Man Ray ~ “Soleil de Nuit (Abandoned Playground)”, 1943
Roberto ComandantedelCaos Diaz
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Andre Breton ~ “Tortured”
Andre Breton was a French writer, poet, and surrealist theorist, and is best known as the principal founder of Surrealism. In his famous manifesto, he described Surrealism as "pure psychic automatism“ using visual imagery from the subconscious mind to create art without the intention of logical comprehensibility.
Masaru Shichinohe ~ “Children of Surrealism”
The painter Masaru Shichinohe is almost unknown outside of Japan, but he has 18 books published under his own name, available only in Japanese. The artist paints on small wood panels with acrylics and influenced by the Surrealism art movement defined by André Breton. Shichinohe’s work therefore responds well to that strange association of ideas led by the omnipotence of dreams and smashing the rationality of thought.
Rene Magritte ~ “On the Threshold of Liberty”, 1937
On the Threshold of Liberty is a controversial piece by René Magritte. It is a prime example of pre-WWII surrealism, which is also an example of the fusion of pre-surrealism/post-dada movement: a modal intermediate between ‘anti-art’ and the expressionistic ideas of dreams presented by the works of Carl Jung that symbols have meaning based in dreams. Through these ideas of semiotic studies, the expressionism used with varied images to convey surreal contortion of art, making use of dream images fused into paintings. It was a common element to use the ‘collective conscious’ idea as a mantra for painting in the surrealist movement: creating a fabricated reality with no coherent meaning other than what the observer created.
Like many of his pieces, Magritte used strange imagery to confuse the observer: Magritte often challenged conventional viewing methods. There is no central theme to the piece, that other colors of the separate so evenly, the pictures are all unrelated, meanwhile, the cannon sits alone, idly making nuance of the room around it. However, there is a strange idea: that each of the panels being completely filled, creating a wall like affected with different color semiotics describing the piece. It was carefully done so in such a weird pattern to show some sort of limitation to what the eye can describe. This comes with the focus of the painting, that the eye is given so much to absorb, that its ultimate meaning is the difficulty ascribing meaning to it. <source>
Harold Lehman ~ “Portrait of a Dancer Plus a Sculptor”, 1934
Along with Phil Guston, Reuben Kadish, Helen Lundeberg and Lorser Fietelson, Lehman was a founding member of the Post-Surrealists, an avant-garde group of California artists active in Los Angeles in the 1930s and 40s. "Portrait of a Dancer Plus a Sculptor“ was one of his most renowned works from that period. <source>
Salvador Dali ~ “Partial Hallucination. Six apparitions of Lenin on a Grand Piano”, 1931
In “The Tragic Myth of Millet’s Angelas”, written in 1933 though not published till 1963, Dali gave an account of how he arrived at his hallucinatory images of phallic loaves, fried eggs in suspension, faces of Lenin (to nettle the Surrealists), and other bizarre trademarks. He recalled (for example) that one night in 1932, as he turned in, he beheld a brightly lit grand piano, in foreshortened perspective, with a number of busts of Lenin on the keys, with phosphorescent yellow aureoles. The picture came to him complete as he was going to bed, even before he had put out the light. It was not prompted by other images he had seen, nor did it lead on to others. The painting that resulted in this case was of course “Partial Hallucination. Six Apparitions of Lenin on a Grand Piano”.
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Salvador Dali ~ “Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man”, 1943
In a break from Surrealism, Dali reacted against the abstraction of modern art, turning to the Renaissance for inspiration. Looking to the past coincided with his renewed interest in Catholicism, and his imagery shifted from the personal to the more universal symbols of science and religion. While working on this painting, Dali jotted down the following list of words which help summarize the period of change: “Parachute, paranaissance, protection, cupola, placenta, Catholicism, egg, earthly distortion, biological ellipse.”
Geopoliticus Child reflects the new-found importance America held for the world and for Dali. The man breaking from the egg emerges out of the “new” nation, America, signalling a global transformation. Africa and South America are both enlarged, representing the growing importance of the Third World, while Europe is being crushed by the man’s hand, indicating its diminishing importance as an international power. The draped cloth above and below the egg represents the “placenta” of the new nation which, as Dali shows with a drop of blood, can only be born through much pain and suffering. An androgynous older figure stands in the foreground and points to the emerging man, acknowledging the birth of this global transformation. The cowering child with its long shadow – the “Geopoliticus Child” of the title – represents this new age. <source>
Man Ray ~ “Pisces”, 1938
Max Ernst ~ "The Elephant Celebes“, 1921
Max Ernst was a German painter, printmaker and sculptor, naturalized American in 1948 and French in 1958. He was a major contributor to the theory and practice of Surrealism. His work challenged and disrupted what he considered to be repressive aspects of European culture, in particular Christian doctrine, conventional morality and the aesthetic codes of Western academic art. Until the mid-1920s he was little known outside a small circle of artists and writers in Cologne and Paris, but he became increasingly successful from c. 1928 onwards. After 1945 he was respected and honoured as a surviving representative of a ‘heroic’ generation of avant-garde artists. <source>
Max Ernst ~ “Ubu Imperator”, 1923
In this seminal work, an anthropomorphic top dances in a vast, empty landscape. “Ubu Imperator” marked the entry of Max Ernst in the articulated stage of Surrealism by his use of a literary narrative that was sometimes personal, sometimes political. Ernst’s knowledge of Freudian theories, familiarity with myth and extreme wit were profound. Here the spinning top, a red carcass with iron reinforcement, and human hands express an astonishing image of the Ubu Father, a grotesque symbol of authority invented by Alfred Jarry. Such works captured early on the surrealist notion of estrangement and commitment to the subconscious, but also they seem surprisingly contemporary.