Surealism......

Surealist painters, what ever they painted was often almost, not photographic but recognisable they used people, objects with real intent to create their surrealist effect.
With photography we can do similar things, we take recognisable images put them into  computers so we can mess around with them. 
Surrealists didnt quite trust reality but creating their art, they were going beyond the real to find their truths, sureal = beyond the real.Surreal is a mode of thinking, it enriches our world we can relat to it, a feeling its not just an artistic practice its an expression.


The founder Andre Breton, he thought about surrealism as a philosophy he thought that painting wasnt quite suitable to portray surrealism. he wanted to liberate the mind from rational thought.


Paint is alot more controlled, surrealism should be free and automatic.Photography was considered more appropriate as it was more spontanious.surrealism was a way of life, not just going into the studio and creating art, it was a mode of behaviour that informed life.


surrealism starts in Paris, after WW1 people wanted to get away from politics so they rejected the rational world.Andre Breton uses surrealism as an antidote to the political turnmoil of the time.


Apollinonaire-Poet-Surrealist ideas saw an increased place of modern life, he was locking together distant elements that created a stronger element. He endevored to communicate the encomunicable.The surrealists were fasinated with the subconscious, they wanted to unlock subconscious and tap into repressed ideas.

 René Magritte^[p] (21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was aBelgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images. His work challenges observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality.


This pipe image and text has a juxta positioning, it challenges your sense of reality. when you look at the image you think ''yes this is a pipe'', then you read the text and you are immediately encouraged to challenge your original thought.


This painting by Margitte holds alot of representation.
On first glance we can deduct that the figure is a traveller. we can take this as a portrayal of 'life', we as humans are on a journey through life.


The body of the traveller is a cage. cages can been known to represent freedom, we are caged ?.


Birds in the cage. we can see in the image that the birds are in the cage but the doors are open, the birds choose to stay. This could be the fear of adventure, thy want to stay with the safe and familiar.


In the background we can see wide open space. The figure in the image had turned his back on the the free space. this 
represents the fear of un known freedom.




The painting on the left is supposedly of a dream. It holds much representational value for when it was painted, it gives us a lot to think about, it could defiantly tell us about what was going on in the life of the painter.


Trains are well known to represent the idea of desire and also the male genatils, the image of a train going into a tunnel gives the idea of sex.


If we look at the fire place we can see that it is empty, there is no fire lit and no ornaments to fill it. The fire place is the woman's genitals and the lack of fire tells us that there is no passion. Even the room is empty and baron, there is no furniture or decoration, we can also see that there are two candle sticks, both have no candles in them, they give no light. can this give us a message about the society of the time? a loveless no desire marriage?
There is a clock on the fire place, it could represent a feeling of time running out. could all these aspects, the room the fire 
place, the clock represent 'the woman '?


Renne Margitte- The rape 1934.


This is a very sureal image,we expect to see the image of a woman but upon examination we can see that the fave is made up of only spacific body parts,when we look at the womans face you see sex. Its if quite an ironic image but it tells us the truth. How the woman looks doesnt matter, the sex is forced and is only about the body parts. when you think about it, its actually quite a dark image.


The surealist movement was made up mainly of men who had a very male shovanist idea of women being only objects of sex.


Surealists wanted to let their male desires be free, they did not surpress their sexual urges and desires.


At the same time as this being a very shovanist painitng later on its also became quite a femanist image, i can deffinatly see why.






This dream like painitng tells us a story. All of the objects are personal, its almost like the artist is painting an indirect portrait of his subject.


objects painted here all representations of the body parts. the sky on the walls brings the outside in and gives a sence of space and freedom

At first when looking at this painting we don't see what is odd about it. On further examination we see the canvas in the window. The canvas is painted with exactly the view in the window. It questions reality.

Salvidor Dahli

Giorgio Chirico- figure 13-uncirtainty of the poet. Chirico uses a lot of roman style sculptures in his paintings. The composition/ juxta positioning gives us the surrealist effect. Time is suggested in this image by the use of objects. The bananas are fresh fruit and are therefore perishable, the sculpture on the other hand is made from stone and is everlasting. In the distance of the painting we see a train, which we know to be a symbol of desire. The painting could be interpreted as a story about the male body and sex running out of time.

 Dora Mar, the lover of picasso was one of the only female surrealist photographers/artists of her time.


It is a strong statement about female sexuality.
the background is dark and stormy suggesting troubles and hardship, the shell and hand can tell us that a woman must hide her sexuality ?                          
                                                                   






Man Ray, one of the first popular surealist photographers, he created many unusual and deep images.
This photograph on the left, is a representation of a womans false emotion. The eyes are wide and hevily made up, the lashes look almost creature like. you can see that the tears are made of glass. they look as if they are there purely for decoration, they are not real.


This next image by man ray, is a representation of a painting by Ingres.
Its a very strong story telling image. man ray has made the woman's body into a violin. The womans body is an instrament, it is there for the man to play. She also wears an eastern headress, in keeping with the Ingres painting.
The photograph could be a taunt, man ray saying ''Ingres is dead, im playing his instrument now'', its like a dual between the old and new.






 Hans Bellmer.

''Bellmer was born in the city of Kattowitz, then part of the German Empire (now Katowice, Poland). Up until 1926, he'd been working as a draftsman for his own advertising company. He initiated his doll project to oppose the fascism of the Nazi Party by declaring that he would make no work that would support the new German state. Represented by mutated forms and unconventional poses, his dolls were directed specifically at the cult of the perfect body then prominent in Germany. Bellmer was influenced in his choice of art form by reading the published letters of Oskar Kokoschka (Der Fetisch, 1925).

Bellmer's doll project is also said to have been catalysed by a series of events in his personal life, including meeting a beautiful teenage cousin in 1932 (and perhaps other unattainable beauties), attending a performance of Jacques Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann (in which a man falls tragically in love with an automaton), and receiving a box of his old toys. After these events, he began to actually construct his first dolls. In his works, Bellmer explicitly sexualized the doll as a young girl. The dolls incorporated the principle of "ball joint" , which was inspired by a pair of sixteenth-century articulated wooden dolls in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum''^{(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Bellmer)}

                                                                                                                          


Hans Bellmer's doll series, is in my opinion 
quite desturbing. Its all about objectification,control and power. The way he destroys the bodys of these toy women makes us wonder about his relationships with women, it gives us an insight into his pshychy.


The image on the left- The Doll, Figure 200.


I find this picture quite creepy ! The hair looks quite real, as if its a person wearing a mask.
The dolls pose is a traditional ''temptress pose'', she looks back over her shoulder with a coy smile, the bra strap is visible, she is clearly inviting her lover to her.