

Chance – some artists used techniques where the outcome was out of their control. They did this to prevent the rational mind (which was tarnished by a rigid and corrupt civilization) from dictating what the subconscious mind could reveal.

Automatism – tries to elicit images from the subconscious by occupying the conscious mind with another activity or by going into a ‘trancelike’ state. Use of chance elements was prominent.

Veristic Surrealism – Artists mined their dreams for images. They also found absurd and original relationships between existing images. Use of psychoanalytic archetypes was prominent. They also used hyper-realistic painting techniques to increase the feeling of contradiction.

Emerging Surrealist Art- 1920’s

Exquisite Corpse• All parts should be vegetables

• All parts should be machine parts

• All parts should be things you would find in the ocean

• All parts should be things you would find in space

Chance” techniques both stimulated the imagination and created images for the artists to use.

Jean Arp, Arrangment According to the Laws of Chance, 1916

Chance

Examples of Exquisite Corpses made by early Surrealists

Jean Arp, Overtuned Blue Shoe Under the Arch, 1925

Jean Arp

Wolfgang Paalen – using Fumage technique

Max Ernst painting, using a process called decalcomania

Max Ernst, Napolean in the Desert, 1941

Pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express, either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought.

Automatism

Andre Masson

Andre Masson, Automatic Drawing, 1924

, Andre Masson, Battle of Fishes, 1927

Andre Masson, The Seeded Earth, 1942

Joan Miro, The Hunter (Catalan Landscape), 1923-24

Joan Miro, Catalan Landscape. Around 1925?

Joan Miro, The Harlequin’s Carnival, 1924-25

Roberto “Matta Echaurren, painted around 1940 or so

Matta

Matta

Delving into the world of dreams and nightmares. These artists used hyper-real painting techniques to reinforce the feeling of dislocation and alienation in their work.

Veristic Surrealism

Salvador Dali, The Visage of War, 1940

Yves Tanguy, The Sun in its Jewel Case, 1938

Yves Tanguy, Extinction of Useless Lights, 1927

Yves Tanguy, Indefinite Divisibility, 1943

Max Ernst, The Elephant Celebes, 1921

Max Ernst, The Virgin Spanking Christ, 1926

Max Ernst, Attirement of the Bride, 1943

Rene Magritte, The Treachery of Images, 1929

Rene Magritte,Collective Invention, 1934

Rene Magritte , Pleasure Principal, 1937

Rene Magritte,Time Transfixed, 1938

Portrait of Paul Eluard, 1929

Salvador Dali, Persistence of Memory, 1931

Salvadore Dali, Daddy Longlegs of the Evening--Hope! ,1940

Salvador Dali, Old Age, Adolescence, Infancy (The Three Ages) ,1940

Salvador Dali, Geopoliticus Child Watcing the Birth of the New Man ,1943

Surrealist Poetry

ARPTurns without reflections to the curves without

smiles of shadows with mustaches, registers the murmurs of speed, the miniscule terror, searches under some cold cinders for the smallest birds, those which never close their wings, resist the wind.

Paul Eluard, translated by Amy Levin