Month: August 2020

Aesthetic Genre – Surrealism & Expressionism

What is Aesthetics?

Aesthetics is known as the philosophical study of beauty and taste related to the philosophy of art. It provides a guideline to define how individual artworks are interpreted and evaluated. 

Surrealism

What Is Surrealism?

As an artistic movement that aimed to reject the rational cognition of human experience, Surrealism centred around the values and beauty of the unconscious and dream-like quality. The word ‘surrealist’ also suggesting “beyond reality”. Despite this being an irregular movement, artists and poets discover a strange beauty in the unexpected and the peculiar of Surrealism.

Development Of Surrealism

Surrealism was founded by the poet André Breton in Paris in 1924 as an artistic and literary movement. According to him, surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the world of dreams and fantasy would be fused with the daily rational world in “an absolute reality, a surreality.”

Surrealism movement also represented a reaction against what is observed by its member when “rationalism” caused destruction to the Europe culture and politics in the past and that had culminated in the horrors of World War I. 

Characteristics of Surrealism

Artists in the Surrealism movement were a diverse group, there is no unified style for surrealism. However, early work by surrealist often followed the Dada tradition of turning familiar objects into mocking and nonsensical artworks. As the movement evolved, new systems and techniques developed for artists to explore the irrational world of the subconscious mind. This in term resulted in the emerging of two trends: Biomorphic(abstract) and Figurative.

Figurative Surrealism Artist – René Magritte and Salvador Dalí 

Realistically painted images with an impossible form or context and reassembled within an ambiguous, paradoxical, or shocking framework that makes no rational sense to its audiences.

René Magritte

About The Son Of Man, Magritte said:

” At least it hides the face partly well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It’s something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present. “

Salvador Dalí

The Persistence of Memory is widely recognized and frequently referenced in popular culture and sometimes referred to by more descriptive titles, such as “Melting Clocks”, “The Soft Watches” or “The Melting Watches”. It symbolizes Dalí’s theory of “softness” and “hardness”, which was central to his thinking at the concepts of time. 

Biomorphic Surrealism Artist –  Joan Miró 

On the other hand, surrealist abstraction avoided the use of geometric shapes in favour of the more emotive impact of natural organic forms, be it real or imagined. These abstract images, usually biomorphic, are suggestive but indefinite.

Joan Miró

Harlequin’s Carnival is one of the best well-known pieces of work by Joan Miro. Harlequin is the name of a popular Italian comic theatre character that is recognized by his checkered costume. The “carnival” in the title has a high possibility to be the celebration that occurs before the fasting of Lent begins.

Joan Miro’s often filled with brightly coloured and biomorphic shapes that are carefully composed on the canvas. 

Expressionism

What Is Expressionism?

Expressionism is a movement in which the artist seeks to depict not objective reality, but instead, subjective emotions and expression of their inner experiences and feelings.

Development of Expressionism

The Expressionism is a movement initially in poetry and painting which occurred during the late-19th century, early-20th century. It originated from Germany in response to the dehumanizing effect of industrialization and the growth of urbanization. Many described expressionism as a rejection of the ideology of realism. 

Characteristics of Expressionism

Expressionism artworks are often conveying emotion and meaning rather than merely record the reality and his observation of it. Each expressionist had their own unique way of expressing their emotions and thoughts in their art. Most of the time, subjects are often distorted or exaggerated to express emotion. At the same time, vivid and shocking colours are often observed in the artworks by expressionist. Compositions of expressionism artworks also tend to be simpler and more direct and are often characterized by thick impasto paint, loose, freely applied brushstrokes, and occasional symbolism.

Abstract Expressionism – Jackson Pollock

Abstract expressionism is a term applied to the new forms of abstract art developed by American painters such as Jackson Pollock in the 1940s and 1950s. It is often had a sense of freedom, which expressed through loose brushwork and a bold palette introduced spontaneity and subjectivity.

Figurative Expressionism – Sidney Nolan (The Ned Kelly Series)

Nolan produced 27 paintings under the Ned Kelly series during his studies of the themes of justice, love and freedom. In The Trial, depicting the courtroom scene if Ned Kelly’s criminal hearing in 1880. The piece features Kelly in the centre of the painting, handcuffed, only his eyes visible under his iconic iron suit of armour.

Other works in the series also displayed Nolan’s love of the Australian landscape, each painting featuring a different view of the land and bush, showcasing the beauty and vastness of the country through intense colourings and smooth, flowing textures.

Neo-Expressionism – Julian Schnabel

Neo-expressionism dominated the art market in Europe and the United States during the early and mid-1980s. Neo-expressionists returned to portraying recognizable objects, such as the human body ( mostly in an abstract manner), in a rough and violently emotional way, usually using vivid colour.

Julian Schnabel‘s painting is usually influenced by Cubism and with a theme such as sexuality, obsession, suffering, redemption, death, and belief. Many of Schnabel’s paintings combine painting and collage techniques, often crowded with paint drips, dynamic brushstrokes, and found materials including broken plates, textiles, tarpaulins, and velvet.

The Timeline of Art Movements

 

Comparison – Surrealism and Expressionism

Similarity

Expressionism and surrealism as artistic movements are similar in the fact that both sought to explore the subconscious and the inner emotions of an artist’s mind.

Differences

Both Expressionism and Surrealism share a similar purpose of filtering reality through individual perception, it is indeed different in the views of reality and expressing it in their work. 

Expressionism can be referred to as external reality tingled with the violent emotional state of the artist. This art movement can be seen with bold strokes and not much focusing on the details but to the expression of a subject matter with the main focus to portray the emotions and subjective interpretation, rather than making aesthetically pleasing works.

Whereas Surrealism suggested dream-like quality in Surrealist paintings, which can range from enigmatic images straight from dreams to expressive, dream-like, expansions of ideas. Fine works are usually done in this time period, focusing a lot to the details and emphasize on perspective and composition.

In-Depth Study – Surrealism

Destino (1945-2003)

Destino is an animated short film released in 2003 by Walt Disney. This film originally started its production in 1945, which is 58 years ago, as a collaboration between Surrealist Painter Salvador Dali and Walt Disney. However, due to the financial woes of WWII, the production was put on an indefinite hiatus.

Destino’s follows the story of Chronos and his ill-fated love for a mortal woman named Dahlia. The story is about searching for love and ultimately, coming close to it and even found it. The lovers, who never touch or speak, are alone yet not alone, wrapped in the search for each other. The landscape changes to keep them apart.

The dream-like characteristics of surrealism can be observed in these few interesting scenes which are realistically painted but with an irrational context. 

The woman appears out of nowhere, and has an affinity with the shadow of a bell tower, to the point of wearing the bell’s shadow as her dress after she loses hers.

The dancer also changes form, her head becoming a dandelion, scattering seeds through the air.

Salvador Dali’s familiar tropes also made its appearance in the film as melting watches and also ants that morph into bicyclists which have made their screen debut in his surrealist classic, Un Chien Andalou (1929). 

Dali also symbolized himself with his distinctive moustache through different figures in the firm. 

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Bibliography

Definition of Aesthetics
https://www.britannica.com/topic/aesthetics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics

Surrealism
https://www.britannica.com/art/Surrealism
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/surrealism
https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-surrealism-183312
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-what-is-surrealism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/surrealist-artists.htm

Rene Magritte
https://learnodo-newtonic.com/rene-magritte-famous-paintings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Son_of_Man#cite_note-3

Salvador Dalí
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persistence_of_Memory
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79018
https://mymodernmet.com/the-persistence-of-memory-salvador-dali/

Joan Miro
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Harlequin%27s_Carnival
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joan-Miro
https://www.joan-miro.net/

Expressionism
https://www.britannica.com/art/Expressionism
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/e/expressionism
https://www.ducksters.com/history/art/expressionism.php
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/expressionist-movement.htm
https://www.mdc.edu/wolfson/Academic/ArtsLetters/art_philosophy/Humanities/Expressionism/expressionism.htm
https://www.theartstory.org/movement/expressionism/
https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/expressionism/m0pybl
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressionism
https://m.theartstory.org/movement/expressionism/

Jackson Pollock
https://www.artsy.net/artist/jackson-pollock
https://www.theartist.me/art/15-famous-jackson-pollock-paintings/

Sidney Nolan
https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/artsets/tgscgk/print
https://cookshillgalleries.com.au/pages/sidney-nolan-artist
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sidney-nolan-the-painter-who-brought-australian-colour-to-british-art-wjznkk2c2
https://nga.gov.au/nolan/

Julian Schnabel
https://www.britannica.com/art/Neo-Expressionism
https://www.theartstory.org/movement/neo-expressionism/
https://www.artspace.com/tags/neo-expressionism
https://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/book_report/what-was-neo-expressionism-54198
https://whitney.org/collection/works/292
https://www.artsy.net/artwork/julian-schnabel-hope

Comparison – Surrealism and Expressionism
https://wikidiff.com/expressionism/surrealism
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-surrealism-and-expressionism-1

In-depth Study – Destino
https://www.parkwestgallery.com/5-facts-you-may-not-know-about-disney-and-dalis-lost-project-destino/
https://stephenpersing.wordpress.com/2015/05/20/destino-and-animated-surrealism-pt-1/
https://boingboing.net/2020/01/30/the-story-behind-dali-and-disn.html
https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/salvador-dali-disney-destino
https://lwlies.com/articles/walt-disney-salvador-dali-destino/
http://www.spainlifestyle.com/2018/02/watch-destino-sensational-surrealist.html
http://www.unravel.us/2016/05/31/a-look-at-surrealist-cinema-destino/