AWT3M1 Surreal Vision - Due Jan 23

This culminating unit requires the student to consolidate student learning by producing a media artwork that exhibits many of the skills and concepts learned during the semester. The importance of the self, both in the learning process and as an expressive artist will be the focus of the work. Students will have an opportunity to express their imagination and unleash the surrealist sub-conscious through the photography and digital manipulation skills they’ve polished in this course. The artwork should exhibit a sense of the search for the self, an investigation of your own sub-conscious mind!

New Alternative: Photography to Change the World An alternative to this assignment is to do a similar layered work or photo presentation with notes (Powerpoint; website) based on research and your own photography into an important social issue. The photography of Ed Burtynsky is a good example or using photography to comment on environmental issues (Google him…). A bad example would be to take a few pics of litter and recycling boxes and call that your major work!

Your work would need to be:

· Approved beforehand based on discussion of a written proposal

· About a serious social issue that we agree is important

· Independent – you will take this alternative only if you’re highly motivated and know what you want to say about the issue.

· Well thought out and executed, same as the Surrealist work would be

The Surrealism Assignment: (10% of your final mark)

The work should be an expression of some aspects of your self. Who are you? What motivates you? What lurks in your subconscious? What do you think and dream about? A good starting point is to try to remember some of your most vivid dreams. What do you think they meant? How could you represent them visually? (If you’re uncomfortable exploring your own subconscious self, talk to me about a less self-analytical work.)
Produce a Photoshop image, saved in BOTH .psd and .jpg formats, in a folder named G:/AWT3/Surrealism
The image must be a minimum of 1200 x 800 pixels. You can start with a “blank canvas” by using the File/New command in Photoshop
The imagery should be a combination of your own photography (predominantly) mixed with a few symbolic images you find on the net. You can also use hand drawn elements, either using Photoshop’s painting tools directly, or (better) on paper and then scanned or photographed.
Keep each element in a separate layer, blending by using transparency, erasing parts of layers etc. Layers are created automatically when you copy and paste into a document, and you can rearrange their order and transparencies by pulling down the Layers tab.
In a Word document in the same folder,

List the 10 examples you studied (see below)
Briefly critique the example you liked best, analyzing why it “worked” for you and how it influenced your work.
Critique your own work. Start with a literal description of what it looks like. Then describe the layers and components that make it, stating their source and anything you did to manipulate that layer of the image. Explain the symbols you incorporated.
Finally describe the symbolism and the ideas you tried to convey in your work. What aspects of your sub-concious mind were you trying to explore? What feelings/thought do you hope will be invoked in the user?

Surrealism

Work by Rene Magritte – what elements make this surreal?

Here’s an initial definition and discussion from Artcyclopedia. Check out their site here.

Surrealism is a style in which fantastic visual imagery from the subconscious mind is used with no intention of making the artwork logically comprehensible. Founded by Andre Breton in 1924, it was a primarily European movement which attracted many members of the chaotic Dada movement. It was similar in some respects to the late 19th-century Symbolist movement, but deeply influenced by the psychoanalytic work of Freud and Jung. Dream Interpretation is associated with Freud and Surrealism. Carl Jung was more involved in synchronicity and intuition.

The Surrealist circle was made up of many of the great artists of the 20th century, including Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico, Man Ray, Joan Miro, and Rene Magritte. Salvador Dali, probably the single best-known Surrealist artist, was somewhat of an outsider due to his right-wing politics - during this period leftism was fashionable among Surrealists, in fact in almost all intellectual circles.

The Magic Realists were American artists somewhat influenced by the Surrealists.

Massurrealism is a form of art that is rooted in the combination of mass media related art [ such as pop art ] and surrealist imagery. Essentially it is an evolution of surrealism that is strongly influenced by mass-media and technology. Began in 1992.

Some words and phrases associated with Surrealist images. These should describe your final work!

Incongruous; mysterious; disquieting; haunted; unnatural; dream-like; changes and distortions of perspective; eerie; hidden desires; anxieties; symbolic; bringing the dream world and the waking state closer together; precise style to portray an uncertain reality; incongruous yet unified; metaphorical; allegorical; inverted; contrast; parallel existence

Symbols

Surrealists believed that our subconscious mind is as important in who we are as the conscious mind. They were interested in Jungian and Freudian dream analysis, because this provided a gateway revealing and understanding the subconscious.

Dreams and surrealist works are full (in their view) of archetypal symbols.

Google Jungian Dream Symbols and try to find sites that list common dream symbols and archetypes. This will help you explain the symbolism that must be in your work.

Here’s a page I found helpful: http://mythsdreamssymbols.com/symbolsmeanings.html

An example: an image of the MOON is not just a pretty picture! Dream Analysts and Surrealists would use the moon with this in mind:

From prehistoric times the moon has been regarded as the source of all fertility. It governs ocean tides and rainfall, menstruation and birth. (Even when seen as male, the moon has been associated with fertility: for example, in Australian aboriginal tradition, the moon makes women pregnant.) It therefore symbolize (the posibility of) personal growth.

Your work must incorporate archetypal symbols, and your writeup must explain what they mean and why you used them.

Examples of Surrealist Images

Spend a good amount of time starting from the list of artists below the examples, researching what Surrealism is, how it applies to Art, and particularly what Surrealist Art looks like and the elements and symbols that are common in it, so you can create your own Surrealist work. Here are some preliminary good examples and explanations:

Pierre Roy - A Naturalist's Study - 1928
	From the Tate Museum’s caption: Like several of the Surrealists, with whom he exhibited in 1925, Pierre Roy used a precise style to portray an uncertain reality. A Naturalist’s Study alludes to the nineteenth-century concern with scientific classification and order. However, the relationship between these curious objects, including a paper snake and a string of eggs, remains mysterious. The artist’s son described this work as portraying a strangely motionless world: ‘Life seems to have stopped and become fixed like the locomotive itself in front of a chance or imaginary obstacle’ My observations: Shadowing is incongruous with the light source – e.g. the shadow of the wheel implies ligting from the opposite wall; a bright shaft of light hits it from above but casts no shadow; wall reflections on the floor are unnatural What do eggs, a snake, a cross, a train symbolize? The cross could also be a puppeteer’s tool What’s happening to the clouds? The doorway frames a very different reality from the room, a common surrealist technique

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik - Dorothea Tanning 1943
	From the Tate Museum’s caption: This scene of a dreary hotel corridor appears haunted by unnatural forces. The oversized sunflower on the landing is strangely animated. A life-size doll leans in a doorway while the long hair of a girl stands on end, blown by the wind. These unexpected elements suggest childhood fantasies and nightmares, and echo elements of the Gothic novels that Tanning loved. The title, ‘A Little Night Music’, is borrowed from one of Mozart’s most light-hearted chamber works and appears to be used ironically.
Untitled - Jerry Uelsmann 1969 – all film photography, no Photoshop!
	Made entirely in the darkroom, Jerry Uelsmann creates his surreal photographs in a series of steps, masking and exposing different areas of photosensitive paper as he changes negatives. He maintains some loyalty to the aesthetic of traditional landscape and still life photography, insofar as the seams and edges of each successive element are concealed, and the resulting composite suggests the unity of a singular view or scene. The metaphoric and symbolic force of Uelsmann’s photographs is derived from these juxtapositions, consistencies, and forms. Uelsmann’s photo-montages extend the tradition of surrealist photography pioneered by the avant-garde photographers and painters of the 1930s and 40s: positive and negative spaces are inverted and false reflections appear in earth and water, architectural elements like windows and doorways bound tapestries of sky and sand. (Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College)
Salvador Dali - Autumnal Cannibalism 1936
	From the Tate Museum’s caption: Painted just after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, this work shows a couple locked in a cannibalistic embrace. They are pictured on a table-top, which merges into the earthy tones of a Spanish landscape in the background. The conflict between countrymen is symbolised by the apple balanced on the head of the male figure, which refers to the legend of William Tell, in which a father is forced to shoot at his son.
Giorgio de Chirico - The Uncertainty of the Poet 1913
	From the Tate Museum’s caption: De Chirico’s quiet square evokes the classical arcades and statuary of antiquity (the sculpture is a torso of Aphrodite). In contrast, the passing train and perishable bananas suggest a sense of the contemporary and immediate. The distorted perspective and shadows undermine the conventions of pictorial space and time. De Chirico’s early works were enthusiastically embraced by the Surrealists, who saw in them a dream-like parallel existence. The poet Paul Eluard wrote: ‘these squares are outwardly similar to existing squares and yet we have never seen them ... We are in an immense, previously inconceivable, world.’

Surrealist Artists

Find surrealist works you like by 10 of these artists. Study them, be inspired by them. Critique one of them, as in the list of requirements. Follow the links, and the further links into galleries displaying (and sometimes discussing) the artists’ works.

Surrealist Artists Francis Picabia	1879-1953	French Painter
Jean Arp	1886-1966	German/French
Marcel Duchamp	1887-1968	French/American Conceptual Artist
Giorgio de Chirico	1888-1978	Greek/Italian Painter/Sculptor
Paul Nash	1889-1946	English Painter
Man Ray	1890-1976	American Photographer/Painter
Max Ernst	1891-1976	German/French Painter
Alberto Savinio	1891-1952	Greek/Italian Painter
Joan Miro	1893-1983	Spanish Painter/Sculptor
Andre Breton	1896-1966	French Writer
Andre Masson	1896-1987	French Painter
Paul Delvaux	1897-1994	Belgian Painter
Rene Magritte	1898-1967	Belgian Painter
Kay Sage	1898-1963	American Painter
Pavel Tchelitchew	1898-1957	Russian Painter
Eileen Agar	1899-1991	British Painter
Yves Tanguy	1900-1955	French/American Painter
Alberto Giacometti	1901-1966	Swiss Painter/Sculptor
Stanley William Hayter	1901-1988	British Painter
Hans Bellmer	1902-1975	German/French
Victor Brauner	1903-1966	Romanian Painter
Salvador Dali	1904-1989	Spanish Painter
Oscar Dominguez	1906-1957	Spanish Painter
Remedios Varo	1908-1963	Spanish/Mexican Painter
Enrico Donati	Born 1909	American Painter
Wilhelm Freddie	1909-1995	Danish
Dorothea Tanning	Born 1910	American Painter/Sculptor
Roberto Matta	1912-2002	Chilean Painter
Meret Oppenheim	1913-1985	German/Swiss
Sven Dalsgaard	1914-1999	Danish Painter
James Gleeson	Born 1915	Australian Painter
Leonora Carrington	Born 1917	British/Mexican Painter/Writer
Arnulf Rainer	Born 1929	Austrian
Rodolfo Opazo Bernales	Born 1935	Chilean Painter
Jerry Uelsman	Born 1934	American Photographic Artist