Fantasy Art & Surrealism 

  • 1900s to 1920s
  • ]]Surrealism:]]
    • Inspired by Sigmund Freud’s theories of dreams and the unconscious. He believed dreams were symbols of our desires and fears.
    • Ideas will flow from our unconscious minds if we let them.
  • Artists sought to release this creative potential of the unconscious mind
  • Surrealists present irrational juxtapositions by using recognizable/rational subject matter in illogical situations (+ weird association).
  • Dream-like scenes
  • Later developed around personal, unexplained symbolic images.
  • Artists: Dali, Chagall, de Chirico, Magritte
  • Assemblage: A work of art composed of fragments of objects or materials originally intended for other purposes - partially 3D.

<<Chagall:<<

  • Somewhat cubist art style
  • His concepts are personal - Russia memory: A Russia village and fun-loving peasants, folklore and fairytales
    • Combined reality with happy memories
  • Goat facing man: vignette of smaller paintings that don’t belong (juxtaposition)
  • Interior vs. exterior, imaginary vs. real, past vs. present
  • “I do not understand them [his art] at all. They are not literature. They are only pictorial arrangements of images which obsess me.”
  • ex. I and the Village(goat face), The Soldier Drinks (Picasso at the bar)

<<de Chirico:<<

  • Uses 2 tones: light and dark
    • Sensation of impending doon - using vast spaces and large flat areas of little texture.
  • Distortion of light on the bus (surreal) and uses 2 vanishing points.
  • Used 2 muses and the background is where Chirico is from (Greece) in The Disquieting Muses
  • ex. The Mystery and Melancholy (the bus), The Disquieting Muses (Greek statues)

<<Dali:<<

  • Depiction of how time is meaningless
    • Small painting of soft objects that are usually metallic and solid.
    • Technique recalls flemish art of 15th century
    • Unreal: Limp watchs, giant ants, partial face….. Real: Spain scenery
  • Claimed to “hate simplicity in all its forms”
  • Uses exacting realism
  • Set in Patagonia, Spain and clocks resemble overripe cheese
  • Depicted the disintegration of the atom (science-y)
  • ex. The Persistence of Memory (clocks), Galatea of the Spheres (circles on face)

<<Magritte:<<

  • Depicts repressed passion
  • Their style combined absurd combinations of realistically painted objects.
  • These juxtapositions amuse and puzzle the viewer.
  • The work creates more questions than answers.
  • “Not a pipe, an image of a pipe”
  • Distorted a man’s elbow and has a face covered by an apple (wanting to see what’s underneath)
  • ex. The Lovers (bagged kiss), The Son of Man (wrong elbow), The Treachery of Images (pipe)

]]Dada:]]

  • Began in Zurich, Switzerland
  • Negative reaction to WWI - They were disillusioned with rational thinking
  • Incorporated trash and other mundane objects to construct new, disturbing, puzzling art that would alienate the viewer.
  • Often satirical, nonsense, absurd
  • Nonsense attitude toward conventional language.
  • Use personal styles to create spur-of-the-moment works.
  • Message: All European culture was decadent and devoid of meaning.
  • Romanian: “Da, da” = “yes,yes”
  • French: “Dada” = “Rocking horse” or “hobby horse”
  • Artists: Arp, Schwitters

<<Arp:<<

  • His collages were a protest against both the design quality and emotional expression of previous styles of art.
  • Cutting random bits of wood/paper, glueing them together and creating relief sculptures.
  • Birds in an Aquarium (confusion of life, merges abstraction with Dada)
  • ex. Birds in an Aquarium (bird statue), The Forest (leaf statue)

<<Schwitters:<<

  • Uses garbage in his art
  • Message: Recycling the refuse from a society he was demeaning into works of art for that same society to see.
  • Merz = Dada, Bild = picture (nonsense made by Schwitters)
  • ex. Merzbild (garbage face), Construction for Noble Ladies (garbage carriage women)

{{Surrealism vs. Dada:{{

  • Dada: Life has no meaning, no reason, no purpose, and no logic. Art has no value.
  • Surrealism: Life has no meaning; one has to find its logic by unlocking visual and verbal codes kept hidden in the unconscious mind.
    • Artists are getting “beneath the surface of life” or into a dream of unreality