Blog
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Surrealism and trauma
Surrealism is informed by trauma and so am I. So it is natural that I would look to this movement to understand better the context of my own making.
‘Nue couchée’
Dorothea Tanning
‘La corde sensible’René Magritte
‘Object’
Meret Oppenheim‘Breton defined Surrealism as a way to “resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality.” He recast it as an artistic enterprise with his 1928 publication Surrealism and Painting. By then, artists such as Jean Arp, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Paul Klee, René Magritte, Joan Miró, and Yves Tanguy had been drawn into his orbit.Stylistically, Surrealism ranged from the quasi-abstraction of Miró to Magritte’s deadpan realism. Originally centered in Paris, it became global in scope, spilling over to the Americas and Asia. Reacting to the carnage of World War I, the movement attacked rationalism and social decorum, upending longstanding artistic precepts and subverting conventional sexual mores with misogynistic élan. Even so, Surrealism attracted a significant cohort of female artists, among them Meret Oppenheim, Dorothea Tanning, Claude Cahun, and Leonora Carrington.The Surrealists reveled in a discontinuity best summarized by a line from the 1868 novel Les Chants de Maldoror, which described a “chance juxtaposition of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table.” This idea became Surrealism’s credo, codified by the collaborative genre known as the cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse). Resembling a game of telephone, but played with drawings, cadavre exquis involved passing a piece of paper around a group of artists. Each would render part of a figure, then hide it by folding the sheet over. Other participants would follow suit, and the result when revealed was predictably disjointed.’Like Dadaism, Surrealism was an avant-garde movement that explored the psyche and had placed strong emphasis on mental investigation. it is unsurprising that they were a response to profound changes in politics, war, revolution, and technology witnessed in the early 20th Century.
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this-person-does-not-exist.com
https://this-person-does-not-exist.com/en is a website that generates AI images of humans faces.I will play about with this site and a range of other AI engines to get some strong results.
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Collections brief initial thoughts
I believe that we are affected by what is poured into us. This feels pertinent to as a Mother, looking honestly at how I raise and influence my daughter. How she is influenced by her world. What nourishes her and what harms her. I am influenced my trauma and this is an underlying theme for this work; I will explore the Surrealist movement further to get better context.I would like to make mixed media pieces for an installation that explores these themes.My initial thoughts are that I would like this to be collaborative; to engage the viewer in action so that they might be compelled to connect more deeply with the subject being discussed. So that I might learn from their engagement.I would like to display vessels illustrated with images of AI generated children’s faces. These children do not exist and themselves are composite of many other children’s faces.This echo’s the theme of the work while bringing the contentious issue of AI generated images into the conversation. This narrative is further complicated by the fact that the choice to use these images instead of photos of real children was an ethical one; a striving to avoid being exploitative. Posing the question: Which is a more ethical choice by me as an artist?My idea for collaboration is that I would present multiple transparent vessels as well as liquids and pipettes to the audience. They will be invited to pour liquid into each container until they are finished or until the vessel is full. There could be a selection of coloured liquids available; some water and some oil; that way, the different layers added will stay separated, forming strata bands of colour, of influence. Like a geological sample of psyche. The liquids should be unlabeled to give the audience space to relate to the piece.The piece will be true to life in scale, with each image being head sized. This makes them feel more relatable, more real, more emotive.I would like to use glass because of its transparency but also its fragility. We are all capable of shattering and or cutting if handled too roughly. I have unfortunately been told that I cannot use glass in this setting and so instead will have to adapt this choice and use Perspex.I like the idea of referencing milk. It is the original food and has strong language around nourishment.I also want to explore a collection of pillows. I like the idea of examining the imprints that we leave in fabric after we sleep. Like a mould of our subconscious. I also like the idea of messing with visual scripting and creating pillows using unexpected materials like plaster; capturing the ephemeral. I will explore 2D and 3D works.I would like to experiment with photographic and video pieces of the objects.While I am pleased with this initial concept, in an effort to push my artistic practise, I am going to focus on just making and following my creative instincts. When connecting with my last project brief, I was very loyal to my original idea. This in of itself had merit. But it also painted me into a corner direction wise and in that way was limiting. So I will strive for the opposite this time. -
Critical studies: Art and the law
Although I was already aware of a lot of this due to past endeavour, it is really practical to be given a refresh of all this info for consideration.
I have saved the talk for later reference.
