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[Click image to enlarge] [watercolor paper, collage, gouache, aquarelle, pencil..]Look carefully, and you see the tiny wrinkly waves the fish produces while she knits..
This collage-sketch is absurd, strange and perhaps somewhat disturbing. Does it come close to surrealism ? Does it have anything to do with symbolism ? Or any -isms aside, what does it convey ?
A group of artists, the Surrealists sought to explore an inner reality beyond the rational world. They often used symbols to portray bizarre, dreamlike landscapes and were influenced by the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud.
The Surrealists were interested in more distinct forms than the Impressionists, who often depicted objects dissolved in bright sunlight. Like Dada artists, they experimented with new subjects. Unlike Dada artists, the Surrealists were not in favor of anarchy as a way of protesting politics and war. Andre Breton, poet and critic was known as one of the founding fathers of the Surrealist movement. In his treatise of 1924, First Manifesto of Surrealism, Breton defined the doctrines of the movement. In it, Breton emphasized the importance of an "automatic" approach and a dream state for creativity.
One of the most controversial and key figure of the Surrealist movement was Salvador Dali. He was intrigued by Freud's ideas of the unconscious mind, and the symbolic significance these ideas held, inspired most of his art. Dali, more than many other Surrealists, combined realism into his strange landscapes, giving them a startling, familiar quality. His goal was "to record unconscious objects as precisely as possible."
