Dandelion_Blood
11-09-2004, 11:29 PM
So, where’d it all begin? Surrealism I mean.
Who came before it, who broke the ground? Who inspired artists to begin to take art to another level? Well, it all began on a cold winters night… no wait.
Seriously...
It’ll all begin shortly after the extremity of the Dada movement, there philosophy was “anti-art–not beauty but ugliness”. The artist of the surrealist movement researched and studied the works of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Some of the artists in the group expressed themselves in the abstract tradition, while others, expressed themselves in the symbolic tradition. These two styles separated into two groups, called Automatism, the other, as Veristic Surrealism. Heres a shortened version of an explination I found on what each stands for;
· The Automatists
Believed that their surrealist art was a suppression of the consciousness, and were in favour of using their unconsciousness focusing on the feelings presented through their art. They believed these images should not be burdened with "meaning."
“Faithful to this interpretation, the Automatists saw the academic discipline of art as intolerant of the free expression of feeling, and felt form, which had dominated the history of art, was a culprit in that intolerance. They believed abstractionism was the only way to bring to life the images of the subconscious. Coming from the Dada tradition, these artists also linked scandal, insult and irreverence toward the elite's with freedom. They continued to believe that lack of form was a way to rebel against them.”
· The Veristic Surrealists
“The veristic surrealists, interpreted Automatism to mean allowing the images of the subconscious to surface undisturbed so that their meaning could then be deciphered through analysis. They wanted to faithfully represent these images as a link between the abstract spiritual realities, and the real forms of the material world. To them, the object stood as a metaphor for an inner reality. Through metaphor the concrete world could be understood, not by looking at the objects, but by looking into them.
“Faithful to this interpretation, the Automatists saw the academic discipline of art as intolerant of the free expression of feeling, and felt form, which had dominated the history of art, was a culprit in that intolerance. They believed abstractionism was the only way to bring to life the images of the subconscious. Coming from the Dada tradition, these artists also linked scandal, insult and irreverence toward the elite's with freedom. They continued to believe that lack of form was a way to rebel against them.”
Personally I feel that is a great way to view surrealism that the automatists had, unburdening it, not trying to understand every part of the psyche and what it brings to the service to be viewed. But I feel that when it comes to surrealisms, it has a quality I feel that makes me want to find out me, to analyse and understand it better. I want to know why objects are used what they represent. But less by what people say it means, but by my own interpretations of the objects placed on the canvas. I thin defiantly through surrealism and the surfacing of the subconscious mind many things can be understood from them. But perhaps the Automatist had the right idea, maybe we spend all our time trying to interpret, decipher and understand and maybe for once we should just accept and appreciate it.
((more will come later))
Who came before it, who broke the ground? Who inspired artists to begin to take art to another level? Well, it all began on a cold winters night… no wait.
Seriously...
It’ll all begin shortly after the extremity of the Dada movement, there philosophy was “anti-art–not beauty but ugliness”. The artist of the surrealist movement researched and studied the works of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Some of the artists in the group expressed themselves in the abstract tradition, while others, expressed themselves in the symbolic tradition. These two styles separated into two groups, called Automatism, the other, as Veristic Surrealism. Heres a shortened version of an explination I found on what each stands for;
· The Automatists
Believed that their surrealist art was a suppression of the consciousness, and were in favour of using their unconsciousness focusing on the feelings presented through their art. They believed these images should not be burdened with "meaning."
“Faithful to this interpretation, the Automatists saw the academic discipline of art as intolerant of the free expression of feeling, and felt form, which had dominated the history of art, was a culprit in that intolerance. They believed abstractionism was the only way to bring to life the images of the subconscious. Coming from the Dada tradition, these artists also linked scandal, insult and irreverence toward the elite's with freedom. They continued to believe that lack of form was a way to rebel against them.”
· The Veristic Surrealists
“The veristic surrealists, interpreted Automatism to mean allowing the images of the subconscious to surface undisturbed so that their meaning could then be deciphered through analysis. They wanted to faithfully represent these images as a link between the abstract spiritual realities, and the real forms of the material world. To them, the object stood as a metaphor for an inner reality. Through metaphor the concrete world could be understood, not by looking at the objects, but by looking into them.
“Faithful to this interpretation, the Automatists saw the academic discipline of art as intolerant of the free expression of feeling, and felt form, which had dominated the history of art, was a culprit in that intolerance. They believed abstractionism was the only way to bring to life the images of the subconscious. Coming from the Dada tradition, these artists also linked scandal, insult and irreverence toward the elite's with freedom. They continued to believe that lack of form was a way to rebel against them.”
Personally I feel that is a great way to view surrealism that the automatists had, unburdening it, not trying to understand every part of the psyche and what it brings to the service to be viewed. But I feel that when it comes to surrealisms, it has a quality I feel that makes me want to find out me, to analyse and understand it better. I want to know why objects are used what they represent. But less by what people say it means, but by my own interpretations of the objects placed on the canvas. I thin defiantly through surrealism and the surfacing of the subconscious mind many things can be understood from them. But perhaps the Automatist had the right idea, maybe we spend all our time trying to interpret, decipher and understand and maybe for once we should just accept and appreciate it.
((more will come later))