Surrealism
Surrealism[1] is a cultural movement that began in the early-1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members. The works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur, however many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost with the works being an artifact, and leader André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was above all a revolutionary movement. From the Dada activities of World War I Surrealism was formed with the most important center of the movement in Paris and from the 1920s spreading around the globe, eventually affecting films such as the Angel's Egg and El Topo, amongst others.
The Elephant Celebes (or Celebes) is a 1921 painting by the German Dadaist and Surrealist Max Ernst. It is possibly the most famous of Ernst's early surrealist works and "undoubtedly the first masterpiece of Surrealist painting in the De Chirico tradition". It combines the vivid, dreamlike atmosphere of Surrealism with the collage aspects of Dada.
The central focus of the painting is a giant mechanical figure. It is round and has a trunk-like hose protruding from it. The figure’s round body was modeled after a photograph in an anthropological journal of a clay corn bin from a southern Sudanese tribe, the Konkombwa. Celebes suggests "ritual and totemic sculpture of African origin", evidenced by the totem-like pole at right and the figure's bull horns.[2] The painting uniquely combines found imagery and tribal elements.
Giorgio de Chirico The Red Tower (La Tour Rouge) 1913
Metaphysical art (Italian: Pittura metafisica) is the name of an Italian art movement, created by Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. Using a realist style, they painted dream-like views of squares typical of idealized Italian cities, as well as apparently casual juxtapositions of objects. Their art represented a visionary world which engaged most immediately with the unconscious mind, beyond physical reality, hence the name. Pittura Metafisica provided significant impetus for the development of Dada and Surrealism.
A
consummate technician, his work frequently displays a juxtaposition
of ordinary objects in an unusual context, giving new meanings to familiar
things. The representational use of objects as other than what they
seem is typified in his painting, The Treachery of Images (La trahison
des images), which shows a pipe that looks as though it is a model for
a tobacco store advertisement. Magritte painted below the pipe, This
is not a pipe (Ceci n'est pas une pipe), which seems a contradiction,
but is actually true: the painting is not a pipe, it is an image of
a pipe. (In his book, This Is Not a Pipe, French critic Michel Foucault
discusses the painting and its paradox.)
Magritte pulled the same stunt in a painting of an apple: he painted
the fruit realistically and then used an internal caption or framing
device to deny that the item was an apple. In these Ceci n'est pas works,
Magritte points out that no matter how closely, through realism-art,
we come to depicting an item accurately, we never do catch the item
itself: we cannot smoke tobacco with a picture of a pipe.
His art shows a more representational style of surrealism compared to
the "automatic" style seen in works by artists like Joan Miró.
In addition to fantastic elements, his work is often witty and amusing.
He also created a number of surrealist versions of other famous paintings.
René Magritte described his paintings by saying,
My painting is visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery
and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this
simple question, 'What does that mean?'. It does not mean anything,
because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.
The well-known surrealistic piece introduced the image of the soft melting pocket watch. It epitomises Dalí's theory of "softness" and "hardness", which was central to his thinking at the time.
Although fundamentally part of Dalí's Freudian phase, the imagery predicts his transition to the scientific phase, which occurred after the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945. The imagery can be read as a graphic illustration of Einstein's theory of relativity, depicting gravity distorting time.
It is possible to recognize a human figure in the middle of the composition, in the strange "monster" that the same Dalí used in several period pieces: it's a head.
In general the tree means life, but, in this case, it has the same function as the rest of the elements in the picture: to impress anxiety and, in a certain way, terror, although it is likely that it was conceived as a functional element on which to drape one of the watches. The golden cliffs in the upper right hand corner are reminiscent of Dalí's homeland, Spain, and are derived from the rocks and cliffs at Cape Creus, where the Pyrenees meet the sea. It was there that Dalí and his wife Gala went for solitude.
x
Links