Observation and Fantasy

Surreal- resembling a dream; being or seeming fanciful or imaginary

Surrealism – A style of art in which dreams, fantasy, and the human mind are sources of ideas for artists. Popular in the 1920’s as a reaction to Dadaism and WWI.

So . . . .is this art?

Dada – An art movement that grew out of the absurdity and horror of World War I. It protested all art, modern or traditional, as well as the civilization that had produced it, to create an art of the absurd.

Marcel Duchamp

The Surrealist Manifesto "The Surrealist Manifesto" by

André Breton in 1924, Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely, that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in "an absolute reality, a surreality." -

Influenced by theories of Sigmund Freud, Breton saw the unconscious as the wellspring of the imagination.

Salvador Dali - 1904 – 1989. One of the most popular and well-known surrealist artist. He worked in painting, sculpture , film and other media.

his painting technique is compared to Renaissance artist

His painting subjects are based off of Freudian theories.

Persistence of Memory Salvador Dali A haunting allegory of

empty space in which time is at an end.

Barren landscape, without horizon, drifts to infinity, lit by some eerie, never-settting sun.

An amorphous (shapeless) creature sleeps in the foreground (based off of creatures in Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights.

The Face of Mae West Mae West was a sultry

American actress who is known for her burlesque type shows and struggled with censorship for her cinemas.

Dali was intrigued by her and what she stood for

Painting is a portrait combined as an apartment

Metamorphosis of Narcissus

The Burning Giraffe

Rene Magritte - (1898 1967) A Belgian surrealist artist.

became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images.

intended goal for his work was to challenge observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality and force viewers to become hypersensitive to their surroundings.

The Son of Man

False Mirror

The Lovers

Remedios Varo – 1908 – 1963. A Spanish-Mexican surrealist painter.

Combined her love of fantasy and mechanical drawings

Worked like a scientist by asking questions like, “What if”

Spiral Transit

Creations of the Birds

Mimesis

Surreal Hand-scape

Must portray the hand as a prominent, totally unusual & unexpected ‘character’ in its environment.  Show hands interacting w/ that environment… passively, or actively.

Must include at least 7 different levels value through the use of stippling.

Media – Sharpie/Prismacolor Markers

Homework 1. draw a large hand interacting with a

landscape in a surrealistic manner -large hand picking up a park bench -hand pinching an air balloon

2. Draw a hand as a tree or flower Arm and wrist as the trunk, palm and fingers as

the branches; add foliage

3. Draw a hand(s) as an animal

-snail, bird

4. Free draw